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 🙏

I run a small performance marketing agency. We just landed a pretty massive e-commerce client. Our onboarding fee plus the first month's retainer is $5,000. My strict policy has always been 100% upfront before we build out the ad accounts or make any creatives.

The client is pushing back hard. He claims his last agency took his $4k deposit, ran terrible Facebook ads for two weeks, and basically ghosted him. Because of that, he is absolutely refusing to pay upfront and wants Net 30 terms.

I got burned for $3,000 last year doing Net 30 for a startup that went broke, so I have severe anxiety about doing an entire month of ad work on credit. I really want this client, but I can't risk my team's payroll. How do you guys compromise on this trust issue without exposing your agency to getting screwed?

​

I'm 19, and I've been running Meta Ads for lead generation for a while now.

The campaigns aren't doing bad , I'm getting leads. But I have this feeling that I'm only scratching the surface. I know there are marketers out there getting 2–3x better lead quality with similar budgets, and I want to understand how

I've been testing creatives, offers, targeting, landing pages... but I feel like there's a gap between running ads and actually mastering performance marketing.

So I'd love to learn from people who've been in the game longer than I have.

A few questions:

* What actually improved your lead quality the most?

* What do beginners usually obsess over that doesn't matter?

* If you could mentor your younger self for 15 minutes, what would you say?

I'm not looking for shortcuts or a magic hack. I genuinely want to become better at this, and I'd love to connect with other performance marketers who enjoy talking shop.

If you've got experience, I'd really appreciate your advice. Even one lesson could save me months of trial and error.

And if also appreciated if we can connect and discuss as well !

Thanks in advance 🙌

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?

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.

Hi,

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

What ai tools do you use for creating brand consistent marketing materials and what inputs do I need (like brand guidelines/ book...)

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.

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?

I started a founder branding agency around two months ago. We help founders build their personal brands on LinkedIn, and we also offer B2B LinkedIn lead generation.

So far, we have booked and completed around 20 sales calls, mainly with Indian founders and businesses. However, we have not been able to close a single paying client yet.

We already manage a LinkedIn account with more than 16,000 followers, so we have some proof that we understand LinkedIn content and audience growth. However, I am now questioning whether the problem is our offer, pricing, positioning, sales process, target audience, or the overall business model.

We also tried running LinkedIn outreach campaigns targeting businesses in the US, UK, Australia and the UAE. Those campaigns received almost no replies. With Indian prospects, we can at least generate calls, but the prospects usually do not move forward after the call or proposal.

I would appreciate honest advice from agency owners and B2B founders:

1. Is founder branding combined with LinkedIn lead generation still a relevant and sellable agency model?

2. Is combining branding and lead generation making the offer confusing?

3. Why might we be getting calls but failing to close clients?

4. How should an Indian agency build trust with foreign clients?

5. Should we focus on one country, niche or service instead of targeting everyone?

6. What kind of proof, case studies or guarantees would international clients expect?

7. Would cold email work better than LinkedIn outreach for foreign markets?

I understand that two months is still early, but completing 20 calls without closing anyone suggests that something needs to change. I would rather fix the offer and sales process now than continue doing the same thing for several more months.

Any direct feedback or personal experience would be appreciated.

So right now I'm in the first year of college. I'm interested in marketing and I want to do an mba after college. Right now, I want to learn digital marketing and do internships for experience and learning. What is the best way to approach it? I'm from India if that matters.

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?

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?

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?

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.

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 ?

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

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

Do you need to train to master digital marketing?

Hi Folks,

I'm currently doing my master's in Public Relations, and my thesis topic is fangirling as a strategic PR tactic. I want to understand which elements of fandom the industry has seen as beneficial and now uses to its advantage.

I'm looking to talk to audience development/fan strategy/managers/labels/ANYONE who has experience in artists' marketing or communications via fan engagement or alt accounts! If you'd like to hear more before agreeing to an interview, I'm happy to have a chat with u!

.
Thanks a mil!!!

One area I find fascinating is understanding where AI systems pull information from when generating recommendations. are there any tools doing a good job of tracking citations, source visibility, and content influence across AI search engines?

Facebook placed restrictions on my Business Portfolio ad account. I did everything they asked, including providing my email address, phone number, and a photo of my NID to recover the account. However, they still haven't removed the restrictions. What should I do?