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Digital Advertising

Running ads without strategy isn't marketing. It's just spending money.

Spending money on ads isn't the same as advertising. There's a difference.

  • Have you run ads before and seen impressions, not results?
  • Are you spending money on advertising without a real picture of what's working?
  • Do you know which channels actually make sense for your business and why?
  • Bottom line: Is your advertising built to grow your business, or just to run?

Digital Advertising Strategy

The platform isn't the problem — your strategy is.

Two stories we hear constantly — and both end up in the same place.

“I've never done this before.”

You know your customers are online. You just don't know where to start, what to spend, or which platforms actually make sense for your business — and you don't want to hand money to someone who'll pick for you and hope for the best.

"I've tried it and it didn't work."

You ran ads. You got reports. You got impressions. You didn't get much else — and you're not sure what went wrong.

Different situations. Same missing piece: nobody sat down at the beginning and defined what success actually looks like for your business. Not impressions. Not clicks. What would make this worth it.

No Strategy, No Results

Why most ad campaigns underperform

Here's what we see most often when businesses come to us after a failed ad campaign.

  • Reaching the wrong people

    You can have great ads and a generous budget — if they're reaching the wrong people, none of it matters.

  • Only advertising at one stage

    Most campaigns only run at the "ready to buy" stage. That leaves a huge part of your future customer base completely untouched.

  • No connection to real goals

    Impressions and clicks aren't results. If your campaign isn't tied to leads, calls, or revenue — it's just a number on a report.

  • One-size-fits-all approach

    The same campaign template doesn't work for a home builder, a restaurant, and a law firm. Every business needs a strategy built for its specific goals and audience.

Two colleagues discussing project on laptop

The Customer Journey

How digital advertising works

The best strategies reach people at every stage — not just when they're ready to buy.

Awareness

They don't know you yet. Show up before the need hits. 

Consideration

They're researching. Be visible when it counts.

Research & Discovery

They're comparing options. Stay in the loop.

Decision

They're ready to act. The right message closes.

Loyalty

They've already bought. 

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Calculate Your Marketing Budget

Not sure what to spend on digital marketing?

Our free marketing budget calculator gives you a smart starting range based on your revenue and goals — in about 30 seconds.

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Online Advertising Platforms

The right tool for the right moment.

There's no single best platform — just the right one for where your customers are and what you're trying to accomplish.

Google Search Ads

High intent. They're actively searching for what you offer. You either show up or your competitor does.

Facebook & Instagram Ads

Wide reach, precise audience selection. Build awareness and stay in front of warm audiences — the people who've already shown interest in what you do.

YouTube Video Ads

Video builds trust fast. YouTube puts your brand in front of a large, targeted audience before they even start searching.

Connected TV (Streaming)

Your ads on Hulu, Roku, Peacock — actual TV screens, with the precision to reach specific audiences. Most local competitors aren't here yet. That's the opportunity.

Retargeting & Display

Reconnect with people who've already shown interest. Keeps your brand visible across thousands of sites and apps through the buying decision.

AI-Optimized Campaigns

The latest AI-driven ad tools automatically optimize placements, audiences, and spend across multiple channels at once. Powerful when guided by the right strategy — flat-out wasteful without it.

Why Cougar Digital Marketing?

We're not the agency for every advertising budget. We're the right one for yours if you're ready to do this right.

We've gotten selective. Not because we're too busy, but because we've seen what happens when advertising runs without strategy, without the right client relationship, without honest conversations about what's actually working. It wastes money — yours and ours.

What we offer is a real partnership. We learn your business, build a strategy around your specific goals, and stay invested in the results. We're local, which means you can sit across a table from the people running your campaigns. We're not routing you through account managers or reading from a script.

  • Strategy before platforms — we figure out what makes sense before we spend a dollar

  • Direct access to the people actually running your campaigns

  • Plain-English reporting tied to goals — not a wall of metrics nobody explains

  • 13+ years in this market: healthcare, construction, food & bev, professional services, trades

  • Invested in what happens after launch — not just at launch

leads in the first year alone

What happens when you pair a new, modern auto repair shop website with a hyper-focused Google Search Ads strategy?

team blog

125+ 5-Star Reviews

When you do great work, people notice.

Josh was easy to work with. He returned my calls and emails promptly! And he did amazing job. I will not hesitate to reach out to him again for up coming projects!

Very grateful for Cougar Digital's marketing work for my medical practice. They really helped increase my online presence and improve my ratings online. I have referred my colleagues to Cougar.

These guys are great! It's always an interesting scenario when you begin a relationship with a new company. I will say that from experience Cougar Digital is one of the easiest and highly educated companies to work with. If you have a question a quick email or call gets an answer. If you have an idea these guys will without a doubt help to the best of their ability. I'm no expert in the marketing world but Cougar Digital makes me feel like I have everything I would ever need at my fingertips. Thanks a ton guys, we look forward to our continued partnership!

Our website turned out great! Nick was super easy to work with really made the process a breeze. Josh was our photographer for our website, after seeing the results from the first shoot we had to schedule for another! The pictures turned out better than imagined. Josh did a great job staying out of our crews way but managed to catch all the action with great detail. 10/10 would recommend to anyone!

Cougar Digital provides excellent follow through on all our projects. We trust them with developing solutions for our email marketing campaigns, graphic design, and collateral creation. Their designs are used by our partners nationally. We count on them for specific website support work and they always come through for us. They are solution oriented and their upbeat, friendly customer service is unparalleled.

Mykaela Faulconer at Cougar Digital is one of my favorite people to work with, ever, across the board. She is incredibly talented, and has done consistently stellar graphic design for me and my team at Tri-City Orthopaedic Clinic. I have never had a bad interaction with Mykaela, and she goes above and beyond to provider exemplary customer service at every turn. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to work with Mykaela on a daily basis. Everyone at Cougar Digital is amazing, and I would recommend them whole-heartedly.

Working with Cougar Digital to launch a campaign for kids to support the Prosser Boys & Girls Club. I was impressed with their creativity, professionalism, and attention to detail. They helped us to achieve incredible results and bring our ideas to life!

Very helpful and easy to work with. They thought about everything that we needed on our website and it looks amazing! Very satisfied.

Ashley redid our website. She was professional, quick, and listened to all of our requests. Thank you!

I recently had an opportunity to choose a web designer to re-vamp and optimize Stepping Stones Alliance's website. Having worked with Cougar Digital before they were my choice for this project. I'm so glad they were able to work with us! The entire process from first meeting to re-launch of the site was stellar. They are quick to respond, listen to feedback, professional and clear in their communications, and spot-on with fulfilling the client desires. The entire team was great to work with along the way and I appreciated the high level of customer service at every point. Not only will I continue to work with them for all our organization's website needs, but I will recommend them to anyone looking for website and marketing projects.

Josh and Cougar Digital did an amazing job on a video for an event. We were super proud to show it to donors and had a wonderful response by community members regarding the video. Well done Josh and Cougar Digital!

So great to have a guy like Josh and the Cougar Digital team in your corner. Professional, fast, and awesome to work with.

Josh created a style guide for us to help with consistency throughout our agency. He did a great job creating the guide with little information. He did a great job explaining everything to us. He went above and beyond troubleshooting a zip file issue. Our services with Josh Kandle were 5-star service! He was kind, patient, thoughtful with his work and helpful with creativity in our style guide as well and assisting with technical difficulties. Thanks again Josh!

I absolutely love working with Cougar Digital for every aspect of marketing our business utilizes. From digital content and graphic design work, to helping us create content (photos, videos and language) for various types of media and needs, Cougar does it all. The staff is awesome! Everyone is personable, prompt and professional. They are fun and I look forward to working with them on each project because I know the results will be incredible every time. Cougar's team members are open and flexible in helping us reach our goals and are authentic in their approach to meeting expectations and timeliness. Their consistent delivery of high level results within projected timeliness makes them my first choice for all marketing needs

Sonar Insights had the pleasure of partnering with Cougar Digital Marketing & Design, LLC on two separate occasions - a video campaign for the Benton Franklin Census 2020 and a video for a client. It was a big undertaking to take the script sand creatively execute on them. Josh Kandle and his team did a masterful job at realizing the vision for the projects with a fantastic end product. Could not be more pleased!

Had a great experience working with Josh! Super easy to work with and really knows his stuff - especially when it comes to lighting and editing for interior shots. The photos turned out amazing, with just the right vibe we were going for. We ended up adding a few extra shot requests last minute, and Josh had no problem fitting them in. He also helped with staging, which made a big difference, and the drone footage was a great bonus. His pricing was very reasonable for the quality we got. Great value for money. We’ll definitely be hiring him again for future shoots!

We had a fantastic experience working with Cougar Digital for photography at two of our recent Prosser Chamber events, Scottish Fest and the Art Walk & Wine Gala. They did an incredible job capturing the fun, energy, and unique details of each event, giving us some high-quality images that we can use for future marketing and tourism promotion. Josh was professional and incredibly easy to work with. He has a great eye for capturing moments that really bring an event to life. The final product exceeded our expectations and we look forward to working with them in the future!

Travis and the Team impressed me as having great listening skills! I had them create a website and the main priorities were SEO, Responsive across all devices, Reasonable loading speed and the Contact Info was responsive so it’s easy to place a call or send email. They surpassed these objectives and did a great job of matching the graphics with the content on each page. Very punctual and professional and we’re sensitive to my schedule also. I was impressed by the way all Team members signed off before launching as a measure of quality control. Their values are put into action and not just on a plaque in the office.

Ashley is very easy to communicate with and quick to respond when you have questions. Ashley is very attentive to your ideas. My website gets very high compliments.

Fantastic service! Cougar Digital gave me very professional one-to-one couching! This is making a significant impact on my projects!

Josh was quick to reply and great to work with. I would highly recommend and look forward to the next opportunity we get to work with him.

Cougar Digital worked closely with us to create a website for our business that truly reflects our vision. They dedicated time and effort to ensure every detail aligned with our goals, and the end result exceeded our expectations. We’re extremely happy with the final product and appreciate their commitment to quality.

We had a short timetable and a limited budget. The end result was great. Working with the Cougar Digital team made the project very enjoyable.

Josh Kandle was excellent to work with on remaking our branding guidelines, etc. He was helpful, patient and his work was outstanding. Thanks Cougar Digital and Josh for making this process so great.

Working with Cougar Digital on our logo design was fantastic! Their creativity, professionalism, and attention to detail brought our vision to life, delivering a result that exceeded our expectations. Highly recommend their team!

Cougar Digital Marketing & Design does outstanding work. Prosser School District has utilized their expertise on multiple occasions to assist in communicating our message. They are easy to work with and most importantly, they deliver!

Travis, Josh and everyone at Cougar Digital have been super to work with. They have become a partner in our business. Our web design and online media presence has greatly improved by implementing their recommendations. They go the extra mile.

Josh Kandle was absolutely terrific to work with and the quality of his product is outstanding. Josh made great use of our time and was very collaborative for our project. I would highly recommend Cougar Digital Marketing they produce great product at awesome value. Cheers, George Stanley General Manager Audi/BMW Tri Cities

Cougar Digital is fantastic to work with. I hadn't experienced a branding workshop before and had no idea what it would entail. They did a great job of taking all of our team's preferences and opinions into consideration to deliver a full branding guide that truly fits our vision. Very professional, thorough and an overall pleasure to work with. Thank you Cougar Digital for all of your hard work!

Josh at Cougar Digital built us a beautiful website! He and Travis are wonderful to work with and made the whole process easier than I imagined it would be. I would recommend them to anyone that wants a great, quality website

The Review Manager service from Cougar Digital Marketing & Design is terrific! I have wanted to get reviews for years but felt awkward about asking. This service makes it easy, and the response has been phenomenal! 5 Stars and more!!

The Cougar Digital team is fantastic. We recently revamped our website. I worked closely with Faith and she was super friendly and helpful every time we talked whether it was email, phone, or in person. The whole team works together to make sure everything is perfect and taken of. They really took our needs into consideration. Thanks!

Cougar Digital went above and beyond to ensure our complete and total satisfaction with creating and launching our new website which can be a challenging process when multiple opinions are involved. Josh in particular was very attentive, patient and helpful throughout the creative process and also with recommendations for SEO and innovative solutions for soliciting reviews and feedback from customers to boost online reviews. He also facilitated communication with our existing IT support to smoothly transition our domain and emails. I highly recommend the expertise of Cougar Digital for help with all things digital. If they don't offer a solution themselves, they will help you find one!

I honestly don't know where to start. My partners and I could not be happier with the process from start to finish working with Ashley and Cougar Digital Marketing. It was an absolute pleasure working with Ashley and I would recommend her to anyone who is looking to either create a website for their business or enhance their current one like we did. The service and pricing we experienced completely exceeded our expectations.

It was such a pleasure working with Cougar Digital. Not only was the process fast and easy, the work they created is amazing! Josh gave us a variety of different options to work with after taking the time to carefully listen to our needs. He made every little detail count and really brought our vision to life. We will definitely continue to work closely as our business continues to expand. Thank you, we could not be any happier.

I am the Office Manager of a business that badly needed a website reworked. I knew that Cougar Digital was up to the task, but I was unsure of my own Manager. He really didn't want to go through the steps to work with anyone on anything like a website. Nick was fabulous (as in over the top) in his Customer Service skills with a very hard to work with man. The professionalism of Cougar Digital, coupled with the patience and skills of Nick, provided my Manager with everything he needed to get a new website. The website is beautiful and I am one very pleased customer. I will always go to Cougar Digital for all of my marketing needs.

I originally had a very basic logo for my business, but after Travis, at Cougar Digital, kicked it up a few notches, now it really stands out! I have used them for a number of graphics projects since, including business card and rack card designs and I am always impressed with what they produce! They are very easy to work with as well.

Thank you Cougar Digital. Over the past couple of years we have worked with Cougar Digital for rebranding, website updates, new logo, updating our business card and promotional material. They also produced an amazing testimonial video - so much fun working with Josh and his team to create this. I can’t begin to express how happy we are with the work Cougar Digitial has completed for us over the years. They are professional, punctual, very creative and so easy to work with. Looking forward to our partnership for years to come. I would highly recommend Cougar Digitial. Our team at New Leaf Creations is thankful for all of your amazing work and looking forward to working with Cougar Digital in the future.

Cougar Digital answered the phone, literally. During a company name change, we reached out to multiple design and marketing groups from the Tri-Cities to Walla Walla to Spokane. Although we'd left messages with each vendor, Cougar was the only one courteous enough to respond. After a couple consultations, Joshua Kandle, Director of Marketing took charge of the design of our new company logo. With patience and professionalism, he listened to our concepts and following a series of modifications, he created a logo that is printed on millions of labels and boxes that're shipped globally. The logo is headlined on our website and our email, along with being printed on our work garments. Digital art might be easy with today's technology, but without Joshua's patient nature and ability to listen to our ideas, the incredible logo wouldn't have been possible. Vehemently I recommend Cougar Digital. They're professional yet personable. They're communicative and driven while remaining patient.

I used Cougar Digital Marketing for a personal Christmas gift in 2024. Josh was professional, friendly, and helpful throughout the whole process from setting up location and time for photos, to helping me through the purchasing process to get the photos printed. The Christmas gift was my father's favorite this year-- thank you , Cougar Digital Marketing!

I have been working with the team and Cougar Digital now for almost five years and I genuinely love working with them. They have become such valuable partners on the marketing side of our business. I can't recommend them strongly enough!! I would give them 10 stars if I could!!!

Travis Hartliep and his crew are amazing! I worked with Josh on designing a book cover and he was great... was willing to work through numerous changes and updates, suggested helpful things to push the project along, and was very patient and courteous. We came in on budget and on time for the project and the end result was fantastic. I highly recommend Cougar Digital for any and all of your design and marketing needs.

Greatly appreciate the work that Josh and the Cougar Digital Marketing team did for our organization. We had a vague vision and they were able to make it better than we could have imagined. Appreciate their flexibility to work with us on a short turnaround and their suggestions for making the best video possible.

We had a great experience working with COUGAR DIGITAL for creating our website and helping us with our ongoing marketing needs. Ashley, did an exceptional job with the website. Josh created an awesome logo and branding bible for us, and Makayla's photos added a professional touch. Highly recommended for top-notch digital marketing solutions!

The team at Cougar Digital did a great job helping us translate our company culture and goals into a visual representation of who we are as a company. They took the time to understand what we wanted to convey and helped us select the right colors, logo, fonts, and overall branding to bring that vision to life. The entire process was collaborative and professional, and we’re extremely happy with how everything came together. They made what could have been an overwhelming process feel straightforward and enjoyable. I would definitely recommend Cougar Digital to any company looking to build or refresh their brand.

Cougar Digital has been great to work with. They helped us to update our website and to launch a marketing campaign. I've been impressed with how Travis and team seek to understand your business before making recommendations. They are professional and attentive and produce high quality work. I highly recommend to others.

I enjoyed working with Josh. Josh explains things in a way that make easily understandable for someone who is not in the marketing industry.

Josh and his crew go above and beyond. He offers very personalized service and is always willing to go the extra mile. He never hesitates to come in to my office and personally show my staff how they can maximize their services. I've wasted too much money over the past few years on worthless SEO. It's great to have someone local who is accountable and provides fantastic service!

Working with Josh at Cougar Digital Marketing & Design was an excellent experience! The process was incredibly collaborative, allowing us to bring our vision for the Pasco School District Career Guide to life. Josh listened to our ideas, provided valuable insights, and worked tirelessly to ensure the final product exceeded our expectations. We are thrilled with the outcome and can't wait to share our new Career Guide with our students and families. Highly recommend Cougar Digital for any design and marketing needs!

This is the second time I've worked with Ashley Hite and Cougar Digital Marketing to revamp a website. Ashley is knowledgeable, creative, and patient. In both cases, she went the extra mile to make sure we were satisfied with the design and functionality of the websites. When we have issues (or just a question of how to do something), she is always quick to respond. I would hire Cougar Digital and Ashley again with no reservations, and I highly recommend them.

Questions?

Digital advertising FAQs

If you’re thinking it, there’s a good chance someone else asked it too. 

How much do Facebook ads cost?
How much should a local business spend on digital advertising?
How do I know if my digital ads are working?
How long does it take digital advertising to work?
Do you work with small digital advertising budgets?
What is the best digital advertising platform for a local business?
What is the difference between Google Ads and Facebook Ads?

Digital Marketing for Busy Professionals

Learn more. Grow faster.

Quick, useful reads to help you think bigger and market smarter.

Let's Talk

Ready to treat your advertising like an investment instead of an experiment?

We'll start with a real conversation about your business, your goals, and whether this is the right time to build something together.