Bear North Digital

Josh Kimmes is the founder of Bear North Digital, a Superior, Wisconsin–based home services marketing agency that positions itself as specialists in SEO and Google Ads for contractors. By his own account on the agency's About page, Kimmes's marketing work started young — he describes experimenting with keyword stuffing at age 15 — and he eventually built Bear North Digital around a thesis that home service businesses are underserved by generalist agencies that apply cookie-cutter playbooks to verticals with distinct seasonal patterns, keyword landscapes, and buyer intent signals.

The agency's stated positioning is narrow by design: HVAC, plumbing, remodeling, roofing, electrical, garage door, auto glass, and home improvement contractors. Kimmes frames the firm's philosophy around four ideas that recur across the site — treating clients as partners with full transparency, a 'founder's mindset' that favors durable growth over short-term spikes, a willingness to test and re-test campaigns when they underperform, and clean offboarding where clients retain ownership of their assets. Bear North markets itself as a Gold-level HubSpot Partner and claims to have served 500+ businesses.

The public founder narrative is relatively brief; the site leans harder on service mechanics and results than on Kimmes's personal résumé, and specifics about prior roles or team size are not disclosed on the pages reviewed. What is consistent is the vertical focus: Bear North presents itself not as a digital agency that happens to take contractor clients, but as a contractor-first shop that built its SEO and paid media processes around trades-specific economics like cost-per-lead, Local Service Ads conversion rates, and seasonal demand.