Welcome to Essential Marketing!

Our mission is to equip people interested in marketing with practical tips & tricks in order to create world class digital marketing solutions. We're a group of digital marketing fanatics who love to learn and love to share what we've learned. We're learning every day!

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How to Get a Job in Marketing | What We Look For (Pierce College Guest Lecture part 3)

As we wrap up this three part series based on our talk at Pierce College, we are diving into the things we look for in possible candidates to join our team. If you are interested in the field of marketing, or even actively looking for a job or internship, we have a “cheat sheet” for […]

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Marketing Tips from Our Most Powerful Case Studies (Pierce College Lecture Part 2)

In our last post, we highlighted some of the main reasons why our team loves marketing, as the first part of a three-part series featuring the talk we gave for a marketing class at Pierce College here in the Tacoma, WA area. Today, we’re looking at part two of that talk, which focuses on some […]

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Why We Love Marketing! (Pierce College Guest Lecture part 1)

We are always honored when we get the opportunity to share our love and knowledge of marketing with fellow marketing nerds! We visited a communications class at Pierce College here in the Tacoma, WA area back in November to talk about why we love marketing, some real-world case studies from our work, and some pro-tips […]

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We’ve Listened to 30,000 of Our Customers’ Phone Calls–Here’s What We’ve Learned!

Over the past two years we’ve made it a goal to listen to every single call generated by our marketing efforts for our customers. As a result we’ve now listened in on over 30,000 phone calls!  Tracking and listening to phone calls can be time-consuming, so you might be asking, is it really worth it […]

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Conducting a Market Competition Analysis | Defining Your SEO Strategy Part 2

In our last post, we discussed the three key factors that go into choosing the best keywords for your SEO strategy, namely, search volume, competitiveness, and profitability. Today we are looking at another important tool we use when crafting keyword strategies: a Market Competition Analysis. Read on or watch the video below to learn how […]

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How to Choose the Best Keyword for Your Business | Defining Your SEO Keyword Strategy Part 1

How do you choose the best keyword when defining your SEO strategy? There can be a lot of factors to consider, and it may not always be cut-and-dry when it comes to the best keywords to optimize for in your SEO content. We have a process for defining a keyword strategy that we’ve used for […]

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Why ALL Businesses Should Be Using Events to Market Themselves | First-Party Data + Lead Nurturing

Now more than ever, business owners and marketers have to be creative and innovative in the ways they reach new customers. Social media and other digital tools can definitely be leveraged to your advantage. But with increasing market saturation and rapidly changing trends, plus new regulations in targeting and data, some of these channels are […]

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Our Best Call Tracking Tips | Google Ads + Call Tracking Tips and Tools

If you use call tracking to keep track of the calls and leads you get from your Google Ads, you probably know that it can be difficult to figure out which ads your calls are coming from, and which ones are most effective at bringing in leads. Watch the video below or read on for […]

Introducing CitySwitcher! | Google Ads Tools and Tips | Essential Marketing Extras

What is CitySwitcher? CitySwitcher is a piece of Java Script we’ve developed that when added to your website, will automatically replace the landing page city name with the name of the location the user is searching from when they land on your page from your Google Ad.  Read on or watch the video below to […]

How We Use Google Ads to Rank in the Top 3 Google Maps Results | Google Maps Hack

Did you know that over 30% of users searching Google engage with the Google Maps results? Specifically with the top three results that appear next to the map, known as the “3-pack.” Clearly this is an extremely valuable spot to rank, but getting your site to appear there is not exactly straightforward. Watch the video […]

How We’re Using Snapchat (and Other Socials) to Recruit For Customers | Intersection of Marketing + Recruiting

We recently had a long-time customer reach out to us for help in recruiting for some employment positions they wanted to fill. This customer had tried recruiting through channels like Indeed and ZipRecruiter, but found their job posts weren’t being found by the candidates they wanted to reach. This week on Essential Marketing we discuss […]

How We Know What Makes Sites Rank #1 on Google | Core Web Vitals: Cumulative Layout Shift

So far, we’ve covered two metrics in the Google Search Console Core Web Vitals report that are crucial for your website’s search rankings, and today we are covering the third. If you’re having issues with your own website’s rankings and traffic, read on to learn what else we’ve discovered about these metrics, and how they […]