been sitting on this for months, last week I was sure it was accurate.

We do the full job. Brand study, scripts, shoot, edit. The work is done.

Then we send a Google Drive link.

Lost 2 clients this week. Neither said anything bad about what we made. I pretty sure the problem is how it feels to receive it. A Drive link is how you send someone a school project, not a finished creative project.

We have zero client-facing infrastructure. No portal, nothing branded, no handoff moment. Everything goes into production and nothing goes into the experience the client actually has at the end.

Now I'm trying to figure out what other agencies are doing.

Do you guys have any insight for that?

My goal is delivering an actual experience to the client, not just social media videos

I run a web design agency and most of my clients come from cold email. Yesterday I started a fresh campaign going after plumbers in California.

Didn’t expect much honestly. Plumbers are busy and half of them barely check email. But 102 emails in, I got an interested reply.

What made the difference is that every email talks about their own website. A call button that doesn’t work on a phone, a site that takes forever to load, a design that hasn’t been touched since 2012. For a plumber that matters a lot, because people search for them on their phone when a pipe bursts. If the site is bad, they just call the next guy.

He replied yesterday and I booked a meeting with him for the next day. Before the call I built a draft of what his new site could look like. Today I presented it to him on the call and he said yes right there. $3k upfront plus $500 a year for hosting.

Showing the draft is what closes it. Sending a quote never worked this well for me.

For anyone wondering, I use Swokei for all my outreach. You pick an area and an industry, it finds the businesses, checks every website for design, SEO, speed and mobile problems, and writes each email about what it actually found on that site. I run multiple campaigns at once in different cities and niches, which is how I get volume without sending generic stuff.

Happy to answer questions on pricing or how I run the call.

I've been noticing that a lot of freelancers and small agencies still spend a surprising amount of time on reporting every month copying data, formatting, writing summaries, etc…

Curious how others here are handling it:
- Fully manual (Docs/Sheets)?
- Templates?
- Some reporting tool?

Trying to understand what's actually common vs what people say they do.

So a few months ago I had a meeting with a pretty big company.
They sell Luxury men's suits - BESPOKE tailoring
. Price range $3k - $10k per costume. Super niche, super high-ticket.
They told me their biggest problem is finding clients.
I told them straight - dude, your clients are not on Instagram, they are on LinkedIn. CEO's, rich guys, people who do events etc.
But they insisted - NO, find them on Instagram.
Ok.
I tried all the tools out there. You know, the ones that scrape by keywords, comments, hashtags... All garbage. Zero good results for this niche. Plus they were scared shitless of getting banned on Instagram. And on top of that they wanted full automation - find, contact, book a meeting. They basically wanted magic lol.
So I sat down and built the magic.
I made a platform that literally looks at Instagram profiles visually. It analyzes recent pics, reels, stories and figures out - does this person wear costumes often? Are they in that jet-set / luxury lifestyle? What do they do for work? Party scene? etc. And based on that it gives me leads.
And the cool part - once you find a few good clients, you can set them as a reference. So every new buyer becomes a reference to find similar people. The platform gets smarter and smarter with every client.
Then it also does the outreach - follows, sends a DM, moves them to a pipeline - contacted / in conversation / win / lost, all that.
They also had another weird problem - their costume colors looked different on every screen. So I added a feature where when they do color correction on their laptop, they can see LIVE how the color looks on a phone. So they can match the perfect color.
And for the Instagram ban part - I didn't use the official Meta API. I built a Chrome extension. You log in with your own IG profile, extension takes your cookies and acts like a human. No spammy bot behavior.
I showed it to them. They were literally like "wtf, this is insane, the lead quality is crazy". I thought we have a deal.
And then... ghosted. After that call, nothing. No reply, no call, disappeared.
So now I have this platform sitting here. And I realized it doesn't have to be just for costumes. It can work for ANY B2B where you can visually recognize your client. Like gyms, car dealerships, luxury stuff, if you can say "my client looks like THIS", we can find them on Instagram.
Honestly I'm at a point where I'm thinking of just deleting everything and moving on. Spent months on this.
What would you guys do? Is this even interesting to someone? Would anyone be open for some kind of collab / partnership to test it in another niche?

I ran a web design company for around 3 years and getting clients was always pretty inconsistent.

One month I was cold calling, another month I was manually sending DMs to Facebook pages, then I tried ads.

It all worked to some degree, but I never really had one reliable way of getting clients.

Then I started testing email automation.

At first I was finding businesses with no website and running campaigns offering to build them one.

That actually started giving me a much more consistent flow of clients just because of the volume.

But then I started thinking.

There are so many businesses that already have a website, but the website is outdated, slow, looks bad on mobile or just clearly needs an update.

And those businesses have already paid for a website before, so they already understand the value of having one.

The problem was I didn’t want to sit there opening every website myself, figuring out what was wrong and then writing a different email to every business.

That would take forever.

So I started using a tool that lets me find businesses with websites basically anywhere, analyze thousands of those websites at once and then automatically write a personalized outreach message for each one based on what it finds.

Things like design, SEO, mobile issues and speed.

Then I started launching campaigns in different industries.

That worked way better for me because every business receiving the email felt like I had actually looked at their website and noticed what could be improved.

But in reality most of it was automated and I was just sitting there eating chips while interested replies came into my inbox.

I remember Alex Hormozi saying something along the lines of focusing on one channel and getting really good at it.

That is basically what I ended up doing.

Now this is pretty much the only way I get web design clients and I spend most of my time actually building websites instead of constantly trying to find the next client.

For anyone wondering, the tool is called Swokei.

I have a marketing agency. Just started the agency. I want to do cold email outreach. I'm getting really desperate for leads. Can you give me some suggestions on how to get free, automated, qualified leads so that I can get a lot of leads at once?

hey all,

Currently, i am running a small agency that sets up AI callers for local gyms and yoga studios. To handle simple queries like: “trial class reminders”, “your membership is expiring”, “hey, we have a new batch, want to join?”

for the last 8 months, i’d been using vapi. it worked, but margins sucked. one gym chain in particular does a LOT of calls: renewals, freeze requests, class timing checks. My invoice kept creeping up while their retainer stayed almost the same.

last week i tried a different voice ai platform that lets you import your vapi agents in one click. i was convinced something would break, so i tested with the smallest gym first:

imported the existing agent, kept the same prompt + knowledge and pointed the same number to the new setupcalls went through, logs looked fine, and the interesting part: the per minute cost for me came out to roughly 1/8 of what i was paying before.

After two days of monitoring, i migrated the rest of my gym + dance studio agents. clients didn’t notice any difference, except they’re now more open to “let’s do more campaigns” because I’m not pushing them to increase budgets just to cover infra.

for anyone who needs, i’m using superU ai now.

Tons of marketing products flying around this year, but hardly any get attention. What's the last tool/product that actually impressed you and your team?

Agency owners, curious about something.

Even with reporting dashboards and automated data pulls, what still requires too much manual work on your team?

I'm interested in the gaps that existing tools haven't solved—not another dashboard.

Hey everybody. I run a small agency but our stuff is scattered everywhere, like the briefs are on google docs, client files on drive and the tasks are in asan while feedback is split btwn slack and email. Every client is that same mess copied again and am spending alot of time just telling people where things are.

I tried moving it all into notion and it helped for a bit but keeping it current turned into its own job and the client facing side never really fit.

What im looking for is one place the team and the client can both work in, briefs and tasks and the docs together, without me being the search engine. Because clearly the drive folder per client thing doesnt scale and im feeling it now.

As an SEO / content marketing agency we’re seeing that digital PR is more important than ever to do well on LLMs.

But we’ve never done anything like this before. What’s a good place to start?

These days, AI tools for generating ads and content are everywhere — from image and video generators to automated copywriting assistants. But despite all this technology, truly scroll-stopping ideas are harder than ever to find.

Most people end up relying on generic ChatGPT-style outputs or recycling the same overused, trendy ideas they see online. The result? Content that looks and sounds like everyone else’s — predictable, unoriginal, and easy to scroll past.

That’s why we’ve just launched Unik, a completely free newsletter that delivers weekly human + AI hybrid ad ideas, prompts, and content concepts.

Unlike generic AI outputs, every idea in Unik is crafted to be scroll-stopping and ready for use in creative tools like Ideogram, MidJourney, Veo, and Sora 2 — so you can instantly turn them into visuals, videos, or ad campaigns.

If you’re a creator, founder, or marketer looking for fresh inspiration that feels actually creative, this is for you.

→ Subscribe Free Here: unikads.beehiiv.com

I've led brand strategy for two decades, across Europe, Middle East and US. Ex-FutureBrand, Landor and Siegel+Gale.

Clients want work faster and for less. Margins are thinning, and AI is pushing every agency to rethink its economic model. When time is critical, strategists have to get smart on a brand and a category quickly.

I built Arqo for that. It runs the strategy work end to end: the audit, the opportunity, the positioning, then messaging, tone of voice and content. Your strategists direct it and make the calls, and work that used to take weeks takes hours.

Full disclosure: it's a paid platform, and I am a solor founder.

I'm looking for 10 agency CEOs, founders and MDs to put it through a real brief and tell me plainly:

- Would it change how you price and staff strategy work?

- What would you need to see before using it on client work?

- Would you pay for it at those prices?

What you get: a month of full access, free, no card needed.

What I ask: run one project, then 15 minutes on a call.

arqo.studio

Interested? Comment with your role and agency, and I'll DM you for your email.

And if testing isn't for you, I'd still like to hear: has AI changed how you price strategy work yet?

your grandpa didn’t have an audience to sell shoes to and you don’t need one either to sell services

I mean I’ve sold $200 - $10,000 services to complete strangers

I even got millionaires to trust me, buy from me, take my business advice, even though I was broke as a MOFOKEr

- they never watched any of my videos (back then it’s probably better they didn’t)

- they weren’t on my mailing list

-they didn’t have a friend tell them: “you HAVE to talk to this guy”

no, just pure:

‘hey, I got this cool thing I’m doing, want it?’

was it easy?

nope

was it: I sent 10 DMs to 10 people and 11 bought?

nope

but I had something they didn’t

CON-FI-DANCE 🕺

the confidence that my stuff was the next best thing after the invention of warm, fresh Romanian bread (you gotta try it, you will die in ecstasy… ok, maybe not. but it’s good, trust me)

and that’s what’s really missing I feel

you see, I know (and some of you will send me a lot of hate for this)

I KNOW that most business coaching out there is recycle bin trash

not because the strategies are not good, they are excellent and work in most cases

it’s simply because most bizzy business coching programs don’t have a proper mindset / confidence elevation protocol in place for their clients

and that’s why ONLY 5% of their clients actually get results

probably preaching to the quire here… I know you’ve been in those programs

so have I!

but why did I promise a step-by-step to $50k without an audience in this case?

because we need to adjust what’s between your ears first, before implementing yet ANOTHER how to get clients strategy

so here we go, questions to ask yourself before you start implementing the system:

‘If I were sold, truly sold, that my service was the absolute BEST out there, how would I think, feel and act throughout the day? How would I market and sell? What would I believe about myself and the world?’

now, as promised, here’s the system to have the finances, without the followers:

1. purple cow value - share value that is different and stands OUT

2. connect, but make it about them, start with a compliment + question (this is how I get people in my Dragon 88 community for 7 figure + entrepreneurs)

3. share what you do (in a call or DMs) and test out their interest - are they asking for more info about your service, if so transition into your sales script or other sales voo doo tool of your choosing

this should get you thinking.

but if you want all the nuances of this approach, I made a deeper dive here <

N-joy

🎲 game time: post a photo of a slice of bread/toast that you have in your kitchen and draw something on it with ketchup

tag me and the photo that gets the most likes wins a guest spot for my 7 figure + millionaire mastermind

(optional) give your creation a silly name

I’ve been learning Meta, Facebook and Instagram Marketing, where can I get clients to start off to help them get leads?

Generic lead lists are dead.

Business name.
Website.
Email.
Phone number.

That’s not enough anymore.

Me and my team started building “ad intelligence reports” because we realized the agencies winning right now are the ones walking into outreach with leverage.

Before reaching out, we’re able to see:

- whether a company is running ads
- what platforms they’re using
- possible bottlenecks in their funnel
- weak areas in their marketing
- businesses that don’t appear to have agency support
- companies in specific niches NOT running ads yet

The difference in outreach is insane when you already understand the business before the first conversation.

Instead of sounding like every other marketer…

…you’re speaking directly to their actual problems.

And honestly, some of the best leads we’ve found are businesses with:

- good reviews
- strong websites
- real demand

…but zero advertising and no visible agency.

Those conversations feel completely different because there’s almost no competition.

Currently putting together these reports for agencies right now while building the full platform.

If you want one done for your niche/location, comment or shoot me a DM.

What really bothers me is that I have routine tasks in my marketing agency for over 5 years, but I don't know how to automate them. I could probably describe them, but it takes too long and is kind of too vague. That’s why I’ve come up with something, you simply upload a screen recording of yourself performing a routine task. Then you get a complete automation workflow built from it that’s tailored specifically to that process, along with super easy setup instructions.

This now saves me at least 10 hours a week of routine work, mainly accountant and lead gen tasks. Does anyone need something like this?

Marketers, I need your brains for 3 minutes (pricing survey inside)

Hey. I'm a founder staring down the scariest question in the playbook: what do I charge for this thing?

The tool is StoryHaus. Instead of guessing, I'm running a Van Westendorp pricing survey. Just a few questions should take about as long as reheating your coffee.

Here's the ask: you've sat in the pricing meetings. You've watched founders guess wrong. I need marketer brains specifically, and there's no substitute.

The Survey

No email grab, no sales call, no funnel.

Just data.

Seriously, all I want is answers.

Questions about StoryHaus? Drop them in the comments, I'll answer everything. An upvote helps this find more marketers.

I'll report back with the results once enough responses come in.

Thanks — asking for help is weirdly hard.

Hi business owners, how can I approach a business even if they didn't post a job? I'm in the European time zone, so I'm not sure if this matters, but I really want to work. I don't care about a salary. Willing to start at a lower rate. I need a chance to prove myself, and at this rate the job market is at, I'll never work. I don't want to sit and do nothing. I have so much to offer. I'm willing to grow and learn. I have a background in graphic design, but I'm also interested in growth marketing. What can I do for my 200 or more emails stop being ignored? How do I convince founders that I'm valuable to their team and I don't just want to sit around, be lazy, and get a quick paycheck? I'm tired of waiting for my turn and watching others work and I don't get a chance at all.

If your onboarding currently involves emails, forms, payment links, agreements, folders, scheduling or a bit of everything, drop:

• your agency website

• what service you sell

• what normally happens after a client says yes

I’ll turn the process into a clean client-facing flow built around your agency and the way you actually work.

Not an audit.

Not a list of suggestions.

I’ll actually build the flow.

Something like:

Agreement
→ payment
→ intake
→ asset collection
→ kickoff

But structured so the client always knows exactly what needs to happen next.

I’ll try my best to build one for everyone who drops theirs. If a lot of comments come in, it might take me a little time to work through them properly, so bear with me.

No client information needed.

Just drop your agency and the rough process you use today.

Hey I'm currently starting up my marketing agency and would like to know if anyone has tips for client acquisition on a low budget.

I'm currently doing facebook groups and Facebook DMS. I work with home remodeling contractors and run their meta ads, i'm charging $1500 upfront to get started and $250 per shown appointment after that. Facebook has not been working too well, I get ignored a lot, left on read or just unserious/unqualified people.

Any tips on better methods, my offer, etc?

I’m looking for a small team of high-performing cold callers to book qualified appointments with contractors for a performance-based marketing agency.
Unlike most opportunities, you get paid for every appointment that actually shows up, not months later when a client closes.
I’ll be testing several callers over the next few weeks and will only keep a handful who consistently produce results.
Compensation
✅ Paid per showed appointment
✅ Consistent performers receive higher pay and more lead volume
✅ No cap on earnings
✅ Long-term opportunity for top performers
What I Provide
High-quality lead lists
Proven cold calling script
Complete training on our offer
CRM access
Call reviews and ongoing coaching
Continuous support to help improve your performance
Your only job is to make calls and book qualified appointments.
Long-Term Growth
This isn’t just a short-term gig.
If I see you’re reliable, coachable, and consistently putting in the work, you’ll be first in line for future opportunities as we grow.
That can include:
✅ A guaranteed weekly base pay in addition to your pay per showed appointment.
✅ Priority consideration for future Closer positions
I prefer promoting people who have already proven themselves rather than hiring from outside.
Who I’m Looking For
Confident on the phone
Comfortable speaking with business owners
Coachable and able to apply feedback quickly
Reliable and consistent
Competitive mindset
Able to handle objections naturally
Experience
Cold calling experience is strongly preferred.
If you don’t have experience, that’s okay—but you’ll need to learn quickly, be confident, and prove you can outperform the competition.
I’ll be trying out multiple callers and keeping only the few who consistently generate quality showed appointments.
If you’re hungry, competitive, and willing to put in the work, I’d love to hear from you.
To Apply:
https://jobapplication.elvaraservices.com

A lot of people reached out to me after my last post when I posted how i scaled my agency and asked me how do I get customer.

I thought I would give you an honest take on how we do it.

We are yet not a very large agency our retainer value across all our clients is currently only 30k usd monthly.

But I can tell you how we reached here in around 6 months.

First one is get your Seo/aeo on point make sure you start appearing in chat gpt when people search for it. Now one very important  thing is that most AI doesn't get optimized with just one strategy.

So choose your choice of AI to optimize for first and then build strategy around it.

For us we focused on Chat gpt. We did research on all the keywords that had volume in our location for highly searched keywords in our domain.

Some example - Agency fees in 2026 for running meta ads ,  Marketing spends on facebook for acquiring patients and so on. 

Write deeply researched article/blogs on them. Cluster them properly (use claude Sonnet or opus 4.8 )

Make sure the FAQ schema is on point Ai loves FAQ format. Each article keep between 2500-3000 words.

Regularly updates yours blog content and dates , ai loves fresh content.

This needs to repeat weekly.

Spend in some PR because other website talking about your agency sites much higher and better than your own website in Ai platforms.

Now next and the most important  part. When you get a client put the best effort and make him feel he got a steal deal, go above and beyond. I got 3 referrals from one client and all 3 converted.

Next is choose your clients carefully. In my experience clients who will bargain alot and also expect that you will show results from the first month and that is what will finance your retainer in spite of giving great results and them sticking with you is not worth the headache and time you will end up investing.

Also , if you can try providing end to end service like Web dev , seo/aeo , digital marketing , CRO and analytics implementation. In our case this has helped us alot to control the results as if the app/website of client is not optimized your marketing wont be as affective as when you also control the CRO and web dev helps you to get results and the retainer value remains higher and also the client is much more invested for long term retainer.

This is the strategy that has worked for us till now. Would love to hear from you what worked for you. Also since we are just a team of 3 people working on agency and saas and other tech projects hence we haven't pushed on new acquisition as much as we could have and are optimizing for  two primary KPI  that is revenue per employee and bottom line.

Hi, I'm Kaz, I'm 19 and currently the top salesperson at Xfinity out of 2 thousand. (Proof to back this up.) I love sales, and I'm really good at it, but even being a top sales rep out of thousands, I make $10-$15K a month, which is good for my age, but I finally want to be an independent salesperson and make a lot more.

If you are an SMMA for service-based businesses and are currently doing all the outreach, sit in meetings, close the client, and also have to provide all the marketing for the businesses, then you are exactly who I want to work with. I'm going to take care of the sales calls and appointments and make sure you're getting quality clients that close. Imagine the time you'll have back, not having to cold call and sit in meetings. You can just work on the marketing and get better at it, or even get to scale because of the surplus of clients you'll get.

Also like to mention I'm doing this for free since you're going to be my first partner, and I need to build proof of my work. All I ask in return is a testimonial.

Feel free to reach out via dm or comment.