r/SMMA

Been working with a client for 6 months in the digital marketing/ads space. Relationship has been great, she always responded quickly, paid on time every month, reacted positively to updates. No complaints whatsoever.

Results have been excellent, we achieved a CPL of $3-4, optimized ad spend to generate 20x revenue returns, built a complete automated system from scratch including email domain warmup, SMS campaigns, pixel optimization and full workflows. She was genuinely happy with everything.

Here's what happened recently:

We proposed a new phase starting June with invoice split in two parts. First part due May 15th. She went completely silent right after — no response to any messages for 10+ days now. She's clearly reading everything (seen receipts) but not replying.

Meanwhile I noticed she has another CRM managed by a different agency, and they recently started building similar workflows to what we built for her over 6 months. Looks like she might be trying to migrate everything there.

My concerns:

• Is she planning to leave without telling me?
• How do I approach this without seeming desperate?
• Should I call her directly after 6 months of only texting?
• How do I retain her if she's on the fence?

What would you do in this situation?

Posted here a few months back about my first 4 months doing AI UGC ads ($7K total, small e-com and local brands). Got a bunch of DMs asking what month 5 and 6 looked like, so here's the actual update. Honestly what moved the needle this stretch wasn't anything I was expecting.

The numbers

Month 5: $4,200
Month 6: $9,600
Avg project now: $900–$1,400 (was $600–$900)
Client load: around 8 active, mix of retainers and one-offs

What I thought would move me up

Better hooks, tighter scripts, more outreach. I spent basically 3 weeks in month 5 optimizing stuff. Built a Notion CRM, an A/B setup for hook variants, a whole script library. Worked 12-hour days the entire month and revenue barely moved. The bottleneck wasn't anywhere I was looking.

What actually moved it

End of month 5, someone added me to a small Discord. Maybe 6 of us in there, all doing AI UGC for different niches. Couple weeks in:

One of the guys shared his pricing structure with me. Bumped my avg project ~40% almost overnight.

Saw 3 ad styles I'd literally never seen on Twitter or TikTok. Half my new winners come from those now.

Got feedback on my sales call deck and turns out I was bringing up price way too late. That alone fixed my close rate.

Someone mentioned a Bonzi feature for batch generating variations that cut my edit time in half. I'd been using the tool for 4 months and had no idea it existed.

Started splitting overflow with two of them. Made an extra $1,800 last month just from referrals between us.

Sounds kind of dumb to say out loud but the real lesson is that 6 months of grinding alone taught me maybe 1/10th of what 2 weeks in a room with other people doing the same thing did. Every "secret" I'd been digging for on YouTube and Twitter was just regular chat in that group.

Why nobody talks about this

Most of the AI UGC content online is course sellers or "winning ad" Twitter threads optimized for engagement, not for actually working. The real stuff stays in DMs and small private groups because the second it goes public, it stops working. I just got lucky someone randomly pulled me in.

What I did about it

The original group ended up getting too big and noisy, so a few of us spun off our own. Mix of operators, agency owners, solo freelancers, all running AI UGC. No course, no upsell, no paid tier. Just a place to post ads for feedback, share what's working, and not be grinding alone. Around 60 of us in there now.

Question for anyone running ads, freelance, or agency stuff: what's the thing that actually moved the needle for you? Pretty convinced "find your 6 people" is the most underrated piece of advice in this space, but maybe I'm just biased now.

hey guys, I was wondering if you if you have any recommendations for some lead gen agencies in the UK that you have used and trust? preferably not too large so the costs aren’t too high!

thanks!

8+ years running a marketing agency. 600+ clients served. Ask me anything.

8+ years running a marketing agency. 600+ clients served. Ask me anything.

I started my agency while working a 9–5, eventually scaled it into a multi six-figure business, and now help others launch and grow agencies of their own.

Over the years, I’ve worked with startups, local businesses, founders, and service providers at different stages of growth.

Happy to answer questions about:

• Getting clients

• Pricing and packaging offers

• Lead generation

• Building and scaling an agency

• Freelancing

• Choosing a niche

• Sales calls and closing

• Retainers

• Content strategy

• Systems and operations

• Transitioning from employment into entrepreneurship

Or anything else you’d like to know 👌

I recently started an SMMA focused on local service businesses like plumbers, electricians, roofers, and contractors, offering lead generation through Meta ads.
Today was my first real day doing cold calls and honestly, almost everyone said no. I expected rejection since I’m still new, but what I quickly realized is that cold calling takes a lot of time and energy, and it doesn’t really fit my current situation.
The problem is I’m still in school from 8 AM to 5 PM, so I don’t really have time to spend hours every day cold calling businesses.
Right now my biggest challenge is client acquisition.
I wanted to ask people who have actually built an SMMA or local lead generation agency:
How did you get your first clients?
Did you rely on cold calling, or were there better methods?
What actually worked fastest in the beginning?
Is there a more scalable way to reach local businesses?
I’m still learning and trying to figure out the most efficient way to get my first clients, so any honest advice would be appreciated.

So my SMMA is fairly new I’ve done it for about 3 months I’ve gained some customers and I just did one month of work for a client where I’d be paid per vies on tiktok. We never signed a contract but I have everything confirmed in chats about payments and rules etc. Also on his website he has an affiliate program with the same guidelines as our agreement.

Anyways I did a month of work for him and asked multiple times also during meeting and in written format if there was any payment limit or problems and the answer was always no.

About I week ago the work for the month was done and it was time for the payment, I sent him my bank transfer details and a day later he replied that he can’t afford to pay everything right now and that he’d need to spilt up the payments over about 3 months. The payment was for a total of about $1000 and at first I was against a payment plan but after some thinking I thought it was better than nothing.

The the ghosting started, at first he would reply but then he’d start to ghost more and more and yesterday I tried calling him, it went through but no answer, then today when I send him a message only one check appears on WhatsApp I try to add him to a group to see if he blocked me and sure enough I wasn’t able to add him to the group (a test to see if a person has blocked you on WhatsApp)

I feel like I’ve messed up big time by just trusting him and is it even worth doing any legal action? I’ve got his name, website and phone number + TikTok and instagram

Any tips on what I should do or is it over?

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for serious partners to grow and scale an SMMA together. If you’re motivated, skilled, and interested in building something long-term, send me a DM. Let’s work and grow together 🚀

I used to have an agency (sarg.io).

Was never able to handle more than 4-5 (~2k/month) clients due to the management, co-ordination and management overhead.

I shut it down as I thought there was no way to scale from there.

There is a reason a lot of SMMA owners become course sellers or shift to selling software (like me).

Would love to know the opinions on this.

Good day!

I am a web developer, and I have been successfully running my own agency for 2+ years now.

The work has been slow for the past few months, and I am looking for long-term partnerships. I am looking for someone reliable I can send my clients to when they are in need of SMM since I do not offer that service.

I realised that there are a lot of cases when I (as a web dev) have a lot of leads for other business branches that I do not serve, and other way around, so I invite you so we can help eachother out, and grow together.

This is also an opportunity for you; send a client that needs a website created, redesigned, or managed and take a cut of the deal made.

I need to clarify two things first, though:

1. I am not a vibe-coder, we do not just generate a generic AI website with an AI builder and call it a day.

We are serious about our work, and we are building long term relationships with clients too. I will provide a portfolio of our work to anyone interested.

2. I will expect your portfolio if you want us to send work your way. I can not guarantee I will always have work for you. Also regarding leads that need websites made, I am more than happy to discuss a % cut that will be paid for every client you send our way.

My DMs are open, looking forward to potential partnerships!

Genuine question because the landscape changed so much in the last year and I can't find recent answers.

A year ago everyone was using emulators and rotating proxies. Now half the threads say emulators are dead, residential proxies are flagged, and you need cloud phones or you're done. The other half says cloud phones are overpriced and unnecessary if you do warming right.

For anyone actually running 5+ accounts profitably right now, what's your stack looking like?

Specifically curious about: 1.Are you on cloud phones, real phones, or emulators? 2.Mobile proxies or ISP proxies? 3.How long is your warm up phase before first post? 4.Are you spinning content per account or running the same uploads with minor changes?

Not looking for theory, looking for what's actually keeping accounts alive in the current TikTok detection environment. Drop your setup if you're comfortable sharing.

Dont listen to the noise. In the past 12 months I've 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 😄.

1. Pick a narrow niche with clear money flow
I’d avoid going “general marketing agency”.

Instead something like:

• local businesses (clinics, gyms, restaurants)
• ecommerce brands doing consistent ads
• coaches or info products with existing revenue

Then I’d look on Reddit, Instagram and Facebook groups to find where they already complain about marketing.

2. Build offer + client acquisition system fast
Simple workflow I’d use:

• ChatGPT or Claude for offer structuring (packages, positioning, pricing)
• Cursor + Claude Code if I need a lightweight client portal or automation tool

Then I’d focus on outreach through:

• Instagram DM
• email
• LinkedIn (depending on niche)

No overthinking branding at this stage.

3. Content + ad creative production with AI
Probably:

• Midjourney for ad visuals
• Kling or Runway for short video ads
• ChatGPT for hooks, scripts, variations

For voice content:

• ElevenLabs for text-to-speech
• Polyvoice to translate ads into multiple languages if targeting different regions

This is where SMMAs are changing fast production cost is basically collapsing.

4. Use AI agents for repetitive client work
I’d experiment with something like OpenClaw for:

• reporting automation
• competitor research
• content scraping
• recurring campaign tasks

Not fully autonomous agency stuff, but enough to reduce manual grind.

5. Systemize delivery early, not later
I’d document everything in:

• Notion for SOPs
• simple dashboards for tracking results

Goal would be to avoid becoming a freelancer trapped in client work.

The main shift I see right now is that SMMA isn’t really about “editing videos” or “running ads” anymore.

It’s more about:

• positioning
• distribution
• systems
• speed of execution

AI just makes all the execution layers cheaper.

Hey everyone I’m 19 and really want to dive into SMM as a side gig to help pay for college. I’m ready to put in the work and scale this up, but I’m struggling with where to start.

What are the "must have" skills for a beginner in 2026? If you were starting from zero today, what’s the first thing you’d learn? Any help would mean a lot:)