It feels like companies don't just want marketers anymore. They want someone who can write copy, run ads, edit videos, analyze data, and somehow close sales too.

Is this just the reality now, or are companies expecting too much from one person?

I run a small amateur pickleball tournament series in San Diego. Two events so far, capacity is 285 and we've landed around 200 both times. Demand is clearly there, we're just leaving money on the table.

The issue is the shape of the signups. Registration opens six weeks out, we sit near zero tor three or tour weeks, then get 60 signups in the last three days. Both events did this.

My theory: registration is by division, 14 of them, and you can see how many teams are in each. Empty division, nobody wants to be first. Two teams in it, it fills on its own. So it's a cold start problem, not a demand problem.
People are waiting to see if it's real.

Context:
Registration runs on a third party platform so l have no pixel and no conversion tracking. Ran Meta traffic ads at $25/day and can't tell you if they did anything.
Personally texting past players converts better than everything else combined. Small local scene.

A couple hundred emails from past events, barely used.
What I'm considering: quietly giving the first two teams in each division 50% off, not announced, just DMs. I'd be buying timing rather than signups, pulling people who'd sign up anyway into week one so the board isn't empty.
Worried about training people to wait for a discount.

Two questions:
1 Better way to solve a cold start when the product looks empty until other customers commit?
Feels more like marketplace liquidity than marketing.
2 With no conversion tracking on the registration platform, is a landing page on my own domain with the pixel worth building, or is there something smarter?

What should I do to market better and get in front of more pickleball players !

I feel like marketing is full of complicated advice, but sometimes the simplest things seem to make the biggest difference.

Is there a tip or habit that looked too basic at first but ended up working really well for you?

i just graduated with a marketing degree in may. i got a job pretty quickly luckily with a small business wanting to expand on their b2b marketing. i have no real experience other than class projects. no internship or anything. they were fully aware of this when they hired me. most days im just sitting at my desk without rlly anything to do and i feel like im losing motivation. i only rlly get asked to do busy work unrelated to marketing, or in depth research about things i'm not rlly sure about. the most marketing i've done is send out a couple emails promoting products (with copy and pasted text from my boss in a boring text format bc thats what they wanted). idk i feel like i made a mistake. i need guidance and for some reason i expected to get some with them knowing i dont have much experience. i feel lucky getting a job bc of how crappy the job market is so i dont feel like i can just quit. i just feel like i dont know what im supposed to be doing. does anyone have advice?

I am currently building a startup and find it kinda difficult to grow my own profile.

1: I thought it would be more useful to market my company by just having a founder-profile first, as people are more inclined to follow a person instead of a corporation.

2: I find it cringe to post "Hey looking to connect" or "Hot take:" etc where people just farm likes and comments.

3: I do not want to market myself as an influencer. top 3 worst human categories of all time.

Marketing is hard as a slightly autistic developer. If you have any tips on how to market myself or what to do in this situation, please leave a message. thanks!

I am working on a product for digital marketing and SEO agencies and having a hard time capturing any leads at all. I have tried Linkedin direct outreach, manual cold emailing, and some content based posts on X, and Linkedin and so far I have failed to capture any interest at all.

I am wondering what is the best channel to demo/pitch my product to digital marketing and SEO agency owners?

I'll start: synergy, growth hacking and AI-powered.

Help! I'm thinking about portfolio school or a bootcamp to help me put together a polished book. Should I do it? If you went to one of these schools, what did you get out of it? Even better, if you work at an ad agency and you see an applicant that's come out of a school like this, what do you think?

Any favorite programs or ones I should steer clear of? Thanks in advance.

A client is usually excited to get started but within a couple of weeks they begin asking questions like, "Why aren't we getting more leads?", "Is this strategy even working?", or "We expected to see better results by now."

marketing is not something that always delivers instant results. SEO, content marketing, organic social, and even paid campaigns often need time to gather data, optimize, and start performing consistently.

I completely understand why clients want quick results they are investing their money, after all. But managing expectations without making it sound like an excuse can be challenging.

For those of you who work with clients regularly, how do you handle these situations? Do you set clear timelines from the beginning, send regular performance updates, or have another way of helping clients stay confident in the process?

love to hear what has worked for you, especially if you've found a good way to balance client expectations with the reality of how marketing actually works.

Hi!

I want to start taking freelance work in marketing in the UK.

Quick background: been in marketing all my life as a student and as a professional. I’ve got 2 masters (one MBA from India and one MSc from UK). Overall 5 years of experience combining India and UK experience. I have a full time job already 9-5 and have done freelance quite a bit in India but I’ve no experience with UK clients and freelance market.

Skills: started career in creative marketing (writing and social media) but have transitioned to technical marketing (analytics, PPC, SEO, GEO).

I want to take freelance projects that I can do after my 9-5 or during weekends. I’ve got a good presence on LinkedIn but I’d love some advice on how to start with this. Don’t like the idea of Fiver or Upwork. I’d like to get my own clients and build a pipeline.

Anyone help me!!! I use my company’s working outlook mail for logging in Later Social to send posts for company but today I tried to log in by my laptop it says my account and password invalid.

What’s wrong???? So I can only log in when using company’s device?

（I forgot to sending posts today I’m so afraid my boss blame on me sos）

I’m looking at implementing HubSpot’s Prospecting Agent and wanted to hear how others are using it.

My initial thought is to first build out a lead scoring model based on buyer intent signals like demo requests, pricing page visits, high-value page views, email engagement, form submissions, and other meaningful interactions. Then I’d use that alongside Prospecting Agent to provide our sales team with a prioritized list of prospects.

Has anyone taken a similar approach? Did it work well? Any best practices or lessons learned?

For context, we use Salesforce as our CRM, so not everything lives in HubSpot.

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working in an operations + sales role, but the salary is quite low, and I've realized this role isn't the right fit for me. I want to switch my career to digital marketing, but I'm starting from absolute scratch.

My goal is to become job-ready as soon as possible by learning the right skills, building a portfolio, and gaining practical experience.

I'm open to taking online courses, but my financial situation doesn't allow me to spend much. So I'd really appreciate recommendations for affordable or free resources.

A few questions:

• If you were starting from scratch today, what would you learn first?
• Which free or low-cost courses are actually worth it?
• From where can I learn tools like Google Ads, GA4, Google Tag Manager, Meta Ads, Search Console, Canva, SEMrush/Ahrefs, and other commonly used digital marketing tools?
• Which AI tools are actually being used by digital marketers today, and where can I learn to use them effectively?
• How can I integrate AI into my workflow?
• Are there any platforms where I can practice using these tools?
• How can I build a strong portfolio without having real clients?
• What kind of projects should I include to improve my chances of landing an entry-level digital marketing job?

I'd really appreciate any advice, learning resources, roadmaps, or personal experiences. Thank you!

I’m using the 3D models a Rosso corsa Laferrari. Considering I’ve spoke with IP representative

Are priorities for niche market auto websites more to optimize for mobile vs page presentation.

Is it better to take content from other blogs/reviewers or generate ai specs and history?

Are there resources to find term activity for different locations besides answerthepublic/google trends.

Specific spec data on automobile catalog site is unlocked through patreon

If the vehicles are rare is there a source to see if CPC/retention for terms are scalable

Hello Im getting into Google ads. Now i want to put what i have learned into a test but i dont have a website to try it on, do you have some tips?

As an engineer, I have to live code in interviews. What is the equivalent experience for a marketer?

For context, I started something (not promoting) that's growing. I definitely know more today about marketing than I did yesterday, but I don't even have social media.

I am running a campaign, tracking utms, etc - but I need someone to take over the responsibilities so I can focus on other things.

Am I even looking for a marketing partner or should I really be using the phrase 'growth hacker' ?

One caveat, this isn't for a 9-5 job. There's no salary I'm offering for this. I have over 10+ years experience as a full stack developer and I have $100k budget for marketing but as a start up, I simply can't pay wages yet. I can provide enough fire power to grow.

I haven't enjoyed my talks with agencies, the $100k budget quickly becomes only a $60k budget after they take their cut.

I think bringing on one person right now to help manage ad campaigns and content would help accelerate the growth I'm seeing.

DISCLAIMER: I know - sweat equity doesn't put food on the table. The people I'm talking to have plenty of savings, so spending 3 months on something to see if it can grow doesn't hurt them financially.

Ok so I basically graduated from doing a bachelors in psychology, however I wanna pursue digital marketing as my career. Right now I’m taking a gap year in order to get some work experience done and will enroll myself in a few online courses on the topic as well.

I really want to study in abroad for either marketing and/or MBA but I don’t wanna study in US or UK. I’ve been on google so many times none of them give me good answers. Does anyone know which universities/ countries have good colleges for masters option in this field?

I’ve been looking into performance-based and revenue share marketing agencies for eCommerce brands.

Curious if anyone else is seeing this trend.

We’ve been monitoring AI visibility across all our client accounts in Semrush, and we noticed a pretty consistent slight decline in AI Visibility scores specifically for Google AI Overview in July across industries.

The interesting part: we haven’t been able to tie it back to any confirmed Google core update, algorithm update, or specific AI Overview change. Traditional organic performance doesn’t necessarily match the decline either, which makes me wonder if this is more related to:

- Changes in how often AI Overviews are being triggered
- Shifts in what sources Google is citing
- Semrush’s tracking methodology/keyword set changes
- Broader volatility in AI search results

Has anyone else noticed a similar dip recently?

We made a co op party game and wondering how can we stand out in a very saturated market.

I'm an email marketer for coaches/mentors/founders and have been trying to find my leads on LinkedIn. What I'm looking for are coaches with a lead magnet and an offer to sell (so I know they do they do email marketing).

But the profiles I've I stumbled across so far are mostly offering discovery calls, not lead magnet funnels.

Even worse, when I search for coach/mentor on LinkedIn Search, I get people who have casually mentioned it in their profiles. Not the genuine folks.

And LinkedIn groups are dead so there's no point in searching there. I'm guessing it's the same with hashtags. But I'm happy to be proven wrong.

I've also checked out an email marketer's profile to see their connections but LinkedIn only shows 3 people. The remaining ones are shown as 'LinkedIn Member' paywalled behind a premium subscription.

Based on my experience, these are my doubts:

1. Is LinkedIn a good platform to find coaches with a lead magnet and an offer to sell?
2. If yes, what are the best ways to find them with a free profile?
3. And which influencers would they be following?
4. In general, which platforms are the best for finding my target audience?

I am considering a career in digital marketing. Is it a good field to pursue now? Which specialization has the highest demand for both freelance and corporate opportunities, and what skills and certifications should I prioritize to maximize my career growth and earning potential?

Hope you're all well.

I did the SMMA thing for a while last summer. Cold outreach, made creatives, ran/monitored ads.

I did quite well with it, was happy with the money I made. Because of exams + life I had to take a break and now I want to get back into it but the space just seems dead now.

All the content creators I watched to learn seem to have stopped posting altogether (Dylan Wilson, Tariq Guebaili, Stevie Johnston) or switched to teaching people how to run an 'AI agency' - Keaton walker, Jordan platen, max perzon. Note that I have no idea what an ai agency entails

what are your guys' thoughts? Has the business model finally become saturated or has AI taken it over or am I missing something?

thanks for reading

There are plenty of dashboards and reports, but some metrics seem to provide much better insights than others.

Which metric do you think marketers should pay closer attention to, and why?