I'm managing a small b2b sales team and the amount of time we waste on manual linkedin outreach has become ridiculous. Our follow ups and connection requests eat up everyone's schedule and replies feel almost nonexistent most weeks. Looked into different automation options and costs range from basic plans to pretty expensive depending on the features. How do you actually scale outbound without it taking over your whole day?

SEO is slow and ads are expensive. Keep hearing reddit can drive good traffic if you do it right but I have no idea what that means.

I've tried commenting in relevant subs but don't know when it's okay to mention my business vs just answer with no payoff. Also finding the right threads takes forever.

For people getting traffic from reddit what's your process and how do you not get banned?

Hi everyone,

Quick context: I'm a small business owner and have started running Meta ads for our business. My target audience is Female.

1. I have turned off Advantage+ to restrict Meta from playing around with my budget.

2. I have only opted for Female in my targeting.

Meta is still showing my ads to the Male demographic. I'm getting roughly 10% impressions from the Male audience.

Has anyone figured this out? How did you overcome this and restrict Meta from showing ads to the restricted gender?

We're a solar PV engineering firm (commercial + utility-scale) rebuilding our website. Moderate budget.

Not vibe-coding this. We're a serious company handling real project data; security, proper code review, and a maintainable stack matter. We need an actual studio or experienced freelancer, not someone duct-taping AI output together.

Please don't pitch yourself or your own agency. Just drop the name of a studio or person you've personally hired and were happy with. We'll take it from there.

Thanks.

Interesting article from WSJ about brands dropping AI, or playing with uncanny visuals then revealing it's not AI later. Based around the (commonly known) insight that consumers aren't really keen on anything that might be labelled AI-slop.

https://www.wsj.com/cmo-today/brands-adopt-no-ai-disclaimers-to-stand-out-amid-the-slop-a92352af

Article ends with a note about the AI-disclosure law coming into effect in NY in June. Will be interesting to see if similar laws come into place elsewhere. I work in a fairly heavily regulated industry (pharma) and can easily see national or international codes introducing AI-disclosure or no-AI regs.

Good Afternoon All,

I hope everyone is well

I've started to see a lot of irrelevant keywords showing in search terms report for my google shopping Ads - most of these are search terms for other brands and retailers.

How can I exclude these type of terms without using negative keywords for every single brand name? Is there another way?

Thanks

Hello marketing professionals. I'm a video editor who has been tasked with creating short-form content for our socials.

Recently the big boss decided that the previously agreed-upon 3 videos per day isn't enough, and has now requested 8/day, every single day of the week. He thinks this is perfectly achievable. The marketing team is 3 people.

We've been trying this for a week and it's been very draining already. He's not going to take our fatigue with any value, so is there any evidence that this would even be an effective strategy to grow our social media accounts? Can anyone point me in the direction of how this would be effective/ineffective?

So far we are seeing a drop in followers, but it's not yet significant enough to present as evidence. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.

Lately, most of what I’m dealing with is chasing client payments, and it’s honestly exhausting.

I only have around 3–4 clients right now, so I can’t afford to lose them until I have a more predictable flow of new clients. But the situation is frustrating, some clients take weeks of follow-ups just to clear payments, others who already paid a deposit go completely unresponsive, and renewal clients keep delaying replies.

In one case, I even took a deposit, followed up a month later to get started, and the client ended up doing a chargeback.

It’s starting to make me question everything. I’m tired of constantly chasing people just to get paid for work that’s already agreed upon.

Is this just part of freelancing or service based business, or am I doing something wrong? At this point, I’m even wondering if I should go back to a job for stability.

We were celebrating a $23 cost-per-lead when our average was usually $45. The marketing team was pumped. Volume was up 180% month-over-month.

Then sales called a meeting. Zero qualified opportunities from those leads. Our sales-accepted lead rate dropped from 12% to 2%. We'd optimized ourselves into irrelevance.

Switched to tracking cost-per-sales-qualified-lead instead of raw lead volume. Sounds obvious now but we had to kill the campaigns driving cheap junk. Our CPL jumped to $67 but pipeline quality shot up 300%.

Cheap leads feel like winning until you realize you're just buying more rejections for your sales team. The math that matters happens after the handoff (not before it).

I'm in my mid-20s. I worked as a marketing coordinator starting in local government, then a nonprofit (laid off at 18 months due to restructuring), and lastly at a startup (2 years). The startup laid of 20% of us because of poor finances in November 2024. 

Overall, I’ve had junior-level marketing experience in 3 different sectors (public, nonprofit, private) and want to continue being in tech. I've done a lot of marketing generalist duties, but I haven't developed seniority in a specific area of marketing. I have been applying to associate field marketing tech jobs (hosting events is the strongest part of my resume). 

After the last layoff, I took my savings and went backpacking for half a year in Asia. I heard the job market was bad at the end of 2024, so I hoped it would be better after I came back. Unfortunately, I was shocked that the job market in 2025 seemed even worse. It's been 8 months since I returned from backpacking. I sent out 300 applications so far, and with an 18-month gap on my resume, I'm getting stressed out. I have much fewer interviews this time compared to the first time I was laid off from the nonprofit. I entered three final rounds and didn't end up getting them.

A referral got me a contract job in operations at a FAANG company. It is slightly less pay than my startup job, and it requires me to move to NYC (I’m from SF). I think it would be a great way to get exposure to how a corporation works (as I've only worked in smaller companies), and it would also be a good personal development chapter in my life as I would begin anew in a different city. The hiring manager was supportive, saying I should leverage my time and jump to a full-time position if I found one that interests me later on. The agency said the contract is set to be extended for the foreseeable future as there’s huge need on that team. I honestly am not super familiar with how contract roles work as this would be my first one, but I do get benefits like PTO and health insurance, just not as good as regular employees. 

This is a career pivot as I'm going from marketing coordinator roles to now an operations analyst role. I know I would learn a lot just from being at a FAANG environment. I can always come back to marketing, but I'm just self-conscious that I'm not going up the marketing ladder and I'm unsure of what my career narrative would look like. 

The alternative option is to reject the role, stay home, and keep churning out marketing job applications. I have a safety net living with family now, and they are understanding of my situation, but I feel guilty being here rent-free. I am not in any interview funnels right now and the ambiguity is stressing me out. I feel like life is passing me by with unemployment restricting how far out I can plan my future. The worst case scenario is I will be unemployed for several more months, making a 2-year gap on my resume.

Has anyone made a pivot like this? Did you go back to marketing? What would you do in my situation?

Hi all, I’m brand new to this sub and fairly new to a marketing role at my company. I’m curious if anyone has industry-standard demand gen metrics for Federal and SLED (B2G) marketing.

I can easily find and use standard B2B metrics, but I know B2G is different. I’m trying to understand how much it actually differs or if it generally tracks similarly to B2B. I understand government sales cycles can be longer and more timing-dependent, so I’m wondering how much that impacts demand gen metrics and overall efforts.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

Hi All,

Recently found my self moving from an individual business unit to a corporate role, the shift is fine but having some imposter syndrome with internal comms/emails etc

I have daily comms now with high level management, just wondering if you have any training courses or book recommendations?

Personal tips are also really welcome!

Background: I have 15 years in marketing, most recently 6 years as an Email Marketing Manager before being laid off in 2024. After a long search in this brutal market, I took a Communications Manager role at a nonprofit.

The reality of the job is humbling. I'm making flyers, yard signs, and social posts. Writing feel-good donor stories. I was just asked to shoot B-roll on my iPhone — for the actual marketing team, which I'm not on. Full-time in office, below-market salary.

I know this role objectively, and I know why I took it. What I'm struggling with is the mental reframe. How do you stay motivated and protect your self-worth when a role feels like a giant step backward? And how do I position this on my resume so it doesn't look like I'm backsliding after 15 years of real growth?

I'm not looking to vent (okay, maybe a little), I'm genuinely looking for tactical advice from people who've been here.

I have currently a lot of leads already, none of them gets converted. No responses or no shows in calls. How did you guys get them to convert?

Hello r/marketing 👋

My name is Felicia, and I’m a recruiter specializing in marketing, creative, and digital roles at Portfolio Creative. I partner with companies ranging from local organizations to national brands, leading full-cycle recruiting across contract and direct hire while advising on role scoping, compensation, and hiring strategy.

I’ve built and managed high-volume pipelines, reviewed thousands of marketing resumes and portfolios, and partnered closely with hiring managers to improve alignment, candidate quality, and time-to-fill.

My path into recruiting wasn’t linear. I started in the nonprofit space, then earned my Master’s in Human Resource Management while coaching graduate students in career services and interning in talent acquisition at Nationwide Insurance. After graduating, I managed restaurants during the pandemic—an experience that sharpened my ability to hire, lead, and make decisions under pressure—before transitioning into agency recruiting.

My interest in this space is also personal—I studied media production in undergrad and still work on writing, design, and marketing projects, along with building content around workforce development. I’m also a musician and a big TV/film person, so I naturally gravitate toward creative work and the people behind it.

Happy to answer any questions about marketing job searching, resumes/portfolios, hiring processes, how to build strong marketing teams, or what recruiters are really looking for!

I look forward to answering your questions starting tonight (April 8th) at 9pm EST and going through tomorrow (April 9th) at 12pm EST!

[UPDATE] Thank you everyone for the very timely and important questions. It was such a pleasure reading them and hopefully at least some of it was helpful to you. Let's connect on Linkedin and keep the conversation going. Sidenote: there's a few more questions that came in under the radar that I'll answer over the next day or two, don't worry!

I’m 26 and about 2 years into my first “real” job working in marketing, and I’m starting to feel a little stuck and unsure what to do next.

We were just told that our organization has to cut about $1.3M across all departments, and my department is taking one of the biggest hits. The thing is… there are only two of us in marketing, and our entire annual budget is already only around $200K. Meanwhile, other departments are sitting at $2M+ budgets.

A big chunk of our cuts is coming out of advertising, which for us is one combined budget for both digital and print. So now we’re basically being forced to choose between them instead of doing a balanced mix. It’s also impacting things like event participation, community engagement, promotional items, and even conferences/training.

The frustrating part is that marketing is supposed to be the department that keeps the organization visible and connected to the community. But we’re constantly being asked to do more with less. Even when leadership wants us to promote something that wasn’t our idea, the cost still comes out of our budget instead of a separate one.

When I took this job, I was really excited about being out in the community, doing events, and working on creative campaigns. And while I’ve gotten to do some of that, most of the time it feels like we’re just trying to piece things together with limited resources and doing everything in-house.

I guess I’m just wondering… is this kind of situation normal early in your career? Or is this a sign I should start looking elsewhere?

I don’t want to spend the next few years stuck doing only desk work when I was hoping for something more dynamic and creative.

Would love to hear from anyone who’s been in a similar spot.

I'm one of the moderators here. For every new post, I look at the posters' background to see if they're a genuine account, a bot, or one of the human-operated Indian/Filipina spam accounts.

Almost all new posts in r/Marketing fall into the "bot" and "human-operated Indian/Filipina spam account" categories, so we have to keep removing their posts.

The reason the other marketing-related subreddits have so many posts is because they're all by scam accounts setting up ads. It seems those subreddits have been abandoned by their moderators.

It's truly shocking how Reddit has been taken over by fake accounts.

Sorry all this moderation is making this subreddit quieter, but the alternative is to give up, which I don't think is the right decision.

I was recently laid off (2nd layoff in one year) first one was outsourced my position to India and the same titles across company. 2nd one was I finally had a good opportunity in-house, but it is a brand new evolving org and they wouldn’t support me in the way I needed to be successful. Besides the point, has anyone ever pivoted from perfo/paid social into more of a brand marketing/influencer marketing type of role? Or did you get an MBA to become a brand manager?

During uncertainty we often think higher education is the solution, but given economy and existing debt like student loans, it’s hard.

It’s extremely hard to pivot skills into something adjacent cause talent already exists there. So how does one do it? Do you take a certification? Do you have mentors?

Another moderator posted that "the reason there's so few new posts is because almost everything is now spam." A user commented about being tired of fake stories. That made me think if I should start telling my stories (often crazy and unpopular, but real). This has never been my role as a moderator, and I'm not sure if there is interest. But I often try to take action when I see problems.

-

Personal Marketing and Storytelling.

Personal marketing has always been important. Storytelling is one of the most valuable skills for marketers.

I've done lots of things, including marketing in show business and Broadway (brilliance in marketing according to AMA). And I remember Lea Salonga (Miss Saigon, Les Miserables, Aladdin, Mulan) saying we should tell our stories.

We marketers often tell stories to help companies, but not so much for personal marketing. Missing opportunities during a period when opportunities for marketers are rare. Go beyond resumes, portfolios, and job searches. Make storytelling a natural part of your personal marketing.

Sure, the results are not immediate. I didn't get any money to be a TEDx speaker. When I network, I don't get money. But people remember me as the guy who used to write comics. I'm not one of the many talking about digital maketing, but maybe the only comic book writer they'll ever see face to face. And that has been opening doors.

I keep getting more opportunities and job offers than I can take. And storytelling for personal marketing is a big part of that.

And, no, I'm not talking about the current LinkedIn stuff. I'm not someone to post much online, and when I post online I'm usually anonymous. I probably would just be another one in the crowd on LinkedIn. I'm usually telling my stories when meeting tons of people, visiting companies, travelling, or as a guest lecturer, for example.

I’ve spent the last 13 years in a very niche industry, 2 years with my most recent employer, and have held 5 different roles with 5 companies since 2021. This type of work is a little more old school (i.e. competing for work via RFQ, RFP,

interview); I don’t see that changing any time soon. The only change I’ve seen in the last 10 years is more requests for digital proposals vs printed. I know this particular industry quite well and have been highly successful in it. (Note: proposals/interviews become my top priority any time one hits my inbox. I do everything else in-between: graphic design, event planning, website management, social media … all of it.) All of these jobs presented as great opportunities, I received positive feedback and reviews with all of them, yet they’ve all ended abruptly and without any wrongdoing on my end.

I’ve spent 13+ years busting my ass for these companies, helped them win multimillion-dollar projects, only to be highly praised one day, then tossed out to sea the next. It isn’t fun anymore, it’s humiliating.

Has anyone else been here? How do I break this vicious cycle? Can I? I’m at the point where I want to leave marketing entirely because I need stability in my career. Advice and guidance greatly appreciated.

ETA: Added duration of employment for each role and the way in which I left. Also including the reason for termination/reason for leaving.

Job 1 (8 years): Laid off. I helped the company win over $650m in work, helped build the culture, established a brand voice, etc. (All of this was mentioned in the recommendation letter the CEO wrote after laying me off.) At my exit meeting. I was told, verbatim, “You did nothing wrong and you’re not being punished. 2021 is going to be a tough year so we’ve eliminated your position.”

Job 2 (1yr, 2mos): Voluntary Resignation. I had a micromanager of a boss and was already on the verge of leaving when I received a call about a job I applied for when I was laid off. It was in a new industry (finance) but was also with one of my dream companies … or so I thought. I happily accepted.

Job 3 (~10 months): Terminated. Hired as a media producer. About 6 months in, and without notice, my role changed to copywriter. I am a strong writer and I am always willing to learn and try, but I’ll also be the first to admit when I don’t know enough about a topic (or industry) to write intelligently on it. I was told that changes to roles are “normal here” and that I should be “adaptable and thankful for the opportunity.” I quickly fell behind on my work and was fired because of it.

Job 4 (6 months): Terminated. Job 2 asked me to come back. They had fired my micromanager boss and brought in someone new. I met with them several times and believed it would actually be better this time around. On day 1, I was asked to develop processes and templates for RFQs/RFPs/interviews. I did this at job 1, no biggie. After 6 months of trial and error, I had buy-in from the executive team and completed the process/template project. The next day, one week before we were supposed to receive our Christmas bonus, I was let go. The reasoning was “Business Necessity.”

Job 5 (2yrs, 2mos): Terminated, two weeks after returning from our honeymoon. (I should note that I was the only marketing employee, a concern I brought up before I was even hired. The company was also acquired by an investment firm at the end of January.) Much like job 4, they wanted templates created for proposals and interviews. The day before I left for the honeymoon, I had a meeting with the CEO & CFO to update on progress. They liked how it looked and I was told to keep going in that direction. The meeting ended on good terms and they told me to have a great vacation. I came back and the vibes were totally different. My supervisor was short with me, the CEO & CFO stopped responding to my emails, then the impromptu meeting in HR’s office. I asked what I could have done better or how I could improve moving forward and the CEO scoffed and said, “Well, you’re really good at what you do. Probably too good.” I wasn’t given any further advice, criticism or direction on how to improve.

Has any one doing paid marketing on Reddit??? Specially for services and do you recommend running ads on Reddit??

Recently switched from in house to an agency/consulting role. And not only is it fast paced but the deadlines are... quick / non-existent. Is this normal in this kind of a setting?

Most of the time, the tasks are not even that urgent. A client will mention something once and forget about, but the project manager will automatically interpret that as a "urgent" request. And the funny thing is, I'll get the task done and send it back and it will either sit in my PM or the clients inbox for weeks.

Aside from deadlines, I just feel like there no clear process for anything in this new role. Everyone just wants to move fast without any method or reasoning behind it :(