Row rect Shape Decorative svg added to top
Row rect Shape Decorative svg added to bottom

Marketing for New Businesses

Every new business needs a solid foundation.

Most new businesses spend money on the wrong things first, then spend more fixing them later. The decisions you make in the first few months set the foundation for everything after.

  • Does your brand match the business you're actually building?
  • Is your website ready before your first customer searches for you?
  • Do you know which marketing moves will matter most in year one?
  • Bottom line: Is your marketing foundation something you can build on — or something you'll have to rebuild?

Startup Marketing

There's no perfect time to start. Just a better one.

“I’m starting a new business.”

You have the idea, but the brand is still fuzzy. Maybe there’s no website yet. Maybe the name, logo, message, or offer still needs shape. This is the time to build the basics right — before a rough first impression starts costing you.

“I’m open, but people aren’t finding me.”

The business is live, but your online presence hasn’t caught up. Word of mouth is helping, but your website, Google Business Profile, social media, and content aren’t doing enough yet. You don’t need to do everything. You need to know what matters first.

“My business has outgrown my marketing.”

The business is real now. Revenue is coming in. Your services, team, or customer base may have changed. But your marketing still looks like the first version of the business — not the one you’ve become.

Wherever you are, the job is the same: stop guessing, get the foundation in order, and put your time and budget toward the marketing pieces that matter first. We’ve helped hundreds of Eastern Washington businesses do exactly that.

Startup Marketing Services

What every new business needs to get started.

You don't need everything at once. You need the right things first — in the right order. Here's where we typically start with a new business.

team blog

Brand Identity

A logo, color system, and brand guide that reflect where your business is going — not just where it's starting. Built to scale with you so you're not rebuilding in two years.

Website Design

A professional site that establishes credibility from day one. SEO-ready from launch, mobile-first, and built to work as your primary marketing asset — not just a digital business card.

Local Search & AI Visibility

Google Business Profile setup, local SEO, and AI search optimization — so you show up when people search for what you do, whether that's on Google or asking ChatGPT for a recommendation.

Brand Photography & Video

Real photos of your team, your space, and your work. Professional visuals establish credibility quickly — stock photos do the opposite.

Digital Advertising Launch

When you're new, sometimes you need to get in front of people who haven't heard of you yet. We build focused campaigns that stretch a limited launch budget toward the right audience — not just everyone within a radius.

Ongoing Marketing Support

Once the foundation is built, a monthly marketing partnership keeps it growing. Strategy sessions, content, campaigns, and production — all under one roof, on a budget that scales with your business.

team blog

Starting a Business?

The biggest marketing mistakes startups make.

Starting a business already comes with enough unknowns. The goal is not to do everything perfectly on day one — it’s to avoid the early marketing decisions that cost more to fix later.

  • Building a logo before you know the brand.

    A logo matters, but it should not come before your message, audience, positioning, and how the brand needs to show up. Otherwise, you end up with something that looks fine in one place and falls apart everywhere else.

  • Launching without a real website.

    Social media helps, but it should not be your whole online presence. A simple, clear website gives people somewhere to learn about you, trust you, and take the next step when they are ready.

  • Skipping local visibility.

    If people cannot find your business on Google, Maps, or local search, you are making word of mouth work too hard. Your Google Business Profile, website content, location signals, and reviews all help people find and choose you.

  • Spending money on ads too early.

    Ads can work, but only when they have somewhere useful to send people. If your website, message, offer, or follow-up process is not ready, paid traffic can burn through budget without fixing the real problem.

  • Trying to look bigger instead of clearer.

    New businesses sometimes overcomplicate the brand, website, or marketing because they want to look established. Clear beats complicated. People need to understand what you do, who it is for, and why they should care.

  • Treating marketing like a launch task.

    Marketing does not stop once the doors open or the website goes live. The first version gets you started. The work after launch is what helps you build visibility, earn trust, and keep improving.

Row circle Shape Decorative svg added to top

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.

Laptop displaying digital marketing budget calculator form

Why Cougar Digital Marketing?

We've helped lots of businesses start with a stronger marketing foundation.

We’ve built first websites, new brands, launch plans, and marketing foundations for businesses across the Tri-Cities and Eastern Washington. We’ve also seen what happens when the early pieces don’t connect — the rebrands, rebuilt sites, unclear messaging, and campaigns that have nowhere useful to send people.

Getting the foundation right early saves time, budget, and a lot of backtracking.

  • Brand, website, photography, content, and launch support in one place

  • Clear guidance on what to prioritize when your budget is limited

  • Local insight into how customers search, compare, and choose businesses

  • A practical plan for what needs to happen now, what can wait, and what comes next

Group standing on steps outside a brick building.

125+ 5-Star Reviews

When you do great work, people notice.

We needed to update our website and Josh at Cougar Digital was very responsive, helpful, and capable. Our refreshed website looks great! -Jennifer Williamson Forster, Executive Director, South Sound Reading Foundation.

We’ve had the pleasure of working with Cougar Digital Marketing on both of our company websites—Ellison Earthworks and EE Traffic Management—and we couldn’t be happier with the results. From the very first meeting, their team was attentive, creative, and incredibly easy to work with. They took the time to understand not just our services, but our brand values and voice, and they translated that into two beautiful, functional, and user-friendly websites. Their communication was consistent and clear throughout the process, and every step felt collaborative. They made what could’ve been a stressful experience feel seamless and even fun. The final products truly reflect the heart of our companies and the industries we serve. We highly recommend Cougar Digital to any business looking to elevate their online presence. Thank you for bringing our vision to life so perfectly!

Great company, great people. Vision matched expectations!

Thank you Josh for your patience and expertise in helping us design our logo! Matt and I are really happy with the end result.

Working with the Cougar Digital Marketing team was an absolute delight. Truly good people who are VERY skilled at what they do. Running a large regional food company, it's a blessing to work with an experienced digital team here locally, and not have to seek services in the Seattle or Portland market. I highly recommend working with Cougar Digital!

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.

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.

Josh did a great job on my headshot. He provided a timely appointment and spent the time to make sure he got the best shot. He was even willing to try several different locations. I would recommend him for anybody looking to update the professional photos.

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.

We love Cougar Digital! We have worked with them on various projects - rack cards, posters, banners, even a couple commercials. They're friendly, helpful, creative, and truly and do great work. We would recommend them to anyone!

Cougar Digital took my website to a whole new level! They are very professional and knowledgeable and did excellent work. They also filmed a few videos for me that turned out amazingly well! They were very responsive to what I wanted and envisioned and were extremely patient with me. I would highly recommend them to anyone!

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.

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.

We’ve been working with Cougar Digital Marketing for almost 6 years, and they have consistently gone above and beyond for Boiada Brazilian Grill. Josh is amazing at graphic design and always brings our ideas to life in fun, creative ways. Travis and Ashley have done an exceptional job with every aspect of our new website build — from strategy meetings and design to training and development. Cougar is professional, timely, fun to work with, and they create outstanding content. We couldn’t be happier with our new website — it’s beautiful and easy for our team to edit and update. Highly recommend Cougar to any business looking for a true marketing partner!

It has been a pleasure working with Cougar Digital. From managing our ads, rebuilding our website, and maintaining our Google reviews, we have been more than satasfied. We also have no problem getting a hold of them with any questions we may have or help we may need. I highly recommend them! Thank you, Alison and the rest of us at Columbia Basin Satellite & Electric

We absolutely loved working with Cougar Digital on the launch of our new website and throughout several incredible photo shoots. From start to finish, their team was creative, responsive, and truly understood our vision.

I really love the team approach with Travis and the group, they are very professional, organized, and skilled at what they do. I wish I had employed them for my website and advertising years ago. I regret spending so much money trying to do it on my own or with cheap services that took my money and did nothing. I feel like they are MY team, and I feel I'm not alone trying to achieve my business goals to get my services out to the public.

Happy we have businesses like this locally! Great customer service. Stayed in communication with me through the whole process. Five-star service.

Josh Kandle was able to complete a wonderful presentation to my Introduction to Business class at Columbia Basin College. He brought to life the world of Marketing on the internet and how to use it effectively and consistently. The students left the presentation with knowledge they could go out and use immediately. He was great!

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.

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!

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.

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!

Josh did a great job making a couple of highlight videos for me. Easy to work with and prompt service

Every business, large or especially small, should have professional help on marketing. As a small business owner, I only have so much time. I need to keep my focus on the daily tasks and still be able to be a family man. Cougar Digital takes this immense pressure off my shoulders. Not only does my business grow, it's easier. Highly recommend.

Cougar Digital did a great job arranging literature and building a website for us. Travis was very easy to work with, and the finished marketing material looks great. Thanks Cougs!

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 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.

Cougar Digital has been great to work with! With their support we have seen significant improvement with our marketplace campaigns.

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.

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.

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!

Always a pleasure to work with the Cougar Digital Marketing & Design team! They excel in creativity, effectiveness and efficiency.

Cougar Digital has been an outstanding company to work with. Excellent customer service, response time & product! Highly recommend!

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!

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

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.

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!

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.

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

We had the privilege of working with Cougar Digital to create a video for our annual Hospice Gala, and we couldn't be happier with the results. The team captured the heart of what we do beautifully, creating a piece that was both moving and true to our mission. Josh, in particular, was outstanding. His compassionate approach made our interviewee feel comfortable and valued, allowing them to share their story openly and genuinely. The video resonated deeply with our guests, effectively conveying the essence of hospice care and the impact of our work on patients and their families. Thank you, Cougar Digital, for helping us share our story in such an impactful way!

We hired these guys to handle some commercial photos for both exterior and aerial shots. Josh and team were excellent to work with and made things easy while adapting to changing schedules and weather. The photos turned out amazing in the end. Highly recommend.

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 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

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!

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!

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!

These guys are top notch! Very knowledgeable and helpful!

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 recently had the pleasure of working with Cougar Digital Marketing for a photography/video project, and we couldn’t be more impressed. From start to finish, their team was professional, creative, and incredibly easy to work with. We highly recommend!

Business Startup FAQs

Questions? We've heard 'em all.

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

What’s the first marketing move a new business should make?
What should a new business budget for marketing in year one?
Does a new business need a website right away?
How long does it take to launch startup marketing basics?
Can you help with one marketing piece, or do I have to hire you for everything?

Digital Marketing for Busy Professionals

Learn more. Grow faster.

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

Ready to get started?

Tell us where you are. We'll help you figure out what comes next.

30 minutes, no homework required. Tell us what you're building, where you are in the process, and what you're trying to accomplish. We'll give you an honest read on where to start and what it actually costs.