r/marketing

I am starting a family / couple portraiture business inspired by 1800s European paintings (John Singer Sargent, Thomas Eakins etc ect), we would go to folks house, do some set design that metaphorically and symbolic express who they are, set lights, and blocking, have them dress in their best clothes and take there photo in a timeless, enduring pose (just as a old painting). The end goal is frame, print and installation in home, intended to be a generational piece to last for decades. Having some issue figuring out the advertisement part and getting first clients. What would you all suggest?

Being a musician really needs a distinctive image, so I am trying to decide between two images. The first one is a goddess type vibe. It would be goddess inspired. Like imagine gold crown and drapey clothes as if a girl came from heaven lol. The other option is a fox anime girl theme with a distinctive hair color that is long. Imagine a dolly look with eye contacts. I want something that can look like a Halloween costume. These will also be technically sexualized. I’m totally fine with it being that way—entertainment is entertainment.

Just from your personal preference, what would you prefer? And it would be helpful if you mention your gender and age range (I understand age can be too much to reveal on the internet).

I recently joined a luxury car dealership in Dubai as their social media manager and I’m currently auditing the account before creating a new strategy.

A few things I’ve noticed:
-Follower growth and organic engagement have been slow over the past 9 months.
-Most content is inventory showcases (luxury cars) with limited educational or lifestyle content.
-We have a limited budget, so most content is shot inside the showroom.

Our target audience is luxury buyers in the UAE, but insights show a surprisingly large audience from India, which I’m trying to understand. I think they bought followers before.

My initial plan is to focus on content pillars (Educate, Showcase, Connect), differentiate content for Instagram vs. TikTok/Snapchat, and create more recurring content series instead of just posting inventory.

If you inherited this account, what would you prioritize first? Would you focus on fixing the audience quality, changing the content strategy, or something else?
I’d love to hear how you’d approach this.

I think most small business owners are wasting money on ads without realizing it.

Every time I talk to someone who’s running ads, I end up asking the same question: “Out of everyone who visited your website last month… how many actually became a lead or customer?” Most people have no clue. That’s the part that blows my mind. They’ll know they got 800 website visitors, but they can’t tell you how many people called, filled out a form, booked an appointment, or bought something. At that point, how do you even know if your ads are the problem? Maybe your website is. Maybe your pricing is. Maybe your contact form is broken. You’re just guessing.

I feel like a lot of people are so focused on getting more traffic that they forget to measure what actually matters. I’d rather have 100 visitors and know exactly what’s converting than 10,000 visitors with no idea what’s going on.

My boss got an idea to run dental ads for the dental clinic. I honestly think it’s gonna be a waste of money, because the person who suggested the idea runs a tat shop where I feel set work portfolio works well, and has a large social following (because, again it’s art).

I assume this is gonna be a money pit, but I can’t tell if I’m in the wrong (Google ads did nothing for dental in the past).

Yes or no?

Had a weird realization mid call yesterday.

We were arguing over a value prop line for the third time. Tweaking words. Rewording the offer. Testing yet another "hook."

Then it hit me: none of that was the actual lever.

The value equation didn't fail. The persuasion didn't fail. The context was wrong.

Same words land completely differently depending on who's reading them, what they already believe, and what they've been burned by before.

A CFO reads "save time" as fluff.
A founder reads it as oxygen.

Same sentence. Two completely different reactions.

We spend so much energy optimizing the pitch and so little energy actually sitting inside the reader's world their pressures, their language, their last bad experience with someone who sounded just like us.

Turns out most "copy problems" are actually context problems wearing a copy costume.

You don't fix that with a better hook. You fix it by actually knowing who you're talking to not their job title, their reality.

Persuasion frameworks assume attention. Context is what earns it in the first place.

Still chewing on this one.

Anyone else run into this? Where a "messaging fix" turned out to be an audience understanding fix in disguise?

I've had Thrivecart for a few years. Lately their platform has gone to shit. I complained about how they treat their customers after people complain about updates, deleting posts, etc.

They're notorious for deleting posts and shutting down discussions when it doesn't put them in a favorable light.

I just complained in the Facebook group and they banned me.

What other software do you recommend?

Originally I was just a multimedia designer, but with all my ideas and the way I managed and planned things, my boss gives me the role of Head of Marketing.

So far? So good yet chaotic (in my head) and so many questions. I wouldn’t say I understand marketing mostly yet, but I do understand how today’s market works.

But any tips on how I can manage and plan things properly and won’t feel so overwhelmed?

Honestly I just wanna enjoy what Im doing, yet I feel burnout everyday.

I started with affiliate marketing as a small side project — nothing serious, just testing ideas and seeing what might work.

Over time, a few of those “small tests” turned into something much bigger, and now the whole thing generates around €15,000 a month. It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t a big strategy — it just grew because I kept refining what showed potential.

I’m at the point where I need to organize everything more professionally, especially regarding scaling and operational structure. If anyone here has experience with higher‑volume affiliate systems, I’d love to hear how you approached it.

I’ve been managing local lead gen for an HVAC contractor client with a $5,000 monthly ad spend and the amount of friction in the traditional heat pump brand co-op MDF support distributor program setups is insane.The manufacturers dangle these Market Development Funds but make the compliance and pre-approval rules so restrictive that small local businesses end up wasting more billable hours on paperwork than the credit is even worth. Its like they want you to run outdated print style templates instead of letting the agency optimize for actual conversion metrics.We recently ran an unbranded campaign featuring some Midea inverter units for a specific high-efficiency residential project, and because we didn't have to wait for corporate brand approval, the campaign was live and generating calls in 48 hours.

For anyone handling local service business marketing, how are you structuring your agreements when navigating distributor program guidelines without blowing your layout timelines?

Asking for a friend

Has anyone of you here promoted his business and campaigns via whatsap. Do you recommend. Also If you have whatsap groups in Au, Uk or us I will pay to join

When FIFA covered up the Levis logo, Levi's responded with a marketing campaign with the covered up logo. How effective was this campaign? Did it work, or was this just a niche ad on the internet? Would FIFA been better off with leaving the sponsorship on the stadium but refusing to say "Levi's Stadium" or using any images of the logo?

I want to see if I'm being underpaid.

I'm currently the person in charge of handling data driven reporting publications and media requests. Without disclosing my niche job title, I'm essentially a senior data analyst which my company has put within our product teams since we are a data driven company that sells reporting solutions, etc. as a product. Our marketing team as well as our PR team is owned by our parent company but we have a dedicated liaison for each business unit. The marketing liaison is a true marketing generalist who has no ability to pull data for these publications, social media engagements, PR, etc. and also barely understands the contents of these metrics when they are pulled since they are intended for industry professionals.

My company wants to be putting more data into the industry and media circuits which I have the capacity to do but am running into a bottleneck with marketing since they deal with many other areas of my business unit than just mine. Additionally, there's so much more we could be doing from a social media standpoint and our marketing team doesn't seem to take any initiative which I don't necessarily blame them for. I know they're stretched thin but also, it can be hard to come up with content that you have no concept of yourself. I feel like these are things I could be doing or managing but will never be allowed to do because they're the marketing departments job.

I have essentially no experience at other companies to know how they handle this. Would a person with my job responsibilities usually sit under the marketing department? I know they're considering expanding my role to be a team lead with more people creating data driven content under me but I see that making the problem worse not better because of the marketing bottleneck. I'm considering pushing to move my position out of product and into marketing to possibly gain some autonomy with what I'm producing so that it's not all having to go through my liaison and he can focus on the other people in my business unit he works with but I'm not sure if that makes sense from both a functional sense as well as (selfishly) looking at job titles and strength of resume/career paths, etc. Overall, I'd really appreciate any insight as to how other companies structure and coordinate these types of positions.

For Marketing Manager, I had had a cordial discussion at a place that lasted for 2 hours. I had met them in person at an event they were hosting, and that's how the process started. They put up a hiring post for my role ONE DAY before my discussion was scheduled with them. They deleted that same post the NEXT day of my discussion . That post had 300 likes.

I waited for 15 days and finally sent a follow-up, to which they have said the following:

Hello zerozits

Thank you for your patience with my response. I’d request another day to get back to you since I’m waiting for one moving part in this process to settle down.

I’ll be sure to get back to you tomorrow

Thank you again

(the founder's name)
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So, what do I think of this?

In my follow-up, I reiterated a few highlights from our discussion while also reaffirming why I wanna work at their cafe. I ended it with "Since I do not want to commit elsewhere before getting to know where I stand with their org, I'd really appreciate any update you might be able to share regarding the role."

Am I in, or nah?

Hi all,

I just got Promoted as Marketing Head. This is literally 2 companies among a group of companies, with practically a good budget if there is an outcome.

So while I have huge plans, company basically runs Ads to get leads.

These 2 are startups, and the founders care about two things - social media posts & follower growth and Leads & conversion.

So what would you do or are doing in this situation ?

I’m not sure which subreddit to post this. I need to make parking hang tag for my business facility entry. I like how the handicap hang tag looks and feels. (In america). How can I have my design printed like the handicapped one?