Today we’d like to introduce you to Monique Nelson.
Hi Monique, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Digital marketing has been my world since Yahoo was the go-to search engine. My career started at 19 with a six-person agency serving real estate agents in Lake Oswego. Over the next ten years, that scrappy startup grew to 200 employees, with me holding five different roles along the way including sales, strategy, customer care, and leadership.
25 years and six agencies later, the work has ranged from local SMB’s to Oregon’s most recognizable brands to campaigns for fortune 500 companies and billion-dollar tech organizations. That breadth taught me something invaluable: how to watch closely. How agencies scale, how they serve clients well, and how they sometimes serve themselves at the expense of the small business owners who trusted them.
The pattern became impossible to ignore. As agencies grow, client relationships fade, service levels slip, and sales teams start promising things the marketing team can’t deliver. The human connection gets lost somewhere in the growth.
When my husband Brian retired from the military, that observation became a calling. We built Digital Media Consultants to get back to what matters, working closely with small and medium-sized businesses, the kind that deserve enterprise-level expertise but rarely get it. We believe that kind of close partnership doesn’t just move the needle on revenue; it strengthens the community around it. And what better place to start than our own right here in West Linn?
It feels like coming full circle with a renewed sense of purpose and a real sense of responsibility. I don’t foresee myself wanting to do anything else.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Smooth? Not even close, but the hard parts are exactly what built the business you see today.
Starting out as a young Black woman in a male-dominated field unfortunately meant the bar was simply set higher, not just by clients, but internally. Watching brilliant women get dismissed or passed over for leadership because they weren’t “one of the boys,” was its own kind of education. It made me more determined to succeed. When leadership roles finally did come my way, I ensured every person brought under my wing was given something that wasn’t always given to me: room to test their ideas, make mistakes without judgment, and be celebrated publicly when they got it right. Criticism stayed private. Confidence was built intentionally. That became a core part of how this business operates today.
There was a real turning point, 2 moments that would change my course forever.
The first time, while running quality control at an agency, I discovered an employees mistake would mean $8,000 that would be owed back to the client. Leadership’s response was to look me in the eye and say if the client hasn’t noticed just don’t say anything. What followed was some of the hardest professional moments of my career…. sitting across from that client, listening to him talk about how much his business was struggling, knowing what I knew. The agency never made it right. That never left me.
The second moment pulled the trigger. I was hired to manage 250 Google Ads accounts alone. An audit quickly revealed that most of those accounts hadn’t been touched in over a year. When leadership was approached about hiring support to do right by clients who were paying for daily management, the response was chilling: focus on the top 20 spenders and ignore the rest. “We don’t care if the small ones cancel.” My follow-up question, why do we keep selling at this price point if we cant afford to deliver the service? was met with a look I’ll never forget and simple directive to drop it. My resignation came the following week.
Those two moments didn’t just push toward something new, they defined exactly what Digital Media Consultants would never be. I cant talk about challenges without talking about winning moments and there are so many! Here are 2. Seeing my client ring the opening bell at Nasdaq when their company went public, and another moment when my client quit his job at the car dealership to finally take his side hustle full time with confidence. His is business is thriving and I feel so proud to have helped him get there. I have so many positive moments like that. All of it has encouraged my husband to continue to build out our vision at DMC.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Digital Media Consultants is a boutique digital marketing agency rooted in the Pacific Northwest, built specifically to serve small and medium-sized businesses in Oregon and Washington. The core services are Google Ads and Bing Ads management, Local SEO and map pack optimization, reputation management, and custom reporting dashboards.
Every client gets a custom dashboard included from day one. No guessing, no waiting for a monthly report that raises more questions than it answers, just real-time visibility into leads, conversions, and ROI, built around the goals that actually matter to that business. Transparency isn’t an add-on here; it’s the baseline.
We intentionally limits the number of clients taken on at any given time. That’s not a limitation, it’s a commitment. It means every business gets genuine attention, and that close-enough-to-visit-in-person relationship that bigger agencies simply can’t offer once they’ve scaled past a certain point.
We can and do serve most all industries but one industry where DMC has developed deep specialization is funeral homes, The people they serve are often stressed, grieving, or making decisions in vulnerable moments. Getting the marketing right in those spaces requires real sensitivity, not just technical skill.
Lastly we have a white-label service arm built for other agencies, which is its own kind of full-circle moment. Other marketing agencies trust DMC to manage paid search and SEO behind the scenes for their own clients, which speaks volumes about the quality of the work.
What the brand is most proud of? Probably the testimonials. Clients describe finally understanding their own accounts, finally seeing their ads become profitable, finally feeling like someone in their corner who tells them the truth. For anyone who’s ever felt burned by an agency that overpromised and underdelivered, DMC was built specifically for you.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
Join your local chamber of commerce, become a regular. Ever heard the term “You will become who you hang around”? You will find people who elevate you, people who open doors for you, people in your shoes, cheerleaders, and mentors. Its uncomfortable at first but just keep showing up.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://digitalmediaconsultants.net/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/digital.media.consultants/#
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61583509140423
