Digital Advertising
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
125+ 5-Star Reviews
When you do great work, people notice.
Cougar Digital Marketing ROCKS! I've worked with Travis and Josh from the very beginning. These folks know their stuff and do a fantastic job with website design & promotion, digital photography and so much more. Their services are very reasonably priced and they know how to GET RESULTS. Great BANG for your marketing BUCK. Look no further that Cougar Digital - these folks will take good care of you.
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!
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!
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!
Excellent service. Creative work. They understand what you are trying to do and deliver! So enjoyable to work with them!
We recently Had Travis and his team build a custom website for our Boat Dealership. Nixons Marine.. Josh, Nick and Travis were awesome. We got tired of the common dealer site and they hit it out of park with our website. What a great project!! Thanks So Much for making it easy..
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.
Josh Kandle and his team did a great job educating us about the importance of up-to-date digital tools, and how quickly out-of-date solutions can hinder our on-line reach. The solutions he offered were more than fairly priced, paid immediate dividends, and I am happy to refer him to any business in need of a productive digital marketing program.
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
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!
We are SO grateful with Josh from Cougar Digital! We are a community workspace and Josh came in and took some fantastic pictures of our brand new space! We are very pleased with the work that he did!
I would highly recommend Cougar Digital Media! They worked with us on creating the exact vision we had for our website, they worked around our schedule to make sure the website matched our vision. Working with Nick went as smoothly as it could go, he went above and beyond with his creativity!
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!
Josh was fantastic to work with! He took Real Estate photography photos on the 14th, and had all of them beautifully edited and back to me in 24 hours! Highly recommend his services!
Cougar digital was awesome to work with. They made the website design experience very simple and were very helpful in accommodating my companies' specific needs!
Very easy to work with and extremely professional. Cougar Digital was able to take our vision and make it a reality as well as making it easy and seamless. I would highly recommend Cougar Digital to anyone!
I highly recommend Cougar Digital. I am currently working with them on 3 separate projects. They took over 2 community based websites that were painful to use and turned them into user friendly, performant websites. Their website & database design is outstanding and they have consistently exceeded my expectations. It has been a pleasure working with everyone at Cougar Digital!
Cougar Digital has truly exceeded expectations with their outstanding work on our website. From start to finish, their team demonstrated peak professionalism, creativity, and technical expertise. The design they crafted for our website is nothing short of spectacular. It perfectly captures the essence of our brand while ensuring a visually stunning and user-friendly interface. Every detail was meticulously planned and executed, resulting in a site that not only looks impressive but also functions seamlessly! 100% Recommend Cougar Digital to all businesses.
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 asked Cougar Digital to create a logo for my organization and make my handmade and very rinky-dink brochure and booklet look professional. They came through with flying colors. They gave me several options for a logo, listened carefully to my feedback and then sent me exactly what I wanted when I myself didn't know what it was I exactly wanted. Their team helped me narrow down the important information, put it in an order that made sense and then make it look fantastic. Everyone who has seen the finished product has been so impressed. Through the entire process, I found them to be easy to work with, easy to communicate with, speedy and responsive to emails and phone calls and patient when we came up against a deadline crunch (through no fault of their own). I would give Cougar Digital my highest recommendation.
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.
Cougar Digital and team is very responsive, knowledgeable, and capable and has done a great job in building and maintaining our business web site, and providing needed graphic design for our needs. Highly recommend them to anyone wanting expert work and assistance in these aspects of their business.
We have nothing but great things to say about Cougar Digital Marketing! Travis took the time to understand our goals, worked around our schedule, and went above and beyond to make our vision come to life. Ashley was a whiz and was always available when we needed her. Our site turned out better than we imagined. Can't recommend them enough.
We highly recommend Cougar Digital Marketing for their exceptional marketing services. We used them initially to build our new website for our commercial and residential General Contracting company, and we signed on with them for future partnership hours. We have been pleased with the seamless results Travis's company has provided us. The team's collaboration and communication with the website designer, Ashlie, the marketing guru, Josh, and the photographer, Mykayla, were ALL GREAT. Having these marketing resources under one roof has made our transition from our last website company, much easier than expected. Their prompt availability and amazing support made the entire experience enjoyable. We are extremely satisfied with the results and grateful for their partnership and guidance!
Awesome experience working with Josh on a 25th anniversary video of my wedding photos set to music. Couldn’t be happier with the finished product. Thank you Cougar Digital and Josh!
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.
Josh has a great eye and delivers on what he promises. Easy to work with and very responsive.
Service is the difference!! Ashley is super sharp and ahead of the curve but the real value is access and responsiveness. Other providers I have had were great until they got paid then very slow to respond to updates and changes I needed. Ashley is lighting in a bottle and handles updates and changes with urgency as well as keeps us informed of new emerging opportunities to consider. Highly reccomend. It would be a Mistake not to give her a meeting before deciding who to partner with.
If you need a website. Call these guys and you won't be disappointed. You'll be surprised at how affordable they are and with the great LOCAL customer service they provide. These guys know their stuff.
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.
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.
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.
Had a great experience with Cougar Digital. We lost our photographer last minute and called Cougar Digital and they stepped up and really did a bang up job for us. Plus their WSU Alum and that added good fun to the shoot. Super appreciate these guys and recommend them to anyone. #AGENT509
Cougar Digital took the time to get to know our firm and our marketing goals before shooting any video. This made the video production process smooth and efficient. A short time after the shoot, their rough draft clips turned out to be nearly perfect final drafts, requiring very little input from us. They have an impressive creative and production team who strikes the right balance between respecting the time of their customers and getting the customer exactly what they want.
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.
My class and I had a great time learning from Josh about his background, experience in design and video, and creative process. Thank you so much for volunteering!!
The team at Cougar Digital Marketing are great to work with! They were very professional throughout the entire process of creating a beautiful website for me. Every member of the team I worked with was attentive to all of my questions/needs and they delivered exactly what I was hoping for in a website. I am so glad I found them!
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 did a great job on our logo! He even let us sit with him at his personal computer so we could be involved with the finishing touches. Thanks Josh and Thanks Cougar Digital!!
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.
Awesome local digital agency. Their webdesign capabilities and customer rapport is super impressive. Loved working with Travis and Josh!
Always a pleasure to work with the Cougar Digital Marketing & Design team! They excel in creativity, effectiveness and efficiency.
Great company! Love how quickly Josh responds to our needs, questions and requests! Highly recommend them
Cougar digital has been an awesome! Basin Pacific Insurance could not be more happy about the work that they have done, the personal experience, and the creative ideas! Keep up the good work! Josh Toner/ Basin Pacific Insurance
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 is a fantastic company for your online marketing needs I had couple estimates on building my website cougar digital was one of the highest but their knowledge and responsive put them apart from other marketing companies which is why chose them best dollars I've spent for my business is here
Cougar Digital has been so incredible to work with! They are always able to turn our words and ideas into a beautiful finished product quickly. The staff is responsive and professional and we love working with Josh. He is a true artist and always delivers a stunning product. Thank you Cougar!
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?
Most small businesses should expect to spend at least $500–$2,500 per month on Facebook ads, depending on the audience, location, campaign goal, and level of competition. A smaller budget can work for testing, but consistent results usually require enough spend to reach the right people more than once.
The bigger issue is not just the ad budget. Facebook ads work best when the campaign has a clear strategy, strong creative, a defined audience, and a landing page or follow-up process that turns clicks into leads.
How much should a local business spend on digital advertising?
A local business should spend enough on digital advertising to reach its audience consistently and collect meaningful data. For many small businesses, that often starts around $1,000–$3,000 per month in ad spend, though the right number depends on the industry, location, competition, and campaign goals.
The ad budget should also account for strategy, creative, landing pages, tracking, and campaign management. Spending more is not always better, but spending too little can make it hard to learn what is working.
Check out our marketing budget calculator for a ballpark starting range →
How do I know if my digital ads are working?
Digital ads are working when they are helping you reach the business goal you set before the campaign starts. That goal might be phone calls, form submissions, booked appointments, website traffic, store visits, brand awareness, or qualified leads.
Before launching a campaign, we define what success should look like. Then we track the right metrics and explain the results in plain English so you can see what is working, what needs to change, and where your budget is going.
How long does it take digital advertising to work?
Some digital advertising campaigns can start generating traffic and leads quickly, especially Google Search campaigns where people are already looking for what you offer. Other campaigns, such as Facebook ads, display ads, and CTV advertising, usually take more time because they are building awareness and trust.
Most campaigns need time for testing, optimization, and better data. We set realistic expectations before launch so you know what should happen right away and what may take longer to build.
Do you work with small digital advertising budgets?
Yes, we work with some small advertising budgets, but the right budget depends on your goals, market, and competition. A small budget may be enough for testing or a focused local campaign, but it may not be enough to support a full digital advertising strategy.
We do not recommend spending money on ads if the budget is too low to produce useful results. If you are unsure what makes sense, our budget calculator can help you understand what level of spend is realistic for your goals.
What is the best digital advertising platform for a local business?
The best digital advertising platform for a local business depends on the goal. Google Ads is often a strong choice when people are actively searching for your service. Facebook and Instagram ads are useful for awareness, retargeting, and reaching specific audiences. CTV advertising can help local businesses build brand recognition in a defined geographic area.
Most businesses get better results when the platform is chosen based on strategy, not just popularity.
What is the difference between Google Ads and Facebook Ads?
Google Ads reaches people based mainly on what they are searching for, while Facebook Ads reaches people based on interests, behaviors, demographics, and audience targeting. Google Ads is often better for high-intent searches, while Facebook Ads can be better for awareness, education, and staying visible to the right audience.
The best choice depends on whether you need to capture existing demand or create more awareness for your business.
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.