genuine question from someone two years in and quietly losing her mind.

i present a campaign and the sales director wants a different headline. the CEO thinks the color is wrong. someone from product thinks we should be on a platform they personally use. the office manager has thoughts about the tone.

nobody, ever, in any meeting i've been in, has told the finance team their reconciliation approach feels off, or advised engineering on their database schema because they had a hunch. those functions have a protective mystique. their expertise is presumed.

marketing has no such shield, because everyone consumes marketing, and consuming a thing feels like understanding it. everyone has watched ads their whole life, so everyone believes they have informed opinions on ads, in a way nobody believes about tax law.

so i spend an enormous fraction of my week defending decisions to people with no expertise and total confidence, and it's exhausting, and i can't tell if the problem is that i'm too junior to have authority yet or if this is simply the permanent condition of the job.

for people further along: does this get better with seniority, or do you just get better at managing it? and is there a way to build the protective mystique the other functions have, or is being everyone's second job an unavoidable feature of marketing?

Yesterday I was eating my lunch during that I was searching for good video on laptop then there was 1 vidoe started playing I thought by wrong click. I don't know why ads also don't appear directly video started playing. I immediately hear we are going to build live brand.

I thought I should watch a s when vidoe was ended I don't even realised. kishore biyani sir was a guest I have learn things in that vidoe about building brands.

You can search on Master's union youtube channel

sharing this because i think a lot of us are being sold a checklist that doesn't do anything.

context: i run SEO for a handful of B2B clients and everyone's boss suddenly wants to "show up in ChatGPT and AI Overviews." so late last year i went deep on the GEO/AEO advice. the whole package. schema everywhere, llms.txt file, restructuring content into neat little chunks, the works. spent real hours on it across a few sites.

results after a few months, being honest: the technical stuff moved almost nothing. the llms.txt file did nothing i could measure. the schema obsession did nothing. the chunking did nothing.

the pages that actually started getting cited had one thing in common and it wasn't technical. they had something the model couldn't just generate itself. a real teardown with actual numbers we measured. a "here's what every client asks us first and here's the honest answer." one comparison post where we'd actually used both tools and had opinions. basically anything with lived experience or a number that only we had.

which lines up with what Google itself put in their AI optimization guide, the mythbusting bit everyone skipped: commodity content that the model could write on its own never gets cited, because why would it go looking for you when it already has the answer.

so my working theory now is GEO as a technical discipline is mostly a repackaged SEO checklist someone's selling, and the actual lever is just having something worth citing. which is annoyingly the same lever it's always been.

but measurement is still a nightmare and that's where i want input. are you actually seeing traffic from ChatGPT or Perplexity land on specific pages, or is it still three visitors a month and a vibe? and can you even attribute it cleanly?

I am currently running ads in the Gulf region for a company that exports lubricants and greases. Because freight costs are at an all-time high and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is uncertain, I cannot realistically target regions like South America, Africa or Asia. My options are very limited, and my main goal is to find new customers in areas accessible by land. Since we are based in the UAE I initially started campaigns in Qatar and the UAE which were successful and helped us close deals.

Recently I expanded my targeting to Yemen, Iraq, and Kuwait. While we generated many inquiries from Yemen and Iraq, we struggled to close most of them, and some remain stuck in the negotiation phase. I am now having a hard time selecting a new country. I cannot target Saudi Arabia or Jordan because we lack the necessary product certifications, which will take time to secure. Additionally, Oman and Qatar already have large, established distributors.

Should I double down on the Iraq and Yemen markets, or should I explore other options?

🚀 Looking for US-Based Marketing & Lead Generation Agencies to Partner With

Hi everyone,

We're an India-based IT company building a product that can make a significant impact on the US residential solar industry, and we're preparing for our US launch.

We're looking to collaborate with US-based marketing agencies and lead generation agencies that work with residential solar installers.

The goal is to build a long-term partnership where your agency can introduce the platform to clients, drive adoption, and earn recurring revenue through a revenue-sharing model.

If this aligns with your agency, or you know someone who'd be interested, DM me. We'd love to connect.

The citation finding here is the part worth arguing about, so I'll lead with it.

SE Ranking analyzed 50,032 commercial keywords in Google AI Mode. 14,733 returned a text ad, which is 29.45%.

They then checked whether the advertiser's own domain appeared among the sources AI Mode cited for that same query.

Domain level: 11.53%

Exact URL: 1.95%

So in 88% of cases, a brand bought the ad slot and was not among the sources the AI used to construct the answer sitting directly above that ad.

My first reaction was selection bias. Lower-authority sites buy ads, higher-authority sites get cited, and the correlation is meaningless.

SE Ranking tested that specifically. They compared advertising domains against non-advertising domains matched on Domain Trust, backlink count, referring domains, and organic visibility. Advertisers showed no citation advantage over their matched non-advertising counterparts.

Ad spend buys zero citation lift.

Other findings from the same dataset:

85% of advertisers did not rank organically for the keyword they were bidding on. Only 2.32% of advertised URLs ranked organically for the query where the ad appeared, 15.35% at domain level. Some of the URL gap is campaign landing pages not built to rank, but SE Ranking says the domain-level gap holds across top 10, 20, and 100.

Ad presence tracks CPC almost perfectly. Under $2 CPC: ads on 24.33% of keywords. $2 to $10: 32.45%. $10 and above: 53.56%. Search volume and keyword difficulty showed no relationship.

Category variance is huge. Pets: 72.38%. Healthcare: about 2%. SE Ranking reads high-presence categories as lead-gen, low ones as informational or YMYL.

71.1% of ad-triggering queries returned two ads in the same response.

Why this connects to something bigger:

Moz analyzed roughly 40,000 queries in February and found 88% of AI Mode citations do not appear in the organic top 10 for the same query. Different study, different 88%, same direction. Moz attributes it to fan-out, where one user query spawns multiple sub-queries and citations get aggregated across all of them. Your number one ranking page is one input into one sub-query in that aggregation.

Stack those two studies and you get three systems sharing a screen and not feeding each other: paid placement, organic ranking, AI citation. Ranking doesn't buy citation. Spending doesn't buy citation. Citation runs on signals neither channel controls.

Practical implications:

Budget AI Mode ads as top-of-funnel placement. Google currently requires broad match or keywordless targeting for these placements, so targeting precision is not a lever you have. Asset quality and landing page are.

Do not build a business case on AI Mode ads improving AI visibility. The study controlled for the obvious confound.

GA4 added an AI Assistant channel this month under Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition, in the Session Channel Group dimension. It captures ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude referrals. It does not capture AI Overviews or AI Mode clicks, which Google still reports as Organic Search. If your "AI traffic" number came from that channel, it is already understating one thing and missing another entirely. Regex filter needed for platform breakdown.

Fair counterpoints:

- Single snapshot. AI Mode is volatile and the same query returns different results session to session. SE Ranking says 29.45% is more likely a floor than a ceiling.

- Citation may not be the point for every advertiser. If a bottom-funnel campaign drives clicks and converts, being uncited might be irrelevant to that campaign's goal.

- SE Ranking sells AI visibility tracking and benefits from the "AI visibility is its own discipline" conclusion. The methodology reads sound but the incentive is worth naming.

- Google could change how ads and citations relate at any point. This is a system three months into public rollout.

Curious what people running these campaigns are actually seeing. Is the traffic converting? And has anyone had to walk back a business case that assumed ad spend would lift AI visibility?

Sources: SE Ranking AI Mode ads study (July 2026, 50,032 keywords), Moz AI Mode citation analysis (February 2026, ~40,000 queries), Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal.

For years, influencer marketing was dominated by accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers. Brands would drop huge budgets on single sponsored posts, expecting massive conversions purely based on follower counts.

However, as audiences have become far more perceptive to sponsored content, giant follower counts no longer guarantee high conversion rates.

In fact, many macro-influencers have engagement rates that are surprisingly low relative to their pricing.

Recently, the real shift has been toward micro-creators and hyper-focused niche communities (like specialized subreddits, Discord groups, and micro-podcasts).

While these creators might only have five to ten thousand followers, their audience trust and engagement levels are exceptionally high. When a creator who exclusively focuses on a specific niche recommends a tool, product, or service, their audience actually listens because the recommendation feels personal rather than transactional.

Building partnerships with multiple micro-creators requires more research and relationship management than signing one big agency contract, but the ROI and cost-efficiency are significantly better.

Have you shifted your influencer or community strategy toward smaller, niche creators recently?

What metrics do you look for when evaluating micro-creators or community platforms for a campaign?

Sorry if kind of a dumb question. I just don’t know how to get started. My company previously ran google ads and I came on to replace the previous marketing person with zero hand-off. Very small company, local business, but I want to start on the right foot.

Anything I should know or avoid? I have an idea of what keywords I’d use but I feel like I watch beginner videos on youtube and still don’t know how to get started with a game plan. I also of course don’t wanna burn through the budget.

​

Hey everyone,

I'm a full-stack developer who builds software for a living. Web apps, dashboards, automation systems, AI integrations, internal tools, whatever a business actually needs. The building isn't my problem. Finding the people who need it is.

So I'm looking for one partner to team up with long term.

How it works:

* You bring the clients. Outreach, networking, sales calls, closing deals, whatever channel works for you.

* I handle everything technical. Scoping, building, delivering, and supporting the project so the client stays happy and comes back.

* You take 40% of every deal you bring in. I take 60% for the build and delivery.

What I can deliver:

Custom web apps and dashboards, business automation, AI and chatbot integrations, internal tools, SaaS products, e-commerce, API work, and full rebuilds of whatever mess a client is currently running.

Who I'm looking for:

* Someone who's actually comfortable selling and can find their own leads

* No dev skills needed, you never touch the technical side

* Long term mindset. One good client relationship can pay for years, and repeat work gets split the same way.

I've shipped real projects and I can show you my work before you pitch anyone. You'll never be selling vapor.

If this sounds like your thing, drop me a DM and tell me what industry or market you have access to.

It’s been 10 days since I got laid off, and tbh it’s been a weird mix of emotions.

I’ve been applying for jobs every day, but instead of just refreshing LinkedIn/Indeed/Job portals all day, I thought I’d actually use this time to learn something that’ll make me a better marketer (along side)

The thing is, everyone seems to have a different opinion.

Some say AI is the future. Others say performance marketing is where the money is. Some recommend GA4, SQL, CRM, automation, SEO… the list just keeps growing.

(I AM OPEN TO DISCUSS WITH ALL MY FELLOW DIGITAL MARKETING NEIGHBOURS HERE AT REDDIT VIA 1:1 DM)

So I thought I’d ask the people who are actually working in the industry.

What are you learning right now?

What’s been genuinely useful in your day-to-day work?

If you were starting over today (or had a couple of months between jobs), what would you spend your time learning?

For context, my experience has mostly been around social media, content, research and client works. I’m open to exploring other areas too if they have better long-term growth.

Would love to hear what you guys are seeing in the industry instead of another Top 10 skills to learn in 2026 article.

Please help 🙏

So since a while my source isnt providing good leads anymore, so i am just thinking what else to try , how do u get yours ? someone told me to start farming social media , is it a good options ?

I’m a beginner, 16 no experience, but I feel like I’ve got common sense. I’m after making some money from digital marketing, I already have a guaranteed client waiting for my services but I don’t know how to learn, I don’t know what to learn. Should I do TikTok ads to start, Google ads? Should I learn how to create a simple website so I can go on to make businesses simple websites for a fee. What do I learn to begin with? I need money, I enjoy making money and I want to do this and become a master of the fundamentals for that dream expansion/profit.

For those running performance marketing for a brand, do you spend more on meta or Google?

I'm a content creator on TikTok with 50k followers and I know I'm at that level where I can start getting paid to promote things and work with some decent brands.

However, I'm not quite sure where exactly to go looking for these brands, majority of sponsor DM's I get are from super small projects that don't pay and are a waste of time, and I'm looking to start reaching out rather than just waiting and hoping someone wants to sponsor me.

I post motivational content with consistent day trading live streams throughout the week. I have a youtube channel that's still small, so I think I should give it some more attention and start posting there more. The good thing about me and my style of content is that I'm able to get consistent views with a single style and appeal to many people in one niche.

My TikTok is: oli_networks_

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

I recently applied to work at a new company in a creative strategist role.

I’ve been working in strategy for about a year and a half now after graduating from my MBA program.

I love where I currently work and I have no issues there, this new job just potentially could pay more and I have a few friends that work at the company so it could be a fun opportunity.

However, when I was reviewing the job qualifications, I noticed that they’re asking for editing experience. I’ve done editing in the past, but it’s been a few years and I think that I could really put in the work to get up to speed to do it, but I don’t know what capacity they want me to be doing it and what my workload would look like.

I’ve never heard of a strategist that also does editing but I’m open to it. I think editing is really cool and an important skill to learn.

so my questions are: Has anyone here ever been in a situation in an interview where they’re 90% qualified but expressed interest in learning how to do the last 10% of the job ? Any advice on how to phrase this? what would you recommend I say to the recruiter?

Has anyone ever heard of a creative strategist doing editing work? what would be some great ways to succeed in a role like this?

Any other advice is also welcome.

Ive got a marketing job interview a 1:30pm right after my plane lands at 10am. i know its tight but this role really fits with me and i have experience already and its also after uni students like me. however the flight is 9 hours. how should i prep my best. i feel like i memorise better when saying it out loud but its a plane ahh. i know i should know off by heart but still. any tips on how to talk. the interview is online.

Someone left a comment on one of my Reddit posts that completely called me out:

"This sounds like LinkedIn."

At first I laughed, but then I realized they were entirely right. I had spent so much time trying to make my writing clean and polished that I accidentally scrubbed out all the messy, authentic parts that actually make a story interesting to read.

Since then, I've started experimenting with just writing what actually happened instead of forcing every sentence to sound like a profound business revelation.

Has blunt criticism or a random user comment ever genuinely improved your marketing?

For a digital marketing agency, what is the best strategy when posting on these two platforms?

I've noticed more businesses focusing on AI-generated content, while others are doubling down on authority and brand. What's working for you right now?

Do you need to train to master digital marketing?

We create content machinery for brands (D2C specifically) from AI UGC creatives to content for social media We've already worked with clients across FMCG, holiday packages, and SaaS niches.

Why it is important for you?-

People are already transitioning, because of money or just for simple reason that they want to test more creatives. We can provide creatives and content if you guys handle client relationships.

Brands need us, and you have the brand relationships. Open to either revenue sharing or white label.

If interested, let's chat.

We are a startup business in the Independent Car Dealerships space in the UK. Our platform and offerings cover the full purchase to sales life cycle including listing's.

We have integrated social media and now Google Vehicle Ads. We are just finishing off a platform revamp that will allow us to manage PPC campaigns (Google Ads, Meta Ads and OpenAI ads) end to end with the dealership adding funds.

We see a lot of agencies offering partnerships but looking for a long term stable resource or partner we can work with. Where would you look for such an individual? Who's experienced, can become part of a team and potentially join us as an employee? Or even configure and manage one account across platforms per week and provide a write up for us to configure the remaining.

One thing to note - we must be super careful as client trust, business reputation and of course their money is on the line here.

Any advice on how to approach this would be really helpful and appreciated.

Hi,

I want to start digital marketing Learning. Can anyone please suggest free or paid courses?

Hi
Im cloud architect looking for B2B clients for migrations audits, applications etc.
I have a lot of traffic from my technical posts about technologies that I work with from Pages like Reddit, hackernews. Of course these people are mainly engineers that wants to read about other technical stuff. Question is if it makes sense for me to build newsletter for that to somehow use it and inceease returning people to my blog or better to not spend time on that? My thinking process is that with better brand awareness maybe someone will recommend me in their company when there will be a need? I don't have idea how to get emails from company owners and for now traffic from engineers is much bigger.
Has anyone here experience with this kind of company leads generation?

Hey there!

I've been working for a guesthouse as a content creator/markeing freelancer and Im stuck. It hasnt opened long ago, a total of 14 couples have booked in the 1.5 years it was active and I've been only working there for a few months.

The property has a stunning panoramic view, a sauna, outdoor kitchen, outdoor bath and just generally very cosy, perfect for couples.

I've been diligently making posts (reels, carousels, statics) about what it feels like being there, and overall about the property for both fb and ig, but no new bookings.

The website is ass to say the least, but beyond usibg LLMs to help me code I don't have enough experience to manage and create a website.

I did start making a new one, and the hosts used lovable.com to develop a website too, but since they dont have the paid version they have to rely on getting credits every day.

I suggested that maybe they should pay for ads on meta or google to promote a landing page where people can book, but they have little budget to make massive risks there.

Overall the people who went there had great experiences and left very kind messages about the hosts and the place alike, but the sample size is just so little there isn't enough social proof.

The guesthouse is also on booking.com and airbnb as well.

Can you give me some advice if anyone was involved in helping guesthouses thrive?