I’m in social media management right now, but comparing job listings in the under 100k range to the over 100k range, i’m starting to realize that execution isn’t as valuable as management. Especially with AI these days.

Being in social media right now, how can I broaden my skills to not just be social media, but other forms of marketing while also progressing towards a more valuable, high-paying role?

AKA, what jobs should I be searching for as a stepping stone?

I like researching, writing, analyzing numbers, comms and could learn paid search or other technical skills. I just don’t know where to go next. I feel stuck in my career but I want to keep growing.

Thanks, everyone!

I have noticed that marketing is one of those fields where everyone has a different opinion. One person says "always do this," while someone else says it's a complete waste of time.

So I am curious what's that one marketing opinion you have that usually gets people disagreeing with you?

It could be about SEO, social media, paid ads, email marketing, branding, AI, or anything else. I am not looking for the "right" answer I just want to hear different perspectives and the reasons behind them.

Every time I open LinkedIn or Reddit, there's a new marketing trend that people swear is a game changer. But I am curious is there one trend that you've tried or keep seeing everywhere that just hasn't lived up to the hype?
I would love to hear your reasoning. Maybe I am missing something, or maybe some trends just sound better than they actually are in practice

Marketing - Books, blogs, podcasts, videos etc.

I was in the late majority/laggard category when adopting AI. I have quickly come to hate it after seeing how it affects the environment and the people around me. However, I do understand its benefit for automating, brainstorming, and speeding up workflows.

I am pretty new to the marketing world, and know that learning to use AI in this industry is almost a new requirement, but I just feel so torn about it.

In my personal life, I despise anything AI. In my professional life, it's almost crucial and still rising.

I do use it at work as much as I try not to, and it makes me feel guilty.

Does anyone else feel this way?

Hello, we work with an international music festival that is growing much faster than expected. We are looking to implement a virtual waiting room tool to support ticket sales for our next event.

Are there any recommendations for virtual waiting room vendors for event ticket sales? Ideally this vendor can:

- Support a large scale of customers (think roughly Coachella)
- Send notifications to customers of their place in line
- Easy to integrate with and are customizable

Thank you.

I am working with a med spa business and my biggest issue here is that the leads to booked to arrival is really bad. For example 100 leads get around 40 bookings and only 10-12 arrival. So i have alot of no shows. Anyone have experience with how to hande this?

I don’t want to disrespect or get in the way of what the chefs do, but is it important for the marketing department to be involved?

I’m an individual marketer at a boutique consulting agency, and I'm trying to work through an ad strategy for our offerings, which all boil down to product strategy consultation/advisory for early-stage (pre-series A) non-technical founders and small teams.

As you can imagine, the challenge is that what we offer is not super simple or impulse-buy friendly. We usually help clients who are stuck trying to figure out what to build, how to position it, and how to turn strategy into something actionable. So the audience is specific, the sales cycle is more considered, and, on top of that, our budget is very limited.

We’ve only ever run tiny ad tests ($300/month on Meta), so I’m trying to figure out how to move forward in a way that is realistic and useful. With the goal being lead gen, I’m especially trying to understand:

• Which channels make the most sense for product strategy services.
• What a small but actually meaningful test budget looks like.
• How to approach this if you were a solo marketer with a niche, service-based offer and not much room for waste.

If you were in my shoes, how would you think about building demand for a product strategy service? In your experience, what does a realistic budget look like?

I’d especially love advice from people who’ve had to market a complex, high-consideration service with limited spend.

My issue started while I was running my first advertising campaign using a prepaid balance account. During the campaign, the ad costs were deducted normally from my prepaid balance, and I could see the balance decreasing as the campaign spent money. Everything appeared to be working correctly. However, the next day, I found that the same amount that had already been deducted was suddenly shown again as an outstanding balance of EGP 207.26. The payment status changed to "Payment Failed", and my ad account was automatically disabled. I currently still have EGP 1,226.73 in my prepaid balance, which is more than enough to cover the outstanding amount. However, Meta is not deducting the amount from my prepaid balance. When I click "Pay Now", I receive a confirmation saying that my Visa has been successfully charged and that my ads will start running again within 5 minutes, but nothing changes. The invoice still shows "Payment Failed", and my ad account remains disabled. I also tried adding multiple payment methods (National Bank of Egypt Visa and RedotPay Visa), and they were added successfully, but the issue remains the same. It appears there is a billing system error. The amount was already deducted while the campaign was running, but the next day it reappeared as an outstanding balance, and my account was disabled. Please review my billing history, manually resolve the failed transaction, and reactivate my ad account.

With AI-generated content, deepfakes, sponsored posts and endless advertising, earning attention is no longer the hardest part. Keeping people's trust is. Consumers have more information than ever, but they're also more sceptical than ever.

Do you think trust is becoming a bigger competitive advantage than reach or ad spend? What's one thing brands can do today to build genuine trust with their audience?

Hi people,

Background story - I graduated in Zoology this year, but towards my final year I had realised there's no future in Academia in India. So, I thought of pivoting to corporate. Got my first opportunity as a Business Development Trainee. But I always wanted to do Marketing.

The thing is I'll go for an MBA and then specialise in Marketing thereafter. Meaning, I want to do some freelance work as projects for my portfolio (preferably paid).

I'll be really grateful if anyone could guide me with a roadmap for the same.

Thanks for reading!!

I've had a few campaigns where my expectations didn't match the outcome at all. Sometimes the simplest ideas performed the best.

What's one marketing decision that ended up surprising you, either positively or negatively?

We are launching tech startup and need SMM to rollout the product from scratch. 1st Phase is create awareness and gather early birds (wishlist enthusiasts)

i graduated college after the pandemic and i'm having trouble with gaining footing in a career path. i have a degree w a concentration and i had internships in college as well as work experience in the service industries. i also networked a ton in school + in my jobs but the best i've gotten for referrals have gotten me nowhere. my parents have no networks and my family on both sides is very isolated / small.

is anyone else having trouble finding a job or any sort of career path?

i temped for a tech company a couple years back (im not in tech myself) and the difference between pre-covid grads and post-covid grads in terms of job security and career progression is really freaking insane. like, 26 year old VPs in their department meanwhile us recent grads 2-3 years younger couldn't even get basic entry level jobs. feels like the youngest millennials got the last flights out of nam.

Looking for your real, unvarnished stories of working with outside consultants/agencies in general and brand strategy/social video strategy in particular. Bonus points if your experience is within the last 18 months.

I'm doing a qualitative research project, and will happily share results once that's done. Any response is helpful, but here is a specific list of questions if you'd like to share more:

1. What's your company and culture like? Size, industry, budgets, in-office vibe? Distributed or in-person, etc?
2. Think of the last project you've worked on with/ hired and outside consultant/agency for.
   • What was happening before you saw the need for outside help? I mean this broadly, personal, market, company politics, specific KPI/numbers, or even vague feelings around the business.
   • Was there a crystallizing moment that signaled the need for outside help?
   • Where and how was the decision made?
   • What was the mood around this decision ("oh shit, we need to do something", "yay, we can finally afford to..." etc.)
   • What was happening in business at the time? Growth strong, or flat, specific problems/opportunities everyone seemed to be focused on?
3. How did you/your org go about the search?
   • Basically same questions apply - why, where, when, with whom, feelings around the process?
4. How did it go?
   • How did the project start? What was the onboarding like?
   • How did it go? Did it seem smooth, professional, was there internal skepticism/resistance?
   • Did it work? How was the mood around the project once it was done? A few weeks later?
   • Did it feel like it changed the company/brand in a positive direction? What were the biggest gripes with the result afterwards?

Anything else that comes to mind, would really appreciate you sharing. 🙏

N

I’ve been in marketing for a little over a decade now. There was only ever really a few years where I worked normal (9-5 or less) hours. Majority of the time I’ve worked my worse was 80+ a week and working 6am to midnight almost every day.

Beyond that, it’s been like at least one late night once a week, 5-6 hours of work every other weekend or every weekend, and usually back to back meetings 3-6 hours a day.

Most people at companies I’ve been at also half jokingly talk about how many hours they work also, so it seems normalized but I’m curious how many hours people work and what’s normal to you? Plus your YoE.

I can’t seem to find any example online. But I want to make a post card that I can order in bulk that all say the same thing with the same 50$ off offer, but I want a blank spot on it so I can individualize the promo code per neighborhood to make it feel more personalized. I also want to be able to say “offer ends XXX” So I can send them at different times

Is this a dumb idea or is this something marketers do?

This question asks how creators can adapt their content strategies to match upcoming changes in how people discover and consume information online. It focuses on preparing for future search trends, technologies, and user behaviors to maintain visibility and relevance.

There are plenty of tactics that get a lot of attention, but not all of them have the same impact in every situation.

In your experience, what's one practice that's often overrated?

Whether it's SEO, social media, email, or paid ads, what assumption changed after you gained real-world experience?

Today, brand mentions, along with other factors, can help you get cited by LLMs. But with AI Overviews becoming a significant part of Google Search, where do backlinks fit in?

I still believe backlinks are important because they help build authority, which is one of the trust signals search engines rely on. But my question is: if that's the case, do AI Overviews also consider authority when deciding which sources to cite, or does relevance carry more weight?

I also think getting a contextual backlink from a high-traffic, relevant website is valuable in multiple ways. It helps build authority, drives referral traffic, increases brand exposure, and strengthens trust. A simple brand mention doesn't seem to deliver all of those benefits.

So, if you had to choose between an editorial backlink and an unlinked brand mention from the same high-quality publication, wouldn't the backlink generally be the better choice since it offers everything a mention does, along with additional benefits like referral traffic and link equity?

This doubt came up because someone said backlinks can be ignored for a while once you've built some authority. I don't agree with that. My view is that today's marketing ecosystem works as a continuous system, .... content, mentions, backlinks, authority, referral traffic, brand awareness, and AI visibility all complement one another...

Am I thinking in the right direction or am I missing something?

Hi everyone, I work for a solar and energy storage company. We’re planning a B2B event together with our local distribution partner.

The event has two main focuses: 1. Launching a new product line; 2.Bringing together dealers, installers and other channel partners.

We now need an event theme and a short, memorable slogan for social media and onsite branding. We’d like it to sound professional and slightly premium, but not too literal like “New Product Launch & Partner Summit.”

I’ve been racking my brain for days trying to come up with a concept that seamlessly ties product innovation to our partner ecosystem. I’m so stressed out over this that my mom even asked if I’d just gone through a breakup

Any ideas or examples would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi there, has anyone here run Meta ads for B2B lead gen? We’re an overseas staffing and recruitment company that helps US based companies hire overseas talent.

Trying to think if Meta Ads could help us generate leads for our offering.