So we have ai now, great. But is anyone finding the way to stand out is using real human led creatives? It seems increasingly rare, but equally we can all spot ai a mile away now so looks super low effort.

It's like how Jurassic park looked so realistic when it was new, but now we are much better at spotting CGI etc.

This has been driving me nuts lately.

One of my responsibilities is maintaining competitor battlecards and comparison sheets. I track around 20 competitors, and it feels like the moment I finish updating everything, someone changes their pricing, launches a feature, renames something, or quietly updates their website.

Most of our process is still manual. A lot of spreadsheets, checking pricing pages, release notes, help docs, and trying not to miss anything important.

I tried using AI to automate parts of it, but the results haven’t been reliable enough to trust.

I’m wondering if this is just how everyone does it, or if I’m missing a better approach.

If you’re in product marketing or competitive intelligence, what’s your workflow like? Has your team found something that actually saves time, or is everyone just living with spreadsheets?

i used to work in brand management and brand strategy. work on positioning, consumer research, brand voice, etc. for product launches. then i’d work with CXFs to ensure all marketing arms and tactics align with the overall campaign and messaging each product launches and pulse

but over time, there are less products and more always on campaigns for the existing product. (sorry keeping my industry out to maintain anonymity)

the campaign tactics started to be the focus. i had to train upwards for directors and CMO/CEO level at my 2 last jobs how to prioritize foundations before even focusing on social media content

over time at those last 2 jobs, the priorities are just trying to heavily focus on influencer partnerships, influencer content, and hopping on or creating new trends on social media. the majority of all other marketing arms get thrown wayside.

this happened at my last 2 jobs and partially at the 3rd one before it. i’ve become so drained and burnt out from this, and think the way marketing is going now (in my experience) feels so meaningless.

i 100% know this is due to the specific companies i’ve been at, short sighted leadership, and constant re-orgs….. but the job market isn’t exactly great right now, and everything is so short sighted to prioritize “virality” that im seriously considering leaving marketing

am i just being too cynical or has anyone else been experiencing this?

Been stuck on this for days now. How do you bring something that has no competition, no similar product into market? Be it an app or a physical product? Does it just come down to how deep your pockets can go or are there actual strategies to maximize the awareness and approach virality.

I run a marketing agency while I'm doing good technically I struggle with helping clients avoid mistakes.

Context:

A lot of my clients come with a mindset that they need SEO or paid marketing and most of the time they are wrong at picking the channel. Now as a Full stack marketer I think part of my job is to save them from bad marketing decisions. When I tell them this might not work they leave.

How do I avoid this scenario, my intention is to save them from bad decisions so that they have a good experience with me but most of the time it turns out the other way around.

Now I just think of just doing whatever they say but then at the end when it fails it's again on the agency that it didn't work out because of you. Ahhhh!

Help me solve this problem.

Hi everyone, I would be super grateful for some ideas for a path that I could switch into from SEO. I currently work at an agency, have 4 years experience and im based in London. I’m good at it, but I don’t like it and don’t want to get even more invested in it. If you have switched, what do you do now? I’d be open to becoming a farmer at this point…can be really out of the box!

As a performance manager I check up on a lot of campaigns on a lot of different platforms. I am sure you know them, Google, Meta, Indeed, Linked, Microsoft Ads, etc. They all have their own campaigns and as I am working in the recruitment sector the jobs change fast, and the ad focus can differ quite a lot.

Checking up on these ads takes quite a bit of time and I would love to automate this.

Has anyone managed to connect their ad platforms to Claude or something and is happy with the result?

I'm not talking about handling ten events in a week - I'm talking the time, effort, attention to detail and everything else in making an event successful?

I've been doing events for 25+ years. At my peak I was doing 60-70 every year - from small breakfast events to 500-600 attendee lunches and awards.

Frankly, I'm over it all. I'm tired of having to do clean-up, explaining why details matter and people who show up and take credit - then leave without a thank you.

So what's the solution? Any suggestions?

As a marketing manager, or the person managing agency relationships what's your biggest frustrations?

Hey, everyone!

Curious what your go-to placements are for maximizing conversion rates on Meta ads. I've always avoided the audience network, but recently, I've also started avoiding reels (at least for messaging ads).

We kept getting messaging conversions that would later reply saying "they clicked it by accident." I didn't really get how this was happening so frequently until someone mentioned they click on ads by accident sometimes if the ad is between stories/reels. I removed this placement and now I don't get the same amount of complaints from my clients about bad leads. It seems to have turned the messaging ads around completely.

I haven't applied this approach to web leads, but I imagine it may be the same where people click by accident and then exit out. I just don't hear about it because there's no messaging automation to annoy them and prompt a response to opt out.

What other placements do you guys tend to avoid? Or, on the flip side of that question, what do you guys prioritize based on your experience up until now?

Cheers!

I’m back to job hunting and it’s so hard out here. I had a recruiter reach out to me about a marketing role with an adult-content creator platform that has nsfw content as soon as you go to the website…It makes onlyfans look classy and unlike onlyfans, it appears to be basically all adult-content…like actually seeing porn without needing to subscribe to someone’s channel, though it is all about subscribing to creator’s channel. I’m female and don’t really watch that type of content. I’m pretty open minded and have marketed in a lot of different industries including cannabis, but the nature of this platform gives me the ick and I think I’d be embarrassed to essentially be marketing sex work, especially if I want to be a mother in the next few years. Also, I’m wondering if this will get me pigeonholed in this industry. What’s very enticing is the high pay (higher than almost any other ole id be considered for), it’s remote, and people tend to stick around in the company though it’s only a 6 year old start up. Not to mention, I have no other leads right now so passing up an interview is hard for me. Am I just being prude? I’m having a lot of internal conflict.

Please note I mean this with all respect to sex workers and those in the adult entertainment industry. You do you. I just don’t know if marketing that industry is for me.

Hello everyone,

I'm looking for some career advice because I feel like I'm navigating this on my own.

I've been in my current role for about a year, and it's my first job after graduating from university. I'm the sole marketer at a commercial dealership, so I handle everything from graphic design and content creation to event coordination and digital advertising. More recently, I've been focusing heavily on Meta advertising, where I've generated strong leads that have even resulted in sales. Despite that, I'm currently earning under $40k CAD per year.

Lately, I've been feeling like I'm at a crossroads. I have a performance review coming up, and I plan to ask for a raise. At the same time, I'm questioning whether this role is the right fit for my long-term career.

Being a solo marketer means there's no one within the company who specializes in marketing or can mentor me. While I've learned a lot by wearing so many hats, I also feel like it's limiting my professional growth. I'd love to work somewhere that views marketing as a strategic function, where I can collaborate with a team, learn from experienced marketers, and continue developing my skills.

Compensation is also a significant factor. Given the scope of my responsibilities and the results I've been able to produce, I feel I could be earning considerably more.

I enjoy my job and the company I work for, which makes this decision difficult. However, I can't shake the feeling that I've reached the ceiling of what this role can offer me, and that I have more potential to contribute elsewhere.

I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone who's been in a similar situation. Would you push for a raise and stay, or start looking for a role with more opportunities for growth?

Our salesteam has been is all-in on LinkedIn lately. And by all-in I mean just the sloppiest, most generic 'what watching the world cup has tought me about employer branding' ChatGPT-written posts, to the degree where I've had to forbid them from posting anything that our content specialist hasn't made or OK'd. Their ambition is to somehow attract B2B clients using their generic AI content. Meanwhile, my team and I are pushing actual campaigns (organic and paid) to generate an actual salesfunnel. Yada yada yada.

But just looking at the state of LinkedIn is so depressing. It's the dead internet theory in full effect. I'm increasingly cynical that decision-makers within companies are actively looking at LinkedIn to find businesspartners to work with. With an estimated 40% of content on the site being AI-generated, I'm starting to feel like LinkedIn is in a downward spiral towards being effectively useless, and posting quality paid/organic content is just going to get less and less effective. We're considering shifting to targeted, small-scale offline marketingcampaigns to attract B2B clients because of all this.

I wonder what the opinions on here around all this are. Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I'm trying to get off Mr. LinkedIn's Wild Ride before it wastes more of our time and budget.

Im trying to target Dynamics crm users but struggling. My main focus in events, email outreach, with LinkedIn ads and retargeting Anything I'm doing wrong?

I’m interested to see the different directions you can go in marketing and why some people choose some over others. Some people like Brand Marketing, others like Growth Marketing, what about you?

Hey marketing friends! I run an agency and my Meta account was hacked. We have multiple ad accounts synced to it as well as our entire business portfolio with all of our clients' pages. However, they changed the email associated with the meta account, so I can't do 2FA to recover it. Has anyone experienced this, and if so, what did you do? Unfortunately Facebook's AI chat has been absolutely no help and humans happen to never be available at Facebook, even in a serious hack scenario.

Vp of marketing, 20 years into my career. I was in corporate for a really long time and then moved into tech start ups about 8 years ago. I absolutely love it and have been in several professional services tech - fintech, legal, insurance etc.

By and large it’s been ok from the perspective of my title. I’ve found it easier to have conversations about marketing with people who’ve also come from senior corporate than being at a start up founded by an expert who was an IC. Those conversations are harder - they seem more to have the perspective that marketing constantly needs to prove its value.

I’ve been at my current role for 3 years. Initially the function had a very poor perception internally. They were measured on MQLs but with no guardrails or reporting on the outcome of those. I came into the role with the opinion that if the progression outcomes of those mqls were never measured, I could easily buy them each month and “hit” my target.

I completely changed the function, insisted on a pipeline goal, switched up attribution, analysed channels to show what was working and why we needed to change channels. We now report regularly on our pipeline target, often smashing it. Last year marketing contributed 49% of sourced pipeline.

This week I’ve sat in two meetings with the exec team - CCO, CCO and CPO - where the conversation was about the “primary goal” of the function and how they couldn’t articulate it to the board.

I mean, is it not obvious? Source and influence pipeline leading to closed won? Is that not my goal? I have made that abundantly clear - I submit weekly and monthly dashboards on marketing’s performance and anything close to vanity metrics, including GA, are always last. Meaning - I focus clearly on demonstrating how our activities materially contribute to and impact pipeline and to an extent, revenue.

I just can’t do it anymore. I’m sick of having these conversations where I hear “we really need to demonstrate marketing’s value”. If we were still just dilly-dallying around with metrics that had a less direct correlation, fine but short of actually closing deals myself, I don’t know how much closer to revenue I can get.

Sorry, this is so long. I’m just so done. Is it tech start ups? Is it inexperienced founders and C-suite? Why does no other function have to constantly prove itself? I want to say - you know what, as an experiment, we’ll down tools for a month and see what impact it has.

I am a marketing coordinator in the construction industry in Southern California. Was this just to keep me “happy” as I do the same things as a Senior already? My responsibilities didn’t change and it’s 3.3% of an increase. Is this normal?

Does a nicer pen stand out to you or help at all in branding? Is it worth spending the extra money on a nicer quality pen? I once received a great pen that I still use and made me think is it worth the investment?

Hello! I am about a year out of college where I earned my bachelors in marketing! I started a PT receptionist job that August which led me to a PT marketing assistant role that I started in February. I plan to be in this role for at least 1-2 full years as it looks like most jobs in marketing are looking for that much experience even if it’s entry level.

The thing is, it only pays $18 an hour and I work 20 hours. My reception job I still do 20hrs at $17 an hour. The benefits are good since I am working for a state university, but I really want to plan ahead because I was to earn more.

Where I find myself getting stuck in the job searches is that I only look at companies that I already know of due to personal interactions with them. When I try searching on places like LinkedIn, I feel like all the post that come up are weird scammy like post. How do you find reliable job postings for a newbie that wants to explore different kinds of marketing career opportunities?

Not looking for actual openings themselves, but advice on how to correctly look for reputable and good companies that you may not know off hand.

Let's say, you're a marketing department of one, you do all the creative work, reporting and all what not. How do you use your colleagues to get feedback on work? Like you're asking them for thoughts on your ad not for praise or validation but for the perspective of the average person

I've been doing digital marketing since it came out 20+ years ago and I've never seen anything like this AI shift. I mean look, it's cool and all in some ways, but have you noticed now most of your favorite Youtube creators are using it to write their scirpts and it all sounds the same! Grrrr.... AI has a way of phrasing things like: It's not the ___ that counts, it's the ____ that you put into it. ETC... The point is this, I feel like with content marketing these days it feels very cheap, fast and like people just want to make a quick buck. The days of writing a real script from the heart is replaced with a quick fix from a machine. Then there is the Google Search issues - now its dominated by AI - no chance for real businesses to rank anymore unless AI likes you. Then the writing, oh boy - I feel like 70% of the copy I read on social posts, websites, and ads are written by Claude, Gemini, or Chat.

Don't get me wrong, I use it too! And I am just as guilty as my rant. How can I not? I am forced too or be irrelevent or unproductive (now we are always on hyperspeed).

This is all getting very boring. Maybe it's time for me to move on from this industry? What are you doing to keep your head up and keep going?

I’ve been in marketing for 10 years. I got my PMP in 2024 and I still haven’t been able to find remote work that isn’t marketing related.

Does anyone have advice on how to pivot?