Drew Brosnan

Room VII: the early sketches

From storage units to a publisher

Engagement
EZ Mini Storage, 2M Solutions, HD Publishing
Role
Marketing Performance Specialist to Marketing Acquisition Manager
Period
2005 → 2010
Location
Texas and remote

Before the marketplaces, there was homework. I was a computer science engineering student at the University of Texas at Arlington when I took a first marketing job: local SEO and paid search for a self-storage company with 50 locations across seven states. Two jobs later I was running acquisition marketing for a Florida publisher from Texas, fully remote, in 2008.

The landscape

Nobody begins in marketplace growth. I began where the work was: storage units in Fort Worth, security cameras in Grand Prairie, and a Florida publisher worked from a distance. The through-line was an engineering student learning marketing from the ground up, local search to ecommerce to acquisition, measuring everything because the habit was already there.

The approach

The pattern repeated at every stop: take the channel, measure it properly, grow it. Local SEO taught me how businesses get found, and the first performance dashboards I built were for those 50 locations. Ecommerce for a security-camera retailer taught me PPC, SEO, affiliates, and merchandising together. Publisher acquisition taught me remote discipline years before it was normal. The engineering coursework ran alongside the first of these jobs.

  • EZ Mini Storage, Fort Worth, 2005 to 2007: local SEO, paid search, and performance dashboards across 50 storage locations in seven states, while studying computer science engineering at UT Arlington.
  • 2M Solutions, Grand Prairie, 2007 to 2008: PPC, SEO, affiliate marketing, and merchandising for the security-equipment retailer 2mcctv.com.
  • HD Publishing, remote, 2008 to 2010: SEO, SEM, and content programs that grew traffic and online sales conversions for a Deland, Florida publisher.

The projects

  1. 01

    A publisher, worked from a distance

    Acquisition marketing for a digital publisher in Deland, Florida, run fully remote from Texas: SEO, SEM, and content programs that grew web traffic and online sales conversions.

    • Ran paid search and SEO for the publisher’s titles.
    • Worked fully remote in 2008, which taught the written-communication habits the later jobs ran on.
  2. 02

    Catalogs, carts, and cameras

    Ecommerce marketing for a security-equipment retailer: PPC, SEO, affiliate marketing, and merchandising programs run together for the first time.

    • Managed PPC, SEO, and affiliate programs for 2mcctv.com.
    • Learned merchandising from the catalog side, which later made product feeds feel familiar.
  3. 03

    Fifty storage units and a search box

    Local SEO and paid search for a regional self-storage company with 50 locations in seven states, with the first performance dashboards I ever built.

    • Optimized local SEO, paid search, and website performance across 50 locations.
    • Introduced performance dashboards and improved search visibility across seven states.
    • 50 locations under local SEO across seven states
    1. Exhibit I The first dashboard: 50 locations, one search box each.
Everything I know about growth started with 50 storage locations and local SEO.

The results

  • 50 locations under local SEO a first marketing role, held alongside an engineering course load
  • 3 companies in five years storage, security cameras, and publishing
  • 2008 first fully remote role HD Publishing, Deland, Florida, worked from Texas

The apparatus

  • Local SEO
  • Paid search
  • Ecommerce marketing
  • Affiliate marketing
  • Performance dashboards

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