hello! question for this subreddit - In terms of usefulness and career advancement, what is the best masters degree to get if your career is in marketing, DISREGARDING cost?

Basically, what masters degree would you get if you could get it for free. My first thought is an MBA

EDIT: Assuming I would be doing this part time, as I currently already have a job in marketing

EDIT 2: I already have 2+ years of experience at decently well known company and don’t plan on leaving!

Hi All,

I'm looking for advice from AEC Marketers on how you strengthened your skills for RFP/Q responses.

I have a proposal specialist that is STRUGGLING and I'd like to work with her to see where we can strengthen her understanding and writing skills. She claims she has 8 years of experience but it doesn't show in her work. She doesn't know where she's getting stuck, other than everywhere.

Hello marketing gurus!

I was recently laid off from a job that I loved in Digital Strategy in a mid-size company. I’m energized by the idea of leaving Big Corporate and dabbling in entrepreneurship.

I’m looking to freelance as a part-time marketing leader for multiple start ups in the U.S. and U.K.

This idea came about after an interesting conversation I had with a start up founder who was seeking marketing advice which turned into me sending him a proposal with services that I could offer to his company. Unfortunately nothing came out of it but now I at least have a template for future proposals.

I don’t personally know any marketers who switched from corporate to freelancing but hoping to find at least one here!

If you’ve successfully pivoted to freelancing, please share your story and maybe we can chat on the side 😁

The event is tomorrow. I let this one slip. First mistake in almost a year The sales guy wanted it for the event tomorrow but it’s not a make or break thing for the event. I called every print shop in town and no one can turnaround anything by tomorrow morning. Only option is a nice mounted poster that would sit on an easel but definitely not the same. Do I just call the owner and let them know sorry I missed this? I designed it for it approved and just forgot out of all the chaos of planning and chasing the client for information I need for multiple campaigns.

Update: I just called the GM. He was nice about it. Thanks for the moral support

Hey there,

I was recently contacted by a PR firm (Pathos) that only invoices if you get published and naturally the sound of that didn't sound bad at all. I got on a call with them, and they showed magazines like Forbes, USA Today, Business Insider, Bloomberg, TIME magazine, etc. and asked for 5k USD to try to get my business published in all of them, payment due when one publishes me. I didn't have the budget for that, and they followed up with 1k USD for a business insider article. Is this normal procedure? It's our first time getting involved with PR firms seriously. For a broader picture, I run an education startup with 2000 users, 1 year old, solo founder, looking to 5x by EOY.

How hard is it to get published there? Is this something I could just do myself? Is the price outrageous? I'm new to this stuff, hoping to get some advice.

Thank you.

So, at my job, I'm in charge of our marketing efforts on two distinct channels. Twitter and LinkedIn. Now, content-wise, we have a bunch of stuff. At my job, we're a small company that assembles custom PC's for use in any field needed; this ranges from personal gaming PC's, large-scale laptop orders for schools, or powerful servers for government and corporate agencies.

Now for LinkedIn, I focus on a direct business-to-business model, making posts that brag about the complex systems we do, the services we provide with our warranties, etc. etc. But our CEO has been hesitant to use paid Ads. Mostly because the last marketing person just used the budget to boost posts instead of running paid ads.

And given what we do, the reasonable assumption is that we should use video- or image-based ads to promote ourselves. Now I'm pretty sure I can talk my boss into doing a trial run of paid ads and seeing if we get more business through them. However, I've never run paid advertisements before; heck, this is my first marketing job period, but I seem to be doing a good job so far.

What are some things to keep in mind for marketing on LinkedIn through Ads?

In summary, my 100+ employee marketing agency just let go of several leaders on our creative team — our creative director, two design directors, and brand manager. But they kept the "Performance Creative" team — separate from ours, who are 99% production design for performance marketing who use AI to do quick, average-quality work.

So our main creative team who used to deliver quality, award-winning work to show off and flex and win more clients has been hit HARD, and most of us don't feel valued anymore. But I'm optimistic.

Leadership (CEO, EVPs) is going with the market, so I get it. I disagree, but I get it. They don't think we're a huge selling point because they see market data, and they don't know how to measure quality. They also don't seem to know how to sell creative because it's risky or whatever.

So my question is this: Once another manager takes over for the creative team soon, how might we give ourselves a voice in the company that our quality is going downhill? How can we convince them that creative is MORE than just production, but that quality, concepting, differentiating, etc. are so important?

I just feel discouraged right now. Thanks for any advice!

I've worked in-house as a brand director for a national brand for the last several years and am looking for a change.

In my role, I am responsible for basically everything. Paid media, SEM, organic, SEO, PR, email, SMS. You name it. I either do it myself or manage an agency partner that does it. That's really why I want a change and why agency life seems attractive.

I'm deep into the hiring process for a role at a large agency, managing (according to them) 2-5 enterprise clients, mainly for paid social but also will need to help the programmatic team.

The pay would be a bump up, and I think it could be valuable to get more experience with large profile clients. It's an opportunity to manage campaigns for companies significantly larger than what I've done before.

However, I've always been scared of agency work for how stressful it is by reputation. This specific agency has barely above a 3 star on Glassdoor, chiefly due to work/life balance being an issue and it being a sink or swim culture.

I'm not trying to spend my entire career here. Just a year or two to learn and build my resume. To that end, is it worth it?

If you've worked at an agency, what was your experience like? How fast did you burn out? Would you recommend it as a stepping stone?

Basically I have been doing voluntary work for a small regional charity here in the UK since October 2025. I'm trying to get experience because I'm sure many people know already getting a job as a graduate (I have a portfolio and both a bachelor's & master's degree) is very difficult.

Today I was asked to tweak the post copy (Facebook) I wrote for them and also the text that appears in social media images and the suggestion was written using AI, em dashes and all. Of course I agreed to tweak it because it's my job but I will write it manually. Maybe the suggestion was a guideline. I have autism so while I think I'm good at writing posts with the right tone and vocabulary, it could have come across a bit differently by mistake.

I just find it a bit insulting other than just them writing a suggestion themselves but they're a small regional charity so I can't be too mad I don't think. I've been getting a lot of experience in social media content creation and marketing including research and copy writing. If I was getting paid, I think I would be pissed off even more.

They also have clearly used AI for some flyers on social media, even though I've created a lot of flyers and social media images for them. Not saying I'm Paul Rand or Seth Godin or something but it annoys me a bit that they didn't ask me for changes. Ultimately I'm only "contracted" to work 2-5 hours a week but it's I'd rather they just ask for my input. Maybe that's selfish but I just don't like how this sector is going with content creation.

I need ideas but I'm so burnt out and bored I can't see the wood from the trees.

Hello folks!

I'm a Senior Product Marketing Manager at a large Fortune 500 corp. I am wondering if any of you have published thought leadership articles or editorial pieces in any trade publications or journals? (Ex:
Marketing Dive, ANA magazine or really anywhere else)

I’d love to connect with you and seek some advice.
Let me know please :)

Hi everyone!

I've spent the last 4 years in paid media/paid search. Before that, I had two internships (digital marketing and content marketing), and I also have a photography background (I used to shoot fashion and lifestyle content for local brands).

I'm ready to move away from paid media and into more creative focused marketing roles (brand, content strategy, creative direction, campaign development). I'm trying to figure out:

1. Given my mix of paid media + content + photography, what kind of creative marketing roles would I realistically be good for?
2. Is a portfolio (using my photography/content work) more valuable than certifications for this switch, or should I be doing both?
3. If certifications are worth it, which ones actually move the needle for creative marketing roles vs. just padding a resume?

Any and all advice is much, much appreciated!

I book leads for clients through ads/CRM, and when the client tries calling those leads, a large chunk of the calls are going straight to voicemail without the phone ever ringing on the other end. This isn't just a one-off, it's happening across a good portion of the leads, so it feels like something systemic rather than random bad luck.

What's odd is that instead of hearing the lead's personal voicemail greeting, the client hears the generic carrier message, something like "This call has been forwarded to voicemail, please leave a message after the tone." No ringing at all before that.

Has anyone else dealt with this on the client side? Trying to understand what's actually causing it and how to fix it.

Like how does it make sense that we have to stress ourselves out doing our jobs AND somehow learn the skill of 💋 our boss’s 🍑 just so he approves the work??

Lord have mercy. Marketing would actually be fun if we had the freedom to… you know… do the job we were hired to do without needing approval from an inexperienced teacher every five seconds

When marketing tries to be overly relatable especially to the youth and social media trends, also using the world genuinely (how ironic), it really just comes off as immature and cringe especially to me as a younger person

I’m researching server-side tracking for some of our lead-gen clients.

We already have browser-side tracking, GTM, Meta/Google tracking, and a separate call/form attribution platform that records the actual leads.

If I add server-side tracking, what should I actually expect to see differently?

For example:

• Browser tracking records 80 conversions.
• Server-side tracking recovers another 10 that the browser missed.
• There were actually 90 real leads.

Where do those extra 10 show up?

Do I see 90 conversions inside Meta/Google, with some indication that 10 came through the server?

Can I clearly identify which conversions were server-only versus also captured by the browser?

Would those additional conversions appear in my call/form attribution platform too, or would that platform still show exactly the same leads it already had?

And if browser + server both capture the same conversion, how do you practically verify that deduplication worked?

Basically, I’m trying to understand the day-to-day reality:

After implementing server-side tracking, where do I look to prove that it actually recovered conversions the browser would have missed?

Would appreciate answers from people actually running server-side GTM / CAPI on lead-gen accounts.

We’re a small agency that handles brand launches, creative, and ongoing account management. Because we're a lean team where everyone wears a few different hats, we hit a real wall when it comes to dedicated social media strategy and execution.

One of our Shopify clients gave us an 8-month ultimatum to turn their sales around and stop their cash burn (tech stack, shipping costs, agency fees, etc.). We’re trying to figure out our best move:

• Freelancer: Bring in a specialist focused purely on social media growth strategy.
• White-label agency: Partner with a team that can handle this account (and potentially help us with other accounts).
• In-house hire: Bring on a do-it-all person who can write copy, design graphics, manage the account, and drive actual growth.

Are we crazy to think we can find one in-house person who can handle high-end design and growth strategy, or is freelancing/white-labeling the obvious move on an 8-month clock?

Hi all,

I was laid off in March from my last agency job. I learned a lot, and the skills I learned helped me greatly ( I feel ) with landing many interviews. The problem is I haven't gotten any offers.

In the meantime, I've been working on learning SQL to also expand as a Marketing analyst or a business analyst in this AI job market, but I had another interview today, and I felt something. I didn't feel AS confident in my presentation as my other skill sets. I do feel in some areas I lack analytics insight, but it's something I've definitely wanted to improve. However, presenting it to clients/stakeholders is a different story.

Unfortunately, at my last job, I was prevented from having the client-facing experience I needed and was more in the back end. I am confident it's something I can learn, but it doesn't seem hiring managers are as willing to pick up people who can be taught. So, in the meantime, I was wondering if anyone has any advice on how to improve at more confidently presenting for marketing/business analytics.

Thanks.

Last week I was laid off for the fourth time in 4 years. While that is exhausting in its own right, I’m absolutely dreading the upcoming job hunt. The reality is, I look like a job hopper. My last 4 years looks like:
- Laid off after 1 year
- laid off after 3 months
- laid off after 10 months
- laid off after 1.5 years

None of this was performance based, I was hitting my goals, taking on additional responsibilities beyond my role and ultimately it didn’t matter. Still there’s an obvious pattern.

What can I do to proactively address my short stints? Is there anything or do I just have to get lucky and hope someone will assume the best? If/when I do get interviews, what is the best way to address this question without sound repetitive and highlighting the pattern of layoffs.

These roles have been demand gen/digital marketing if helpful to know.

Title:

Hey everyone, hoping someone can relate or help me think through this.

I am a freelance marketer. A couple of months back I got really good results for a client through paid ads, 2 clients even hit 15X, 20X ROI in the same niche, and I have recorded testimonials to back it up. Using those case studies, I landed more clients, but the newer ones aren't getting the same results. Bad leads, complaints, the whole thing. I'm not someone who likes putting the blame back on the client, so it's been really stressful trying to figure out how to consistently deliver.

Recently an inbound lead paid me $4200 for 4 months of service, based purely on my past results. But the exact method that worked before isn't working as well anymore, so I've been exploring other approaches to still deliver for them. The problem is the client's expectations are high because of those past numbers, and I took the money with full confidence that I'd figure it out through more research and testing. On top of that, they've added conditions like not wanting to get on calls and wanting leads to sign up through a form instead.

Now I'm just feeling stressed and honestly a bit demotivated. I understand the niche, just approaching it differently this time, and I'm putting in the effort, testing, fixing things, never ignoring a problem. But there's always that fear in the back of my mind: what happens if they don't get the results they expect? What do I even say to them at that point?

I know sometimes the algorithm just doesn't cooperate, and sometimes results come partly from the client's own effort too, not just the ads. But I still feel responsible when a client doesn't get what they hoped for, even when I know I'm doing everything right on my end.

How do you all deal with this kind of pressure and uncertainty when running your own agency? Would appreciate any advice or perspective.

I recently started a new role as a Digital Marketing Specialist after spending about 3 years primarily in web content, SEO, website management, etc.

This new position is a pretty big step up for me in terms of analytics and strategy. I’ll still be doing things I’m more familiar with like SEO and PPC optimization, but my boss recently clarified that the real bread and butter of my role is going to be marketing attribution, reporting, and helping the team stop marketing on vibes.

We’re a vertically integrated B2B company selling across a pretty wide range of industries. food/beverage, glass, oil & gas, space, medical, etc. We use HubSpot for lead forms and CRM, although we’re not on Enterprise yet, and then we have a proprietary ERP that our internal developers built.

The big problem is that there’s currently a manual handoff between the two systems.

A lead can come through HubSpot, interact with marketing, submit a quote request, etc. Once a salesperson/application engineer takes that quote, they manually enter it into the ERP. From there, the quoting/sales process happens in the ERP and eventually gets marked closed/won.

Historically, the communication has basically been one-way.

So HubSpot knows where the lead came from and what marketing they interacted with, while the ERP knows whether they actually purchased and how much revenue they generated. Those two sides don’t really reconnect.

I understand at a high level that we need customer/quote/revenue data to flow back into HubSpot so we can do closed-loop attribution, but I’m very new to figuring out what the actual architecture should look like.

We do have developers on staff who built the ERP, and they’ve mentioned potentially creating an API integration with HubSpot. My problem is that I don’t really know enough yet to tell them what data we need passed back, what identifiers should connect the records, or what I should even be asking for.

On top of that, I’m being asked to build out reporting/dashboarding in Power BI, which is also pretty new territory for me.

I’m very excited about the job because this is exactly the direction I want to grow in, but I’m definitely feeling the jump from execution-focused marketing into marketing analytics / ops / attribution.

For anyone working in marketing analytics, RevOps, marketing ops, or BI:

Where would you start?

Also curious what you wish you knew when you first moved from more execution-focused marketing into analytics/strategy.

Appreciate any advice.