Paid Media Built for Outdoor, Western & Industrial Brands
This category is our heritage. We have run paid media behind brands you know in outdoor, Western, industrial, and agricultural retail, and we know the tensions that come with it: dealers and DTC pulling against each other, MAP rules that limit what an ad can say, and audiences split between rural routes and metro suburbs. We audit, build, and manage accounts you own, with senior hands on every one.
Where it breaks
The problems we see over and over.
Dealer vs DTC channel conflict
Your ads compete with your own dealers on brand terms, and every DTC push risks a phone call from your biggest wholesale account. Most media teams never plan for it.
MAP rules squeeze the message
Minimum advertised price policies mean you cannot lead with the discount everyone else leads with. Ads have to sell on product, story, and fit instead, and most accounts are not built for that.
Rural and metro audiences behave differently
The rancher buying work boots and the suburban buyer chasing the lifestyle respond to different creative, different offers, and different channels. One blended campaign wastes money on both.
Seasonal catalogs, year-round accounts
Spring workwear, fall hunting, holiday gifting. Catalog drops and buying seasons whipsaw the account, and without a planned structure every season starts from scratch.
How this plays out
The pattern, up close.
Say you run marketing for a Western boot brand with a thirty-year dealer network and a DTC site leadership wants to grow. Monday opens with a dealer emailing about your ad sitting above his on your own brand name. By Tuesday a marketplace seller is undercutting MAP in a shopping ad, and someone wants screenshots for legal. Meanwhile the fall catalog just dropped and nobody can say whether last month's spend leaned rural or metro. None of this is a media problem so much as a structure problem wearing a media costume.
The usual fix is a generalist media team that treats you like any other apparel brand. They lead with discounts MAP will not allow, blend the working rancher and the suburban lifestyle buyer into one audience, and bid on your brand terms without asking who else in your channel is bidding too. When results stall, the answer is more budget or another restructure, and every restructure resets the account's history along with its learning. By month three the dealer calls are back. The activity changed but the tensions never moved.
When the system is in, the account itself carries the rules. DTC, dealer support, and brand defense each hold their own campaigns, budgets, and reporting, so your channel strategy is enforced by structure instead of memory. MAP limits live in the promotion rules, and the rural and metro splits keep both buyers visible in the numbers instead of averaged into one. The seasonal calendar is built into the account before the catalog drops, so fall does not start from scratch. And all of it, accounts, data, and documentation, sits under your ownership.
Signs this is you
Your biggest dealer calls about your ads more often than about orders.
Nobody can say what defending your brand terms costs.
Every ad gets hand-checked against MAP before it runs.
The working rancher and the metro lifestyle buyer see the same creative.
Hunting season planning starts when hunting season starts.
If you fired your vendor tomorrow, the account history would leave with them.
What we do about it
Audit · Build · Manage
Account architecture that respects the channel map
We build campaign structure that separates DTC, dealer support, and brand defense, so budget decisions match your channel strategy instead of fighting it.
Brand search protection
We lock down your brand terms so resellers, marketplaces, and competitors do not skim the demand you already earned, and we document exactly what defending it costs.
MAP-compliant messaging systems
We wire promotion rules into the account so ad copy, feeds, and landing pages stay inside your pricing policy without a manual review of every asset.
Rural and metro audience splits
We segment campaigns by geography and buyer type across Google, Meta, and TikTok, so the working ranch buyer and the metro lifestyle buyer each see the message built for them.
Seasonal planning on a documented cadence
Catalog drops, buying seasons, and inventory swings go on a calendar the account is built around. Weekly work is documented in the open, and you own the accounts, the data, and the system.
More than $100M in managed spend, including brands you know in outdoor, Western, industrial, and agricultural retail, and multi-location brands with hundreds of locations. This category is where we come from.
The first 30 days
What actually happens after you say go.
Weeks 1-2: Access and audit
We get admin access to your Google, Meta, and TikTok accounts, under your ownership from the first login, and map what is actually running. We chart brand-term overlap with dealers and resellers, MAP exposure in live copy and feeds, and where rural and metro spend is blended together. You get a written read of what we found, in plain terms.
Weeks 2-3: The plan and first fixes
We bring the rebuild plan: campaign structure split by DTC, dealer support, and brand defense, plus the audience and geography splits behind it. Quick wins ship as we find them, usually brand-term cleanup, MAP-risk copy pulled, and obvious waste cut. Nothing waits for a grand relaunch.
Week 4: The operating rhythm starts
Weekly reporting begins, documented where your team can see it. The seasonal calendar goes into the account, so the next catalog drop or buying season is already built in before it arrives. From here the cadence is steady: manage, document, adjust.
From the blog
How we think about outdoor, western & industrial brands marketing.
UTM Tracking, Done Properly
A practical guide to UTM tracking: the five parameters, casing rules, governance, common breakages, and how to audit the links you already have.
ReadA Weekly Search Terms and Negatives Workflow
A repeatable weekly workflow for Google Ads search terms: fast reviews, intent buckets, shared negative lists, broad match discipline, and a decision log.
ReadThe Paid Media Reporting Stack, Explained
The five layers of a paid media reporting stack, from raw platform exports to a narrative people actually read, and where AI fits in the middle.
ReadQuestions we get
Straight answers.
We sell through dealers. Can paid media work without starting a channel war?
Yes, if the account is built for it. We structure campaigns so DTC, dealer support, and brand defense each have their own lane, budget, and rules. You decide the channel strategy, and the account enforces it.
How do you advertise under MAP restrictions?
We build the promotion rules into the system, so copy, product feeds, and landing pages stay compliant without someone hand-checking every ad. Then we lean on what MAP cannot restrict: product story, fit, and the reasons people trust your brand.
Do you produce the ad creative?
No. We do not produce creative in-house. When creative is the gap, we connect you with creative teams we trust and wire their work into the system.
Who owns the ad accounts and the data?
You do, always. Accounts, data, dashboards, naming conventions, and automation all live under your ownership from day one. If we ever part ways, nothing leaves with us.
Is there a minimum ad budget where this makes sense?
There is no published number, but there is a shape. Managed paid media makes sense when your spend is large enough that structural mistakes cost real money, and spread across enough channels and seasons that no one person can hold it all in their head. If you are earlier than that, the Performance Audit alone may be the right move, and we will say so.
Our peak season is coming. Is there time to switch before it hits?
Usually, because we are not learning the category from scratch. If peak is close, we stabilize what is already running first, so you are not gambling your biggest quarter on a mid-flight rebuild. The deep restructure lands in the shoulder season, where it belongs. The audit tells us which order fits your calendar.
Find out what is leaking before you spend another dollar.
One call. We learn what you are running and tell you the first move worth making.