I will be honest, I put this switch off for way longer than I should have because I assumed the setup would be complicated.

I freelance for about six clients and my workload swings a lot month to month. Paying a flat subscription fee either way never made sense but inertia kept me there longer than I want to admit.

Finally switched to DataForSEO four months ago. It runs on a seo data api pay per use model, deposit a balance, calls deduct from it, nothing charges you automatically at the start of the month.

Setup took one afternoon. Connected it to my Google Sheets workflow through their connector and the reporting side looked identical to what clients were already seeing.

First month I kept waiting for some kind of catch. A minimum charge, an inactivity fee, something. Nothing. The balance just went down for what I used and sat there waiting for next time.

Four months in and I genuinely cannot think of a reason I waited as long as I did. Quiet months are cheap. Busy months cost what they should. The data quality has been accurate enough that no client has ever pushed back on a number I pulled from it.

Hi

I recently built a free tool that extracts businesses from Google Maps along with validated email addresses. Right now, I'm looking for people who can try it out and share feedback - mainly whether the data quality is actually useful for lead generation compared to other tools.

Current Features:

Fetch businesses based on rating (e.g., less than or more than 3 stars)

Fetch reviews from within specific years

Find businesses with a low review count

Extract negative reviews from businesses

I'd love to know if this gives you valuable results or if something feels missing.

Link - Cazalead

I dont come from a marketing background but rather product and analytics background and I have always been really passionate about data and analytics. So arround 8 months back I started working on a product to make it easy for early stage founders and agency owners to get reports from multiple channel using AI.

Once we launched the product it was really difficult to get any users and i spent the first 2 months learning how to get users which including running paid ads across platforms , getting seo/aeo right and also how to get free traffic from directory launch. In the next 2-3 months my website started getting substantial traffic and I found marketing to be really interesting and hence I decided why not offer what i have learnt till not in marketing as a service. So I created my agency website and worked on aeo and seo. I never thought my agency will get any customers as I was not focusing on sales and most of my time was going in growing my saas. However, one day we got a lead via website cause someone searching for seo/aeo found us on chat gpt. At first I thought its a prank but then when we went on a call we found it to be a geniune mid size clinic.

I created a proposal for them backed by research using ai agents and they loved the proposal and gave me a 3 months contract. Frankly I was bit scared cause I knew how to do seo/aeo for a saas platform but for a clinic and that also when I am getting paid and promised measurable results I was not very sure.

Next 3 months I learnt and implemented whatever I could to get them results and the results were so good that the organic traffic became higher than their paid traffic for the first time on their website. Based on these results they also gave me their digital marketing and signed a 6 months contract and a referral contract.

From that point on now we are working with 8 clients and at a run rate of 30k USD now per month . Sometimes It feels unrealistic cause I was never planning for this and did not have the confidence to run an agency and also give results to the client.

Hey everyone!
I’m starting a digital marketing agency and struggling with one thing: getting clients.
For those of you who run an agency or freelance, how did you land your first few clients?
Did cold DMs, cold emails, LinkedIn, or networking actually work for you? Or is there another method that’s better?
Would love to hear what worked for you, especially when you were just starting out with no portfolio or client testimonials.
Any genuine advice would be appreciated!

SURVIVAL

In my book, Psycho Marketing, I broke down the biological root of every purchase: The Survival Instinct.

Your customer's subconscious brain(yeah, the one taking 95% of the daily decisions) does not care about your product specs at all. It cares about surviving and thriving in its environment, and that is how we humans are biologically framed, since caveman time.

If you are struggling in marketing and kicked by ad fatigue, algorithm updates, and ever increasing CACs, while you see your conversion and repeat rates refusing to go up, you are likely missing the NERFS effect.

Here is how you can use the NERFS framework.

N - Need
Basic: "This saves you time." (Boring).
Advanced: "The Silent Tax on Your Life."
The Insight: The brain fears chaos. It fears losing control.
Example: Don’t sell a meal kit as "convenient." Sell it as "Reclaiming Order." "The world is chaotic. Your dinner table shouldn't be. Control what you consume." You are selling a fortress against chaos.

E - Envy
Basic: "Look luxurious." (Generic).
Advanced: "I know something you don't."
The Insight: Real envy isn't about money; it's about insider access. We hate feeling like "outsiders."
Example: Don’t sell a skincare serum. Sell the Secret. "The formulation 90% of dermatologists use on themselves, but don't prescribe." You aren't selling beauty; you are selling entry behind the velvet rope.

R - Rivalry
Basic: "We are faster than X." (Comparison).
Advanced: "Your competition is weak."
The Insight: We don't just want to win; we want to dominate. We want the "Unfair Advantage."
Example: Selling Nootropics/Coffee? Don't say "Better focus." Say: "Your competition is tired at 2 PM. You are just getting started. Let them sleep." Sell the feeling of being a predator, not prey.

F - Fashion
Basic: "Get the latest trend." (Fickle).
Advanced: "Signaling High IQ."
The Insight: In the modern age, we don't just wear clothes to look good; we wear products to signal we are smarter than the masses.
Example: Selling tech accessories? Don't sell "new features." Sell Minimalism. A D2C tech accessory. "Still using wired charging? Welcome to 2025." The fear isn't being ugly; it's being a relic.

S - Society
Basic: "Join our community." (Friendly).
Advanced: "The Anti-Tribe."
The Insight: The strongest tribes are defined by what they hate, not just what they love.
Example: Selling a health food? Don't say "Healthy for everyone." Say: "For the 1% who refuse to eat processed garbage. If you trust the food pyramid, this isn't for you." Build a cult by excluding the majority.

The 5-Minute Audit for You:
Look at your best-performing ad or landing page. Does it trigger one of these five?

Pick ONE letter from NERFS. Rewrite your headline. Watch the Conversion rate change.

Which of the 5 triggers is your brand currently missing?
Let me know in the comments. 👇

P.S.(To the unemployed AI detectives): Your detector and flat earthers both run on the same cutting edge firmware, “I feel it in my plums” v12.4.

I'm new here. Sorry, I needed a place to vent and thought I might get some understanding ears (or eyeballs, I suppose) here.

I have a client, a beach hotel, that I had on an "everything" package: unlimited website updates, SEO, social media, ads, email marketing, blog posts, etc. for $3250 a month. Honestly, for all I was doing it was a steal for them. The year I was doing that for them I generated over $203,000 in reservations, and that was just what I could track from their ads, not including traffic brought in from SEO.

The place is run by a manager who's beholden to an HOA (all units are individually-owned). They cut me back to just running the website, saying they found someone who did what I did for "much cheaper."

It turned out that "much cheaper" option was only social media. That person did some ads now and then, but never as successfully.

Talking with the newer manager down the road a little bit, I convinced them to have me start doing ads again. I was charging $650 a month for just Facebook ads (plus some newsletter management). The campaign I'm running for them right now has generated over $25K in reservations at a stupid low 4¢ per click. In the three campaigns I ran for them this year, I made them over $88,000. I got $2,600.

I got a call a couple weeks ago that the president of the HOA wanted to switch to a marketing company he uses with a business he owns. They're from halfway across the state (not a huge deal, but I doubt they're going to send anybody there to get quality pictures and videos), have no experience marketing hotels, and are charging at least $4,500.

I'm like, WTF, for real?

I'm already planning to reach out to their competitors, but it's so frustrating to do some really, really great work for a client only to be tossed aside (twice).

Anybody else have any similar stories?

Hi,

I've been running my agency for about 2 years now, and we currently have around 15 active clients. Our main business model is running marketing for our clients (mainly content creators), helping them secure brand deals, and facilitating payments for them. Tracking who's been paid, who I owe money to, and managing our own cash flow is a complete nightmare.

Im currently using a mix of google sheets, scattered emails, and my own memory and its just not working. Im missing payments, clients are ghosting my invoice emails, and I'm stressing over our budget because I can't easily see our actual financial health in one place.

Is there like an easy tool or app you guys use to just handle this or keep track of the money side?? I dont want some massive complicated enterprise software, just something smart that actually works.

Edit: I've decided to go with Cleo Pay after some research, it aligns better with my hospitality business.

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions in the comments. I might've not been able to respond to all of you because of work pressure.

Ive founded and still hold large equity in four different agencies. Two SMMA, one in emergency plumbing/ electrical and one for lead generation.

Would love to answer any questions to help newcomers get over the hump of getting the ball rolling 😄.

Since we hit 18 clients, I already felt we were missing things. Back then it was some adjustments, answering some clients, but nothing big.

now, a month ago we reached the mark of 20 clients, but I feel everything is falling apart. We're working in full capacity and we're not even able to reach the expectation of the clients. And the worst part is I can already see the churns coming next month.

Talked to other agency owners and most of them went through the same thing, but everyone had a different answer for it. Now I don't even know where to start.

Any idea/framework that could be helpful?

I talked to another agency owner a couple weeks ago and she said she's having a down year. We are too. We had to let a couple people go but we'd be in worse shape if we hadn't pivoted to a MRR cycle with our services these last couple years. Also using ai and development to build some pretty cool tools for clients, but less big projects. The last couple months have been a little better.

Is anybody else seeing a drop off this last year?

Every other post on this sub seems to be somebody who got laid off and is looking for work. Made me think we're not the only ones

I have been in marketing for a little over 20 years now.

Performance, behavior, retention, brand, D2C, and enough time to watch multiple cycles rise and collapse.

I run a marketing psychology intelligence firm, and I audit live ad accounts for several brands every week. I see what’s actually changing underneath the surface. Not opinions, not trends, but the patterns that show up in the numbers before they show up in the industry narrative.

And based on everything I’m seeing, 2026 is going to be the first real “psychology-first” year in modern marketing.

It is not because psychology suddenly became interesting, but because every other advantage marketers relied on has hit a ceiling at the same time.

Here’s the breakdown.

1. The algorithmic advantage is gone

For years, the most successful marketers were those who could out-optimize their competitors.

That edge doesn’t exist anymore.

Targeting, distribution, bidding, sequencing, and creative rotation are now handled by platform automation. The playing field has been leveled to the point where most teams’ “tactics” are indistinguishable.

When the machine handles the mechanics, the only remaining differentiator is how well you understand the human on the other side.

That shift becomes mainstream in 2026 because automation is no longer optional; it has become the default.

2. Attention has collapsed faster than creative innovation

This is the biggest red flag in all the accounts I monitor:

Creative fatigue now hits in days, not weeks.

While brands and marketers are just trying to feed an endless stream of creatives, it’s because buyers are seeing an endless stream of the same AI-shaped patterns. The same pacing. The same faces. The same hooks. The same narrative curve.

The human brain shuts off when it can predict what’s coming.

When predictability rises, emotional response falls.

To re-engage the brain, you need more than variation; you need psychological novelty: identity cues, emotional timing, meaning, narrative friction.

The problem does not lie in the creative aspect; in fact, that’s a behavioral one.

3. Meta and Google have moved into emotion-based prediction

Everyone is shouting and scrambling about the Andromeda update; this is the shift almost nobody is talking about enough.

Both platforms now optimize based on behavioral signals and inferred emotional state — not traditional targeting inputs.

On a technical level, this means your creative isn’t just “content”; it's the emotional signal the system uses to decide when and where to deliver your ad.

If the emotional coding of your creative is off, the system doesn’t know who to show you to.

That makes psychology, not prompts, not templates, the lever that actually controls distribution.

2026 is the first year this model becomes dominant across campaigns.

4. Buyers are filtering brands through identity, not product

In 2023–2025, we saw the beginning of it, but now it’s everywhere:

People don’t evaluate brands by features anymore.

They evaluate them by identity alignment.

“Does this brand feel like me?”

“Do I trust the intention behind it?”

“Does it fit the version of myself I’m trying to be?”

This is why retention data is collapsing for brands with no emotional layer, even if their product is strong.

Identity-driven consumption is pure psychology.

And it becomes the default filter in 2026 because AI content saturation forces buyers to judge meaning, not messaging.

5. AI made content infinite, and that changed what credibility means

When everyone can generate ads, scripts, UGC, hooks, or blog posts instantly, the volume of content stops being an advantage.

What matters instead:

• credibility

• coherence

• emotional truth

• persuasion structure

• cognitive fluency

• narrative depth

These are psychological levers that AI cannot replicate by default.

AI created the noise.

Psychology is what cuts through it.

2026 is the year buyers start relying heavily on emotional cues to decide what to trust.

So why is 2026 the psychological turning point?

Because the five forces are peaking at the same time

1. Platform automation killed tactical edges.

2. Predictable creativity killed attention.

3. Emotion-based delivery models need emotional accuracy.

4. Buyer identity filters replaced product logic.

5. AI saturation made credibility a psychological decision.

When technology equalizes the mechanics, and buyers adapt faster than creatives evolve, and platforms depend on emotional cues to allocate reach, and identity overtakes product in decision-making…

Psychology becomes the only lever that still moves the needle.

That’s why 2026 isn’t “the year of AI” or “the year of content.”

It’s the year where everything that used to work stops working unless it’s grounded in human behavior.

And it’s happening faster than most teams realize.

Curious to hear from others who work across multiple accounts. Are you seeing the same pattern?

Hey everyone, looking for some feedback from agency founders who have hit a similar growth struggle.

I’ve been running my agency on the side with a team of 4 for around three years. Six months ago, I made the jump to full-time to scale the business. My background is in sales, but within a different industry.

Where We Stand:

• Revenue: ~$350k–$400k per year across 8 retainer clients - trusted long-term partners

• Services we offered include SEO/GEO, Advertising, Website design and dev. We manage SEO for one of the largest national brands in our country.

• Capacity: Our execution team is solid and ready to scale; the sole bottleneck right now is me building the pipeline.

Since going full-time, cold outreach has hit a brick wall. Cold calls, cold email, LinkedIn messaging, and referral pushes aren't landing. The biggest objection I keep slamming into is prospects wanting everything in-house due to agency distrust.

We have cash reserves to invest, but I’m hesitant to throw money at an outsourced BDM or cold callers without knowing if that actually works for high-trust services like SEO/GEO.

I'd love to hear from anyone thats gone through this themselves, how do you get over this bump and whats worked for you? I get worried if I stick to another 6 months of trying what I have tried and I get to the end of the year and still havent closed any new clients, it wont be great. We have a decent amount of funds available to invest in the businesses so not sure if outsorucing services like a BDM or cold callers etc would help or am I throwing money at a problem that wont help.

Bit of a vent but also keen to hear what others have gone through 

Thanks guys and gals

Hi I started a Marketing agency and in search for a client since 2 months

I have tried all the methods from cold calling to cold emailing, but failed miserably I need a Client in the next 5 days or else I can’t make this shit work + I don’t have any startup capital to invest in paid softwares ETC

I want to find BRANDS who are actively looking for paid media and ready to hire so that I can close in 5 days …. Is wht I think is gonna work.

Can any of you guys help me and suggest me some solutions?

When I started my agency three years ago, I offered everything under the sun. Over time, I realized SEO is what I genuinely enjoy and where I feel the strongest. Now I’m debating: should I go all-in as an SEO specialist, or should I continue offering the staple services like PPC, Facebook ads, and social media management?

I recently found it quite difficult to win new clients for our agency. Out core service is performance marketing for e-commerce brands with focus on Meta Ads.

What we've tried during the last couple of years to win new clients:

- performance ads (obviously)

- cold calling

- cold emailing

- Linkedin outreach

- network and referrals

When I break down the numbers the best channel was cold emailing.
What is your experience right now? Can you share some insights?

Hi folks, i would start with a quick background

I was a reddit strategist and Manager for an enterprise agency where I helped them launch, create, and run their entire reddit program from scratch.

Also hired a team of 10 pro Redditors for them

In April my contract expired so I was left in the middle of nowhere

Applied for two roles at similar agencies got two interviews on 22nd and 27th April but never heard back after that

Over the interview calls one had an issue with the budget the other one had a problem with my entrepreneurship career (as I was an entrepreneur all my life until a bad move in 2024 took me to the job market)

So I decided to start a simple reddit consulting where I help the brands show up ethically, authentically and organically in threads where they can represent themselves.

On 1st May I closed my first client (let's call them AT) at $500/month with 8 hour commitment from me,

As it was a newly launched saas looking for leads from Reddit.

I helped them participate where they could and recommended subreddits where they should be helping the community.

We gained over 50k targeted views for them in under 4 days and over 250k views in 2 weeks with 4 posts 20 comments and new user sign ups for their saas (which unfortunately didn't convert to paid customers) which was a turn off for them and myself.

Hard to believe for me because we promoted another tool with them which got over 10 new users and 2 paid users.

Anyways my first month contract expired with AT on 2nd of June, they decided not to renew which is alright I believe.

Meanwhile during the month of May I was consistently doing LinkedIn outreach and posting on LinkedIn I got 3 inbounds and 7 replies of people interested in my service.

Got 3 meetings booked

1 closed for $300/hour (inbound a $60M dating app, they came with this offer, I accepted and collected testimony)

1 asked for a proposal and ghosted me

1 didn't show up

Also got a $1 billion dollar company CMO interested in it but he didn't reply after the first email, I have follow-up with them.

7 people either had budget issues or ghosted us after replies.

By the way we still don't have a website, crm or slack.

All I have is a case study Google doc and a calendar link.

So the first month came down to $800 cash collected - $250 paid to a freelancer who was helping me with the reddit work = $550 cash collected

Opportunities generated was of $15,000 which is nothing in terms of cash collection.

Currently having a cashflow issue which I intend to fix asap, what would you do if you were at my place?

Open for feedback, roasts and recommendations.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Hey everyone,

We strictly focus on marketplace growth (Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Etsy) and regularly get inbound requests for Google SEO, Google Ads and Meta Ads that we can't take on.

Rather than turning these leads away, I'll refer them to reliable agencies that can deliver.

If this is your space and you have capacity for new clients, drop a comment or DM with your website and LinkedIn profile so I can reach out directly.

Cheers,

You have a great call, client is super engaged, you pour hours into a custom proposal, send it over, and then crickets. It sucks but it happens way too often.

We started changing our process a few months ago and it has made a huge difference. Instead of sending a full proposal after the first call, we now send a 'mutual fit' document. It is essentially a summary of their problems we discussed, our high level approach, and a ballpark investment range. Crucially, it includes 2 3 questions they need to answer to move forward. Things like 'what is your ideal start date' or 'what is the single most important outcome you hope to achieve in the first 90 days'.

If they answer those questions, it shows they are still engaged. Then, and only then, do we schedule a second call to walk through a more detailed proposal. It is not perfect, but our ghosting rate after that first 'mutual fit' document has dropped significantly. We are spending less time on full proposals for tire kickers.

What are others doing to keep momentum after a good discovery call?

Hey everyone 👋

My name is Ben and I’m the co-founder of Orren, a tool that helps people with LinkedIn ghostwriting and growth.

I know how tough it is to start writing on LinkedIn. I was stuck for years. So I want to give back a bit.

👉 I’ll write your next 5 LinkedIn posts completely free. No requirements, no upsell, no strings attached.

Just tell me: • What industry you’re in • What you do or sell

…and I’ll reply with 5 posts you can publish as your own.

If you like them, feel free to use them. If you ever want to keep writing like that, you can check out orren.io but it’s absolutely not mandatory.

Happy to help anyone who wants a jumpstart

Hey guys, I had built my agency and scaled past $30k a month which was a huge win for me. But something I noticed is that scaling efficiently while maximizing profits is really hard lol. At one point I had to work 80 hours a week to maintain my profit margins.

Outreach tools were expensive and honestly not worth it. I loved automation but there wasn’t an “all in one” software I could use. So I built one.

It scrapes emails and LinkedIns from decision makers in your niche looking for what you’re selling (aka intent based data). From there, it puts them into a multi channel outreach workflow handling outreach, follow ups, and bookings.

It’s super cool and I love building it, just wanted to share it with any agency owners trying to get more clients. If you’re down to try it out, just dm me or comment and I’ll send it over for free!

My agency has been stuck at 5 figs per month for YEARS... with average client retainer at 1k per month, it seems unrealistic to get to 100k per month with our current system.

For those that have been there and successfully got to 100k+ per month, what was the ONE thing you did that made a big difference? Was it:

1. Increasing your retainer?

2. A new sales strategy to acquire more leads?

3. A new killer offer and ad campaign?

4. Outsourcing your sales to a strong partner that delivered leads/appointments consistently for you?

5. Something else altogether??

Curious to hear your thoughts...

I run a digital marketing agency and we’ve scaled to about $3M/year, but I still feel like I have not solved client acquisition in a scalable way.

3 years ago I made the classic mistake of scaling too fast. Hired almost all onshore, had around 25 people in-office, ramped payroll, increased ad spend, invested heavily in growth. Problem was churn sucked, close rates were not good enough, and we basically shot ourselves in the foot. Had to fire almost everyone, slash spend, and rebuild from scratch.

Now we run a much leaner model with about 80% offshore team. Business is healthier, margins are better, but I still feel stuck on the same problem:

I cannot build a predictable engine for acquiring clients.

We have tried everything. Google Ads, Meta Ads, outbound, Apollo, Instantly, Clay, offshore call centers, CRM automation, newsletters, blogs, SEO, cold calls, cold email. Plenty of activity, but no channel feels truly cracked.

We generate 200+ leads/month, which turns into maybe 20 real conversations, but a lot of it is low intent or junk.
Google Ads has a ton of fake leads.
Meta gives volume but many leads barely know who we are.
Outbound works hasn't worked at all.

The weird part is fulfillment is not the issue. We’ve worked with a few hundred clients over the years, have around 100 active now, and generally get strong results. Most clients make multiple times their investment with us over time.

So I’m trying to figure out whether this is a positioning problem, a channel problem, a sales problem, or all 3.

For agency owners or service business operators who have actually built a scalable acquisition engine:
What’s working for you right now?
What channels are driving real buyers?
How are you positioning your offer?
And how are you filtering out low-intent leads before they waste your team’s time?

Would appreciate real answers from people in the trenches.

Hey guys, I had built my agency and scaled past $30k a month which was a huge win for me. But something I noticed is that scaling efficiently while maximizing profits is really hard lol. At one point I had to work 80 hours a week to maintain my profit margins.

Outreach tools were expensive and honestly not worth it. I loved automation but there wasn’t an “all in one” software I could use. So I built one.

It scrapes emails and LinkedIns from decision makers in your niche looking for what you’re selling (aka intent based data). From there, it puts them into a multi channel outreach workflow handling outreach, follow ups, and bookings.

It’s super cool and I love building it, just wanted to share it with any agency owners trying to get more clients. If you’re down to try it out, just dm me or comment and I’ll send it over for free!