Well, the title says it all. It's ridiculous that this is even a thing - and I see rants about it all on Linkedin (mostly from disgruntled marketing folks). But somehow founders/small businesses seem to think it's a normal thing for one person to be able to juggle content marketing, marketing ops, performance marketing/lead gen?! And thanks to AI, expectations are going to get even more unrealistic. While AI can automate a lot of functions, there's bound to be friction and a whole lot of gaps to fill before marketing automation will become seamless.

But for those who're managing to pull this off - especially in companies that have very lean budgets - how do you do it while keeping your sanity intact?!

Pretty much the title

I graduated with a Comp Sci degree but spent the first 2 years after college running a successful YouTube channel. I opted to find other work as it wasn’t enjoyable and I wasn’t a fan of the fluctuation pay each month.

Job markets bad and a gap in tech is hard to overcome. I’ve been working on projects and estimate it will take me about 6 months to have any chance at landing a job in my field of study.

In the meantime, I applied for a job at a smaller company who became impressed by my social media growth. They instead offered me the role of Marketing Coordinator, and now I’m managing their marketing campaigns, including social media and Google ads.

I’ve been 100% self-taught. And any task they give me I’m pretty much learning on the spot. I’m thrilled at the opportunity I have, but now I’m wondering where it could take me. Anyone have success stories in a marketing career without any college education? What’s your current role right now?

Let I thought AI was getting better, an example of a few in the last few days:

A marketing company with an AI woman looking at a clipboard, she had three huge bones protruding from the back of her hand and freakishly long fingers.

A custom door company that couldn’t be bothered to show their own custom doors, and instead had AI slop that even had a gap at the bottom of the entry door wide enough for a family of raccoons to get in.

A casino that looks like they’re showcasing a wax exhibit they have by the craps table.

I would never, never buy. You know how marketing is really works, it’s about showing authenticity, trust in your brand, that you are the real deal and you value the customer.

This is all so not that. Marketers, those who use AI, do better.

Im struggling with this at my current in house digital marketing job (I'm the only one on the team lol) where my higher ups ONLY want to do things that create results.

However, sometimes I think its okay to put effort in towards brand awareness especially when consumers are flooded with ads all day every day. I want to post things like our community involvement, fun facts about what we sell, etc.

I mean OBVIOUSLY we want results, thats the end goal. but its getting exhausting only directing time and energy towards ads and results.

This job has me doubting my own ability due to so many of my ideas being shut down due to it "not capable of generating enough results".

Am I thinking about this all wrong?!

For me, the biggest issue is clients who don’t understand that marketing is an investment and should be treated as a fixed expense, just like rent or utilities. Without marketing, there are no customers. Without customers, there is no business.

The worst part is that many want to pay next to nothing (sometimes less than minimum wage) and expect a full team: social media management, ad creation, website, design, content... all included. There's a real lack of understanding of the true value of this work.

What has your experience been like with this kind of client?

What were the best methods for you to find your clients that you started working with for freelance digital marketing?

I haven’t found up work or Fiverr very useful since there are tons of people commenting on every request for very little money.

I have 7 years of performance marketing experience, and I’ve done some freelancing by getting clients through connections but it’s not reliable.

Even short projects e.g. set up your ads accounts and structure, bit of hand holding are good with me, not necessarily looking foryear long work.

Hi everyone,

I really need some urgent help or insight from anyone who has dealt with a similar situation.

On Friday, June 27, 2025, I launched a LinkedIn Ads campaign with a budget of $250 USD, as I’ve done in the past with no issues. The campaign was scheduled to run until July 10 and targeted website visits, with everything set up as usual.

But on Saturday, June 28, I received a message saying the campaign was paused due to budget limits. When I checked, I was shocked to see a charge of $14,905.94 USD for only 430 clicks — that’s more than $34 per click, which is completely insane and way out of my reach financially.

I immediately contacted LinkedIn support (after waiting in a long queue), and the only answer I got was that the campaign had been “set with a lifetime budget of $250,000 USD.” I have no idea how that could’ve happened, because:

I’m 100% sure I entered $250;

The interface doesn’t even allow you to select “perpetuity” or anything that resembles an unlimited timeframe;

I tried replicating the same steps and noticed some strange behaviors on the platform that make me think it could be a bug or system error.

Support said they’d follow up by email, but honestly, I left the chat with more confusion than clarity. I’ve asked for clarification and, if necessary, a refund or adjustment — but I haven’t received any resolution yet.

Has anyone experienced something like this before?

Is there any way to fix this before I get charged that amount?

For context: I simply cannot afford to pay that kind of money. I'm not trying to avoid responsibility if it turns out to be my mistake — but even then, I believe LinkedIn should have some kind of alert or validation system in place to prevent such extreme budget setups.

Any advice, experience or support would mean a lot. 🙏

Thanks in advance.

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Hey everyone, I recently joined a startup agency as a copywriting intern. It’s a small team, not many big clients, and most projects have low budgets — so we mostly work with stock videos/images. I’m expected to handle social media calendars, write salesy copy, and ghostwrite LinkedIn posts for founders.

I don’t have a writing background (I’m an MBA in Marketing) — learned copywriting through mentors. But lately, I’m feeling really stuck. My ideas don’t get executed, the environment feels creatively limiting, and my manager says I “lack structure,” but doesn’t explain what that means.

Honestly, I’m just fed up and confused. Is this normal in the beginning, or am I doing something wrong?

I don’t have colleagues of the same level doing the same things as me. I’ve only ever worked under the same manager in my career life (excluding a job i left after 3 months cuz it wasnt what i wanted), so I don’t really have a benchmark.

Context - I’m working as a marketing specialist (market intangible products) Handling branding areas for SEA region

From social media strategy planning and execution (including tasking and approving/ checking creative briefs), to branding campaigns planning & execution, brand collaborations, offline events, influencer marketing etc

We have agency for offline event booth design/ execution and influencer marketing, but the influencer brief and strategy comes from me.

When I search for my brand name; all websites that get shown link to my website.

However my own website doesn't get listed in the Top 20!

So the only way to rank is to pay Google Ads to rank for my brand name.

I just had a call with Google Ads rep who suggested me to further increase my ad budget to help me with sales.

Out of all keywords that Google is ranking me for, only my brand name (exact match) is getting me sales.

It seems that Google is intentionally blocking my website from ranking so that I spend more on ads.

I've been wondering, if you had to choose one email marketing platform to stick with for the rest of 2025, what would it be? What's the reason?

I’ve been getting second thoughts about why I chose marketing as a career Mainly because: 1- A big part of it feels like social media noise and shallow content, especially digital marketing which is what I do and honestly seems to be the main direction ahead 2- The salaries are low and the competition is too much Even when you work hard and gain real skill, there’s always someone with the same qualifications willing to take much less (at least in my country)

I genuinely enjoy the growth side, performance, and analysis that’s where I feel I actually add value But it’s hard to ignore this constant thoughts that I’m not doing meaningful work… sometimes I honestly just feel like a clown.. Has anyone gone through this phase before? If you ended up changing your path, what made you decide and was it worth it?

Hi, I would like to know if people still create lead magnets and is it working? And also do you create lead magnets just to collect email addresses?

Is creating a right lead magnets hard? Can you suggest me any courses or videos to look into?

Are you making every single decision off heatmaps, survey responses, etc.?

Or do you still trust your guts for things like creatives and copy?

Has anyone ever made a wild creative call and had it actually pan out?

• SEO
• Social Media
• Paid ADs
• Cold DMs / Emails
• Email Campaigns
• Referrals

I wanted to reach out to ask people in the marketing field about this. So I've been first contacted by someone named Diana from Elite Staffing with a remote job. Said it would offer $150-450 USD per day, and asked if I have work authorization and reside in the US. Then she said someone from the client would reach out, which turned to be someone from 72andSunny. Did a quick search on them and stumbled upon their website and LinkedIn page, which looks very polished (offices in Sydney, NYC, Amsterdam, LA) and showcases their client work.

I want to understand the legitimacy of these outreach requests and if they're not some sort of scam that's using an actual agency name and impersonating them.

I applied for a director-level position at public school district and received a call requesting an interview. I was excited until they emailed me the time, location... and a request to present two consulting-type presentations.

Is this normal? Or is this a way to get free work?... In my 15 years I have never had this big of an ask for an interview; especially the first round. Picture of the document with the district's name blocked out.

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Hey guys, I've seen a few people on this sub talk about getting low quality leads and have worked with people who's AOV means they barely break even. Apart from some of the more technical stuff you can do, you guys need to condition your pixel.

Everytime you get a low value sale or a lead, qualified or unqualified, your ad platform is going to view that as a win and try to target more of those same people. Your pixel only thinks in terms of quality if you tell it to do so, and you definitely should.

You should instead set a desired certain conversion amount or only alert your ad platform of a lead when a lead is qualified. This way they will begin to understand the kinds of people they should actually be targeting and if you're not doing some variation of this you're leaving massive amounts of money on the table.

Definitely worth asking whoever handles your marketing to do so, or doing it yourself.

Im restarting my agency to work with ecom clients, I was thinking of using clickfunnels simply bc .. shiny award .. but in my ecom space I hear a lot of people complaining about it.

Curious whats the best set up for landing pages / quiz's / forms you know typical lead gen and qualification stuff

Im not even sure how much weight those click funnel awards carry anymore but it feels like those are out dated softwares, was thinking of just doing a basic google forum with zap with basic questions

Would love a basic set up thats as cheap as possible and then one that others have used that converts the best if possible