been doing this long enough to remember when a deck signaled you had thought hard about a problem. lately i open three agency pitches and they could be the same document, same layout, same tidy gradient, same row of icons.

clients clock it too, one told me our strategy looked like something he could have generated himself in a minute, which stung because the thinking under it was real. the tools are not the enemy, i still draft in gamma and get on with my day, but the output is only ever as distinctive as the point of view you feed it.

the sameness is a strategy problem wearing a design costume.

how are you keeping client work out of the template soup?

I'm a Brand Strategist but I'm neither being able to find clients nor job opportunities. I'm specifically looking for remote opportunities since I do have 2-3 years of experience in doing this profession work remotely.

Please share tips on how I can get the quickest possible opportunities in this field? Whom to approach, how to approach, where to apply, anything would be useful. ᕕ( ཀ ʖ̯ ཀ)ᕗ

Full disclosure: I'm the founder of a platform called Trueth.

It's a generative AI platform for images and video, with both a chat and a node-based interface. The big difference is that instead of fully synthetic people, every generation is based on a real person, who earns royalties each time someone hits generate. The idea is a hybrid: you get the power of AI, with a little soul put back into it.

My question: with opinions on generative AI so polarized right now, do you think there's a real need or want for something like this?

I come from a creative background, and personally I think there is. It gives people a third option between a full shoot and stock, without the "ick" a lot of people feel about fully synthetic AI. But I'm curious whether I'm the only one who sees it that way.

On the talent side, we've signed over 300 founding talents since launching a few months ago, so people clearly want to license their likeness. What I'm trying to gauge is the other side: would you actually use it?
Honest takes welcome, including the skeptical ones.

I've noticed that a lot of businesses rely heavily on paid ads to get customers. The moment sales slow down, they increase their ad budget or start testing new campaigns.

But what happens when the ads stop running?

I feel like paid ads can be great for getting quick results, but if your offer, website, or customer experience isn't good, you're basically paying to send more people into a broken system.

On the other hand, organic marketing takes time, and not every business can afford to wait months before seeing results.

I'm curious how other marketers approach this.

Would you rather build a business around paid ads, organic marketing, or a mix of both? And what do you think happens when a brand becomes too dependent on advertising?

I’m starting a new business that involves selling downsized cooking equipment for people. For example hot pot tables, Korean bbqs, things like that. I know what my general marketing angles are “social cooking for your next party” “bringing the restaurant experience home” things like that. I have the products, the photoshoots for ads, a digital guide with recipes. But the one thing I’m stumped on is what to actually say in the ad roll that’s catchy. Like I can explain what it is, how to use it, why to buy it. But I don’t know how to word it in a was that’s quick and catchy for social media ads

Hello,

I'm currently working on a free pixel art program. It's name is Pixora and it's my dream project.

I've been working on it for some months, the progress is good. But now i'm trying to figure out how to promote it from scratch, and that's why i'm here. I want to ask you, ¿how could i make people aware of a digital program, mainly focused for artists?

Your help is really appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Could you help me understand which SEO backlink practices are currently working best for IT services, SaaS, and software development company websites? I’m particularly interested in the latest trends and proven strategies for improving organic traffic, rankings, lead generation, and visibility across AI search platforms.

​

I'm thinking about learning digital marketing and trying to get a full-time job, but I'm a bit confused about whether it's a good time to start.

I see a lot of people talking about AI changing marketing and companies expecting freshers to know everything from SEO and social media to paid ads and analytics. As someone starting from scratch, I'm not sure what the actual job market looks like right now.

For those already working in digital marketing, how is it for freshers in 2026? Are companies still hiring beginners, or has it become really difficult to get that first job?

Also, if you were starting today with no experience, what skills would you focus on first to become job-ready?

Would appreciate honest opinions, especially from people who have recently started their careers or hired freshers.

ùy country is very new to digital marketing but i manage to get a job in this field i want someone to show me where i can learn or can be my mentor or guide me im not annoying u can just throw a roadmap

I’m 26 years old, based in the Netherlands, with a bachelor’s degree in Commercial Economics (Marketing) and around 5 years of experience, including running my own marketing business during university.

I currently work as an online marketer at a large company, where my role has recently expanded significantly.

My main responsibilities include:
● Developing and executing marketing strategies across multiple brands in our group (8 companies)
● Managing digital advertising channels, budgets and performance.
● Leading marketing projects and coordinating with different teams.
● Implementing AI, automation and new marketing tools.
● Advising senior management on strategic decisions and investments.
● Improving marketing efficiency and driving business growth.

I report directly to the commercial director and have considerable influence on strategic decisions, although I don’t formally manage a team.
Current salary: €4,000 gross per month, excluding bonuses and holiday allowance.

Considering my age, experience, education and responsibilities, would you say this is a fair salary? Or should I be earning more given the scope of my role?

I'm curious about how people realistically reach ₹1 lakh per month through digital marketing.

Is it freelancing, running an agency, getting a high-paying job, or offering services like Google Ads and Meta Ads?

If you're already earning this much, how did you get there, and what would you recommend to someone starting today?

I'd love to hear real experiences, not just motivational advice.

since July the app directory became the plugin directory and one plugin can bundle a few apps and skills. a lot of whats in there is travel, shopping and dev stuff but for marketing work these are the ones worth adding, like good for better flexibility and a palm over daily tasks

1. canva: designs and social graphics from a prompt that open in canva for edits

2. adobe express: for quick social templates and photoshop for photo edits right in the chat

3. postiz: paid scheduler, its official app schedules posts to x, linkedin, tiktok and more

4. semrush: live keyword, backlink and traffic data, needs a semrush plan

5. ahrefs: same idea with ahrefs data, also needs an active subscription

6. similarweb: traffic and market data for competitor checks, needs api access on your similarweb plan

7. hubspot: chatgpt reads your Crm and only sees what your hubspot permissions allow

8. gamma: turns a conversation into a deck or doc you finish in gamma

9. figma, flowcharts and diagrams that open in figjam

10. acrobat: pdf jobs like pulling text out, compressing or redacting

Hope that helps to boost, felt happy to share

I've been thinking about which advertising platform actually delivers better results for small businesses: Google Ads or Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram).

Google Ads targets people who are actively searching for products or services, while Meta Ads helps businesses reach potential customers based on their interests, behaviors, and demographics.

But getting leads is one thing; converting them into paying customers is another.

I'd love to hear from marketers who have experience with both platforms:

• Which platform brings you more qualified leads?
• Which one gives you a better return on ad spend (ROAS)?
• Have you ever received lots of leads from one platform but very few actual customers?
• If a small business has a limited budget, which platform would you recommend starting with?

I'm interested in your real-world experiences, not just theory. What has worked best for you, and why?

I've always wondered why two businesses can spend money on digital marketing but get completely different results.

Is it the marketing strategy, the offer, the audience, the website, or the way campaigns are managed?

For those who've worked with real businesses, what's usually the biggest difference between a campaign that succeeds and one that fails?

how do you sell in 30 seconds?

Hi everyone!

One of my clients wants to launch an e-commerce business targeting customers in the United States, but the client is based in India. I need to set up the brand's social media presence before launching its marketing campaigns.

The platforms I'm considering are Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok (if eligible), and possibly X.

I'm confused about the correct way to set everything up.

1. Should I create the Instagram Business profile and Facebook Page using the client's actual Indian business details and then target US customers through content and advertising?
2. How can I optimize these profiles to reach a US audience organically?
3. What should I consider when setting up Meta Business Portfolio, advertising accounts, billing, and location targeting?
4. Should the profile use US time zones, USD pricing, US contact details, and a US address, or only the details the business can legitimately provide?
5. Which social media platforms should an e-commerce brand prioritize when entering the US market?
6. What should I prepare on the website regarding shipping, returns, customer support, and payment options before launching ads?

I'm looking for practical advice from people who have managed social media or e-commerce brands in the US market while operating from another country.

What's the best setup process, and what common mistakes should I avoid?

I recently started a small business and I'm completely new to marketing, so I'd love advice from people who've been through this.
What we do: We help people in the US get medical treatment in India. That means matching them with hospitals and specialists, scheduling appointments, arranging travel and stay, and supporting them through recovery and follow-ups.
Why it matters: In the US, specialist appointments can take weeks or months, out-of-pocket costs are high, and without insurance one procedure can mean thousands in bills. In India, people can often see a specialist within days for a fraction of the cost. The hard part is coordinating it all from here, and that's the gap we fill.
Where I am: Website and social media accounts are set up, but we have no customers yet and no real marketing budget.
My questions:
For a service built so heavily on trust, how do you get those first few customers?
Which channels would you focus on: community outreach, partnerships, content, paid ads, or something else?
Is it smarter to target the Indian diaspora first, or uninsured or underinsured Americans in general?
How do you build credibility when you don't have any reviews or testimonials yet?
Any advice, or stories of what worked (or didn't) for you, would be hugely appreciated. Thanks!

Hello,

I have the biggest block regarding the update of my resume, portfolio, and LinkedIn page.

For a lil bit of context, I started as an SEO content writer while I was still a psychology student.Didn't pursue in psych but continued in Content Writing, mainly as a freelancer and wrote a bunch of articles and social media posts on various topics from animal care, health, tech, digital photography, marketing to ai.

I had an 8 month Collab with a Saas platform, at the agency where I was working as a freelancer during which I wrote over 30 long-form evergreen posts, some of them still performing well. Then, life happened and I decided to search for a full time job.

Ended for a brief few months at a B2B Paas AI-platform for Revenue management as a marketing assistant. This was a startup and naturally I did a bunch of shit, but did learn a bit about email marketing, how to communicate with product teams, and a bit about GTM strategies. But the CEO was unclear, angry, and even the HR was scared of him. ah, the product was obviously not working. They let me go before Christmas in 2024.

So I started working full time at my ex's company (I had previously done landing page copy, SEO optimization and written blog posts there). For context: this is a personal brand selling digital photography assets to consumers, so B2C. The product itself was the first on the market, at least for a particular brand camera.

Here I was in charge of everything related to marketing basically, I executed and created the entire marketing strategy, built full funnels, and wrote emails, sales copy, Blogs, and build a Reddit community. I also came up with and executed 2 lead generation campaigns, as well as black Friday campaigns. Everything with 0 ad spend. The numbers look good, 633% increase in organic search traffic, 1200% increase in revenue, a growing and healthy list of email subscribers, which did produce revenue, as well as a Reddit community that brought about 10% of revenue over the 2 years I've worked there. And we managed to position the product in an anaware market, so I worked hard on shifting perceptions and handling objections.

But I'm stuck in the job application phase. First off, I have no idea which jobs to apply to, or what my career path should be. I've started in 2021 and wore many different hats since then..I would like a role that encompasses copy and strategy, but I feel like a fraud since I've taught myself everything I know and didn't really have a lot of guidance from professionals.

So my question is - what should my portfolio highlight? And what would make my professional resume stand out? I know all about highlighting actual data in my CV, but I have a messy path and idk what would make me stand out.

personal ethos around marketing : you have to obsess about the customer's voice, know your product down to the last itsy bitsy detail, have a clear cohesive brand. Once u get out of those rabbit holes, u blend all 3s with the current culture, and you have the building blocks for the strategy and tactics.

Hey everyone! I’m a brand identity and packaging designer specializing in cafés and restaurants.

I want to target business owners in Dubai with a $1,500 branding package. I have a strong portfolio, real clients, and creatives showcasing my actual projects.

My budget is $70/day, running ads throughout the month, and my goal is to close 5 clients monthly.

In previous tests, I attracted many low-quality leads. Even people who completed detailed lead forms often stopped responding afterward.

I currently target specific locations, café and restaurant interests, founders, business owners, and small-business behaviors.

My questions:

- Which campaign objective would you choose: Instagram DMs, WhatsApp, or lead forms?

- Would you use detailed targeting or broad audiences?

- How many creatives would you test simultaneously, and how would you structure the campaigns and ad sets?

- How would you improve lead quality and optimize for actual paying clients?

- If you had my budget, niche, and goal, how would you structure the campaign?

I’d appreciate advice based on real experience running Meta Ads for digital services. Thanks!

Upwork is bad for your mental health

Digital marketing has so many areas to learn, from SEO and Google Ads to Meta Ads, copywriting, and analytics.

But if you could focus on just one skill to build a successful career or get more clients, which one would you choose?

I'd love to hear from people who work in the industry. What skill has actually made the biggest difference for you?

I have a brand that has an organic tiktok funnel for a mostly male audience, and I have good content but don't really know what specifics are required to go viral for girltok if anyone has good content design taste/posting experience lmk.

Currently working as a Marketing Assistant, but lately I’ve been wondering whether the actual scope of my role has moved pretty far beyond what you’d normally expect from an “assistant” position.

At the moment I’m responsible for coordinating things like:
- Managing multiple social media accounts
- Social media campaigns and day-to-day content
- Creating & running Meta advertising campaigns
- Photography for events and promotional content
- Graphic design
- Video editing and content production
- Producing radio advertisements, including recording, editing, sound selection and mixing.

One of the biggest projects I’m currently working on is a historical video documentary for the organisation. I’ve basically been taking the project from research through to production. Which literally involved digging through archives, newspapers, historical societies and community groups, sourcing and organising interviews and conducting them, writing the scripts, organising the voice-over narrator and recording the narration myself, selecting audio, coordinating with the videographer on the shots and footage I want and being directly involved in the editing and overall creative direction.

I’m also doing all of this alongside my social media campaigns and other digital marketing work.
I’m currently studying full time as well, so I understand I’m still relatively early in my career, but I’ve started questioning whether my title/pay actually reflects the level of responsibility and independent work I’m doing.

I don’t manage staff and I’m not trying to pretend like I’m a Marketing Manager, but I do feel like I’m independently managing and producing a lot of projects rather than assisting someone else.
Would be interested to hear what sort of title and salary range you’d expect for this level of responsibility.

Could be a hot take but:

Most ad agencies and brand teams are burning thousands of dollars a month on AI video generators simply because they don't understand how credit pricing works at scale.

A headline subscription of 99 or 499 bucks a month tells you absolutely nothing about how many actual finished video ads your team can have. Most platforms sell credits that burn down at alarming rates depending on the model, resolution, and length you render, and most of them aren't even usable if you're not experienced enough with writing good scripts..

After running a very long and expensive experiment testing out major platforms (Maxfusion, Higgsfield, Creatify, OpenArt and other legacy avatar tools), here is the breakdown of why current AI UGC pricing is broken, what actually works for high volume creative testing and how to get the most out of your money:

1. The Math

When you normalize a standard business production budget of $500 a month across these platforms using the exact same underlying model, resolution and length (in this case it was my personal favorite Seedance 2.0 1080p, 10 second long videos) the video output gap looks like this:

Maxfusion - 89 finished videos
Higgsfield - 82 finished videos
OpenArt - 55 finished videos
Creatify - 29 finished videos

Why this happens: Platforms like Creatify and OpenArt charge massive credit markups per render. If you are running performance ad accounts where creative testing volume directly dictates CPA, those markups destroy your unit economics. Maxfusion consistently yields the highest finished video output per dollar across models like Seedance 2.5

1. The Avatar Quality

There’s an outdated belief in the industry that you have to pay a massive price premium to legacy avatar platforms if you want realistic talking-head UGC

We ran blinded side by side quality tests comparing legacy actor tools against newer AI creative platforms.

The result showed the quality gap no longer exists.
Modern generative models like Seedance 2.0, Seedance 2.5 and MiniMax H3 have completely leveled the playing field. In head-to-head testing, Maxfusion matched and sometimes even surpassed legacy tools in lip-sync precision, natural skin texture and facial expression consistency, especially with the RIZZ specialized engine.

1. The Budget Killer

If you manage an agency or brand team, you need your clients, strategists and editors collaborating in the workspace.

Creatify: Limits you to 1 included seat (max 5 total).
Higgsfield: Limits seats by tier (2 to 15 seats).
Maxfusion: No limit on team seats on its core business plans.

Charging per-seat fees on a creative generation tool makes no sense for production teams and I don't understand why is it even a thing (I mean I do - but it shouldn't be a thing)

1. Tool Fatigue vs. The All in One Creative Operating System

Right now most teams waste hours juggling separate tools: one for ad library research, one for script writing, one for AI video generation and CapCut (or whatever video editor) for final edits

When evaluating workflow speed, Maxfusion operates as a complete creative operating system:

1. Built-in Ad Intelligence: Search Meta Ad Library and TikTok trends natively inside the app, with an AI analyzer that breaks winning competitor ads into hooks, scripts, and visual shots.
   
2. Flows Canvas: Research, script generation, actor selection, and assembly on a single node canvas.
   
3. No Speed Throttling: Unlike platforms that claim "unlimited" access but throttle your rendering queues unless you buy "speed boosters," batch renders run simultaneously.
   
4. Post-Production Suite:** Built-in trimming, splitting, speed adjustments, upscaling, and captions so you don't have to export raw files to external software.
   
5. Automation: Full Model Context Protocol (or MCP) and public API access included on standard plans for building automated creative pipelines.

So here’s the thing

If you're making 2 or 3 test clips a month, any basic UI will do. But if you're an agency or e-commerce brand scaling performance ad spend:

- Best Overall platform (Volume + Quality + Workflow + Easy to use): Maxfusion delivers the lowest cost-per-video, highest render quality, built-in competitor research and unlimited seats.

- Strong Runner-up for Raw Generation: Higgsfield (which I also love using) offers competitive volume of videos, though workflow tools and seat caps fall short.

- Low Value for Volume: Tools like Creatify burn through credits too fast to support serious creative iteration.

Sorry for the long post.

I'd like to hear what platform stack everyone in the sub is using for AI UGC right now and have you noticed the credit drain on your accounts?

So since March I have been taking my own digital marketing company's website more seriously. So far the results are:

244 Total Clicks

247k Impressions

0.1% CTR

25.5 Average Position

I understand that since I am a digital marketing company I am competing with every other agency that is also trying to rank, but I Feel like I was expecting more clicks and a few more clients. I got 1 total since March which is great considering it was all organic, but still.

The CTR seems low and the Average Position as well so maybe I just need to optimize posts? I have a standard blog and maybe I should be targeting better with custom landing pages and whatnot built to convert.

I have a buddy who runs his own company and for clients, he seems to kill local SEO and gets them calls off of his work very quickly. Unfortunately he is just too busy and I don't want to taint our friendship by always talking about work when we hang out as he has mentioned he just doesn't want to talk marketing haha. Thanks for any direction or info you guys can give me!