About Duane Baumgartner

City Ranked Media, Founder and CEO

Duane Baumgartner had a front-row seat to the evolution of digital marketing as we know it. After beginning his career in contract security services, in the early 2000s, Duane found himself working for Verizon, selling ad space in the old yellow pages. That’s right, phone books – those big blocky doorstops that were delivered to your home every year. “Those ads were shockingly expensive, but they were effective, and they worked,” he remembers. “Whoever paid the most got the biggest ads, the best placement, and therefore most calls.” 

The digital landscape started shifting with the introduction of search engines and smartphones. Phone books weren’t cutting it anymore, and consumers needed to find information for businesses no matter where they were. Duane became the go-to guy at Verizon for demonstrating to businesses how digital ads were the future of advertising. And they indeed were – as the weeks and months went by, he saw what a huge leg-up it gave his clients.

At this same time, his oldest daughter was just entering kindergarten, and he relished being able to walk her to the bus in the morning. He also wanted to start saving for her college. As a few of his former clients and relationships were asking if he would consider freelancing, Duane finally took them up on it. It started as a side project, but in 2011, he made a leap into the unknown and established City Ranked Media. 

Flash-forward to today. Duane’s daughters have grown up, and so has City Ranked. The one thing that hasn’t changed is Duane’s commitment to innovation and helping his clients grow their businesses through forward-thinking digital marketing solutions. 

In his spare time, Duane enjoys camping, traveling, going to concerts (any Depeche Mode fans out there?), and rehabbing old houses. His favorite season is summer, when he and his daughters head down to the Oregon dunes for motorcycling and camping.

Why Does Digital Marketing Matter?

Duane has an intuitive understanding of digital marketing and the inherent curiosity to teach himself and others, but that’s not why he’s passionate about it. What makes him passionate about digital marketing is how it can be used as a tool for growing businesses and changing the lives of his clients for the better. “It was all about making a positive and verifiable impact for clients.”

Over the past two decades, he’s witnessed the power of digital marketing firsthand by helping hundreds of businesses grow from small mom-and-pop shops to successful multi-million dollar businesses. Without effective digital marketing, these clients may not have been able to achieve their dreams of growing a thriving business.

Duane remains passionate about digital marketing’s potential to make a positive impact – but there’s one more group he thinks about: the people who work for him. He’s deeply appreciative of the staff at City Ranked and the passion they bring to work every day – and he strives to make it a place where they can expand their skillsets and grow their careers.

“Lots of people start out here working on one specific thing, and they gradually expand their knowledge to different parts of the business, to the point where they’re subject matter experts helping train the next generation of digital marketers. That’s the power of working as a team focused on a single goal.”

City Ranked – Past and Present

Duane remembers going to client meetings in the early days and telling them, “If I’m not bringing you an idea every month that will make you money, you shouldn’t pay me.” It’s that “put your money where your mouth is” spirit of innovation that drives City Ranked, even to this day.

Here are some additional milestones from over the years that have made City Ranked the company it is today:

• 2010 – Still Duane’s side project. He would teach himself website development, search engine optimization, and pay-per-click advertising.
• July 1st, 2011 – Duane quit his job in yellow pages and made City Ranked his full-time job.
• 2012 – The first proto-version of our service area targeting technology was deployed with promising results. In a few years, this would emerge as City Ranked’s best-selling product.
• Later in 2012 – Started using WordPress – one of the first local digital marketing agencies to do so.
• 2016 – Eclipsed ten employees for the first time.
• 2017 – City Ranked’s first big breakthrough with national accounts.
• 2023 – Launched Skout, the easy-to-use marketing automation platform.
• 2024 – Up to forty full-time employees – and counting!

Watch Duane on The Blox

In 2024, Duane was selected ofr the Season 14 cast of The Blox, a business reality web series, promoted as “the largest competition TV show for startups,” Duane’s goal was to show that what we’re doing at City Ranked is different, and to pitch Skout, our new marketing automation platform. 

He made it to the show’s finale, but the real prize wasn’t the theatrical awards given to cast members who provided the most entertainment value (“No thanks,” said Duane to that one). In the end, City Ranked won an academic award for being recognized as one of the most valuable businesses in the competition.

As is often the case, the real prize was the experience itself. Duane is grateful for his time on The Blox, the new perspectives on entrepreneurship it gave him, the new like-minded entrepreneurial friends he made, and their groupchat that remains active to this day.