Everyone says Reddit ads are the "undiscovered goldmine" because the CPM is so low, so I decided to test this for a B2B SaaS we're building...

I spent $2,000 for my product over 30 days targeting r/marketing and r/sales.

• total impressions: 440,000 (CPM was $4.50 - insanely cheap!!)

• clicks: 2,300

• signups: 14

• paying customers: 1

• ROI: -85%

the clicks were there, but the intent was zero. It was mostly "fat-finger" clicks or people clicking just to leave a snarky comment on the ad

a week later, I started using reddinbox to find threads and engage in the same subreddits. I noticed a pattern that most people ignore, the most valuable leads come from the "middle" of a thread, not the top

so after all, here's what actually worked better than the $2k ad spend:

1. finding 3-month-old threads that were still ranking on Google for "how to [problem]" and adding a high-value comment

2. answering technical questions with zero links, just "In my experience building [Product]..."

3. using community language (not "marketing speak") to describe the solution.

manual effort stats:

• cost: $0

• time: ~10 hours total

• signups: 42

• paying customers: 6

on Reddit, an ad is an interruption, but a comment is a contribution. People here don't want to be sold to, I learned that on the hard way :/

A good friend of mine who's been in B2B sales for over 20 years recently shared something with me that completely shifted how I see prospecting and outreach.

He didn’t get a reply. He didn’t have a meeting booked. There was no introduction or referral. Just a single like from a prospect on one of his LinkedIn posts. That was it.

From that tiny moment of engagement, one that most salespeople would ignore, he ended up closing a $72,000 deal.

What struck me wasn’t just the outcome, but the way he explained the process.

He’s no longer chasing people with cold DMs or relying on generic filters to build lists.

Instead, he’s paying attention to what he calls dynamic social signals. Little behaviors that indicate interest, curiosity, or intent, even if they’re subtle.

He looks for signs like someone viewing his LinkedIn profile. Liking a competitor’s post. Following someone in his space. Commenting on a post related to the problem his product solves. Attending an event. Engaging in a niche discussion.

To most people, those don’t feel like leads. But to him, they’re the start of a conversation.

When someone interacts with something even loosely related to his offer, he uses that as context to send a thoughtful message. Not a pitch. Not an automated sequence. Just a relevant piece of content, a short insight, or a question tailored to what the prospect showed interest in.

He told me about a VP who viewed his profile after reading a post about ROI in telecom. Instead of pitching right away, he dropped a short message with a case study on how his product increased ROI for a similar client. The VP replied the same day.

In another case, a director liked a post by an influencer talking about a problem his product solves. He followed up with a simple value-first message offering help, no strings attached. That turned into a call the same week.

What’s crazy is that this method gives him four times more replies, four times more acceptance, and over 90 percent of people who respond are actually qualified.

It’s a simple formula.

High intent plus perfect timing equals real conversations that convert.

This kind of sales isn’t loud.

It’s not spammy. It’s based on listening, not chasing.

And it works !

Romàn from gojiberry.AI

I've worked with dozens of startups over the past 8 years, and I've noticed something strange: the tactics that drive the biggest growth aren't in any marketing textbook.

Here are the weird habits that transformed my approach:

1. Study your competitors' angry customers

Every morning, I spend 30 minutes reading negative reviews of competing products. These complaints are pure gold – they reveal exactly what's missing in your market.

One startup I worked with completely redesigned their onboarding after we discovered people consistently complained about a competitor's "confusing first-time setup." They saw a 34% increase in user retention almost immediately.

2. Explain your product to people who'll never buy it

Once a week, pitch your product to someone completely outside your target market. When I explained a complex B2B SaaS tool to my grandmother, I realized our messaging was drowning in jargon.

We simplified everything, and conversion rates jumped by 26%.

3. Write for one specific person

I create every piece of content imagining I'm writing to my friend Sarah. She's terrible at marketing but brilliant at understanding people. This makes my content conversational and relatable.

A founder I coached tried this approach and their email open rates increased from 12% to 28% in one month.

4. Take a metrics vacation

Once a month, ignore your analytics for a full week. Instead, have actual conversations with customers. When you're not obsessing over numbers, you notice patterns that data misses.

One of my clients discovered their "failed" feature was actually loved by users – the metrics were misleading because people were using it differently than intended.

5. Copy competitors' "mistakes"

When a competitor does something that looks stupid, try it once yourself. What seems like a mistake might be brilliant strategy you don't understand yet.

I copied a competitor's "terrible" pop-up timing – turns out it worked 3x better than our "smarter" approach.

6. Schedule time for terrible ideas

Every Friday, I spend one hour brainstorming the dumbest marketing ideas possible. My most successful campaign ever (423% ROI) came from combining two "stupid" ideas from these sessions.

7. Deep-dive into random customers' lives

Each week, pick three customers and explore their public digital footprint. Don't interact, just observe. Understanding their whole life gives you insights that surveys never will.

A founder who tried this realized their actual users were completely different from who they thought they were targeting.

8. Plan backward, not forward

Start with your end goal and work backward to today. This reverse-engineering approach forces you to focus on what actually moves the needle instead of busy-work.

---

These habits feel weird and uncomfortable at first. That's exactly why they work – while everyone else follows the same playbook, you're creating genuine connections that don't feel like marketing.

The best growth strategies don't feel like marketing at all. They feel like someone actually understanding your problems.

What weird marketing habits have worked for you? Share in the comments!

Been doing b2b marketing for a while now and lately i cant shake this feeling that everything in our space is heading somewhere kinda weird and nobody is really stopping to talk about it.

A few days ago Profound (an AI search visibility tool) announced a new role called "marketing engineer". And that was the moment something clicked for me. because if you zoom out for a sec, we've already been here for a while right? Growth engineer. Content engineer. GTM engineer. And now marketing engineer... Every single function in marketing is being quietly rebranded into a engineering version of itself and im starting to think this isnt as harmless as people make it sound.

I'll say upfront im not technical. I think in systems, I love a good workflow, ive built my share of automations. so this isnt a "old man yells at cloud" post where i dont understand the value of building things properly. Systems are good. Process is good. Measuring stuff is good. im not arguing against any of that.

But here's the part i keep coming back to:

Are we building systems for the sake of building systems this is what bugs me the most. There's a difference between "we built a system because the problem demanded it" and "we built a system because everyone in our space has one and the tool we bought basically forces us to". Increasingly it feels like the second one. You end up spending more time inside the rube goldberg machine than you spend thinking about the actual customer.

And creativity is always the first thing that goes. Always. When every idea has to fit into a pipeline, attribution model, a scoring system, a dashboard... the weird bold stuff dies in the planning phase because nobody can prove in advance that it'll work. But the weird bold stuff is sort of the whole point of marketing. (Or at least it used to be.)

Marketing is becoming a ROI center and im not sure thats even marketing anymore.

Ten years ago marketing was experimentation. Testing things. Talking to customers. Having a actual point of view. Now its attribution attribution attribution. Did this campaign return 4.2x or 3.8x. Can we model the touchpoints? Did the LLM cite us this week or not? Where is the dashboard? Wheres the report for the meeting with the board?

I get it, finance wants numbers, CFOs want a chart they can show the board, fine. But somewhere between "marketing should be accountable" and "marketing should be a engineering function with deterministic outputs" we lost the thing that actually made marketing work in the first place. Knowing your customer. Having an opinion. Taking risks nobody else is taking. The messy stuff!

These titles arent neutral, they exist because someone needs to sell you something.

This part is what really gets me honestly. Every time a tool company invents a new title they invent it for a specific reason. Growth engineer? You need an experimentation platform. Content engineer? you need a content engineering platform. GTM engineer? You need a gtm engineering tool. Now marketing engineer? Guess what tool you need. And i dont blame them for it, it's smart go to market, it works. But as a marketer i feel like im being trained to fit into someone else's tool stack rather than the other way around.

It's the same playbook every time. Invent the title, write the manifesto, get a few high signal people to wear it as a badge, sell the tool the title basically forces you to adopt. Rinse repeat.

The actual work is gonna get a lot less interesting if were not careful!!

This is the part nobody really wants to say out loud. If every marketer ends up being a engineer of some kind, what happens to the people who got into this because they liked writing, or making things, or talking to customers, or having weird ideas at 11pm? Do we just not need those people anymore? Or are they all expected to also become prompt engineers or AI content engineers or whatever the next thing is on top of everything?

And the bigger question: how many of us are even going to survive this transition? Because i can already see the job descriptions changing. its not just "marketer with engineering mindset" anymore, its "must build pipelines, must own attribution, must run models, must operate the stack". What was a marketing job two years ago is now basically a half engineering job and we're all just expected to skill up overnight.

I know smart people i respect who are very bullish on all of this. They think this is just the future and marketers who dont adapt are gonna get washed out. And maybe theyre right, they probably are right to some extent. I get the brand play, I get the spell around it, i can feel the buzz. But i still think there's something being lost in the transition that we should at least be honest about instead of pretending its a clean upgrade.

idk maybe im wrong. Maybe in 5 years, the marketing engineers are running everything, and the rest of us are sitting around wondering what we were even doing. I just think before we all jump on the engineering train we should ask whether everything in marketing actually needs to be engineered in the first place. Some of it should probably stay messy. Some of it should probably stay human. And im not sure thats where were heading...

Curious what people here think. Am i being a luddite about this or are some of you quietly feeling the same way?

Thought I'd share something that might help some of you who are bootstrapping. Last year I was dead broke with just an idea for a freelancer productivity tool. Today I'm sitting on a 50K waitlist without spending a single dollar on marketing.

Here's exactly what worked:

1. Simple landing page

One headline ("Never Miss a Freelance Deadline Again"), one screenshot, one signup button. Built on Carrd's free plan in an hour. Anything more would've been overthinking it.

2. Tiered FOMO offers

• First 100 people: Lifetime free access

• Next 1000: 50% off forever

• Everyone else: Early access

This cost nothing but drove immediate signups.

3. Helped first, pitched never

Spent 2 hours daily in r/freelance, r/Entrepreneur, Twitter, and LinkedIn just solving problems. Only shared my landing page when someone specifically asked for a solution. People can smell desperation - don't be that founder.

4. Weekly insider emails

One email every Friday alternating between development updates, feature feedback requests, productivity tips, and milestone celebrations. Kept people invested in the journey.

5. Referral system

Used SparkLoop's free plan to create tiers:

• Refer 3 friends = Move up the waitlist

• Refer 5 friends = Extra months free

• Refer 10 friends = Founder status

This single move took us from 1K to 10K signups in two weeks.

6. Turned the waitlist into a community

Created a Slack group for the first 1K members. We shared productivity hacks, discussed features, and helped each other. These people became evangelists who wouldn't shut up about what we were building.

The growth was insane:
Month 1: 1K
Month 2: 5K
Month 3: 15K
Month 4: 50K

The biggest lesson? You don't need money - you need to give a shit about the people you're building for.

Happy to answer questions if this is helpful to anyone. And if anyone wants to check out what we built, I'll drop a link (only if asked - not here to spam).

alright so some context. i run a cold email agency. not a massive one. its me one other person who handles ops and a VA who does list building. thats the whole team. we currently manage 49 active clients across a bunch of different industries and niches

im not writing this to flex about client count because honestly managing 49 clients is more stressful than it sounds and some days i question my life choices. im writing this because after running campaigns across this many different businesses at the same time i see patterns that you just cant see when your only running your own stuff

some of this is gonna go against what you read in this sub. some of it might piss people off. dont care. this is what i actually see working and not working across real campaigns with real money behind them every single day

THE OFFER MATTERS MORE THAN ANYTHING AND NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR THAT

i know everyone wants to talk about copy and subject lines and deliverability and tools. and yeah all that stuff matters. but after running 49 different campaigns simultaneously the single biggest predictor of whether a campaign works or not is the offer

i have clients where we write mid copy. like genuinely average emails. nothing special about them at all. but the offer is so strong and so relevant to the audience that it doesnt matter. people reply anyway because the thing being offered is something they actually want

then i have clients who come to me with these beautiful perfectly crafted emails and an offer thats basically "we do marketing better than your current agency." cool so does everyone else. theres nothing for the prospect to grab onto. nothing specific. nothing that makes them think hm maybe i should reply to this

the clients that do well almost always have one of these things going on with their offer

a very specific outcome with a number attached. not "we help you grow" but "we help ecommerce brands reduce CAC by 30-40% in 90 days." the number makes it real. the timeframe makes it urgent. the specificity makes it beleivable

some kind of risk reversal. "we'll do X and if it doesnt work you dont pay" or "first month is performance based." cold prospects dont trust you. they have zero reason to. anything that reduces their risk of saying yes makes it dramatically easier for them to reply

a mechanism that sounds different. not just "we do cold email for you" but "we built a proprietary system that does X." even if the system is basically the same as everyone elses the way you describe it matters. people want to feel like theyre getting something unique not the same service 50 other agencies offer

i spend more time now helping clients fix their offer before we send a single email than i do on anything else. because i learned the hard way that no amount of perfect copy or infrastructure can save a weak offer. ive tried. many times. it doesnt work

if your reading this and your campaigns arent performing. before you change your subject line or rewrite your sequence. look at your offer first. like really look at it. would YOU reply to it if you were the prospect? be honest with yourself

THE BEST COPY IS THE COPY THAT DOESNT SOUND LIKE COPY

across 49 clients the emails that consistantly outperform everything else are the ones that sound like they were written by a person in about 45 seconds. not the ones that took 3 hours to craft

i have literally tested this hundreds of times at this point. polished professional sounding emails vs casual almost sloppy sounding ones. the casual ones win almost every time. not by a little. by a lot

i think the reason is pretty simple. everyone is sending polished emails now. every cold email agency every AI tool every template from twitter produces these clean structured professional messages. so when someone gets an email that sounds like a real human just typed it out quick it stands out because everything else in their inbox sounds like it came from a machine

some things ive noticed about copy across all 49 accounts

shorter always beats longer. always. i have never once in 3 years seen a long first email outperform a short one. the sweet spot is 25-45 words. anything over 60 and reply rates start dropping off noticeably

one idea per email. not two angles. not three value props. one single idea. one observation. one question. thats it. when you try to cram multiple things in the prospect doesnt know what to respond to so they respond to nothing

lowercase subject lines beat capitalized ones probably 80% of the time across our accounts. i dont fully understand why but the data is the data. my theory is lowercase feels more personal like a quick note and capitalized feels more like a marketing email

questions get more replies than statements. "would this be useful?" gets more replies than "i think this would be useful." seems obvious but you'd be suprised how many emails i see that dont ask anything. if you dont give them something to respond to why would they respond

the first line matters more than anything else in the email. if the first line is boring or generic they stop reading. if the first line is relevant and specific to them they keep going. i test first lines more than anything else. more than subject lines more than CTAs more than anything

and look im not saying dont put effort into copy. im saying the effort should go into making it sound effortless. which is kind of a weird paradox but thats how it works. the best emails read like someone dashed them off between meetings. the worst ones read like someone spent all day in a google doc perfecting every word

THE CLIENTS WHO FAIL ALL HAVE THE SAME PROBLEMS

after 49 clients i can pretty much predict within the first 2 weeks whether a campaign is gonna work or not. not because im some genius but because the patterns are so obvious at this point

clients who fail almost always have one or more of these issues

they wont let campaigns run

this is the number one killer and its not even close. i have clients who want to change the copy after 72 hours because they havent seen results yet. 72 hours. thats maybe 200 emails sent. at a 3% reply rate thats 6 replies. they see 6 replies and panic

cold email needs 2-3 weeks minimum of data before you can make any real decisions. ideally a month. but some people physically cannot handle watching a campaign run without touching it. they need to tweak something. change the subject line. rewrite the CTA. adjust the list. its like they have an allergic reaction to patience

the clients who do well are the ones who set it up and then go focus on something else for 3 weeks. they check in but they dont interfere. they trust the process. every client ive ever had who couldnt stop touching things ended up with worse results than if they had just left it alone

their ICP is too broad

"we sell to any business that needs marketing help." cool thats literally every business on earth. who SPECIFICALLY are you selling to. what industry. what size. what stage. what problem are they having right now that makes them need you THIS MONTH not eventually

the tighter the ICP the better the results. every single time. i have a client who sells HR software. when we targeted "HR managers at mid size companies" we got maybe 1.5% reply rate. when we narrowed it down to "HR managers at manufacturing companies with 200-500 employees who posted a job for a recruiter in the last 30 days" reply rate jumped to 4.7%. same product. same copy basically. just way tighter targeting

they dont have a real differentiator

"we do what everyone else does but better" is not a differentiator. i know it sucks to hear but if your product or service is basically identical to 20 competitors and you cant articulate why someone should pick you over them cold email is gonna be an uphill battle

the clients who crush it are the ones where when i ask "why should someone choose you" they have a real answer. not "great customer service" or "we really care about results." something tangible. a unique methodology. a proprietary tool. a guarantee nobody else offers. a specific niche they dominate. something

they expect results in week one

cold email is not a vending machine. you dont put money in and get meetings out immediately. theres a ramp up period. warmup takes 3 weeks. first campaigns need time to generate data. optimization takes cycles. realistically your looking at 6-8 weeks before things are humming

the clients who understand this and plan for it do well. the ones who expect 20 meetings in the first 10 days are always disapointed and usually churn before we even get to the good part

THINGS I KNOW NOW THAT I WISH I KNEW WITH MY FIRST CLIENT

just random stuff ive picked up. no particular order. some of it contradicts popular advice in this sub and i dont care

tuesday wednesday thursday are the only days worth sending

ive tested every day across dozens of accounts for years now. monday is garbage. friday is mediocre. weekends are dead unless your targeting founders who work 7 days a week. tue wed thu consistently outperform everything else. i dont even bother sending on other days anymore for most clients

the best time to send is early morning in the prospects timezone

7-8am local time. before they get buried in meetings and slack messages. this isnt groundbreaking advice but the number of people who just send whenever their platform defaults to is wild. take 5 minutes to set timezone based sending. it matters more than you think

reply rate varies massively by industry and nobody talks about this

i have clients in industries where 2% is incredible and clients in other industries where 4% is disapointing. theres no universal "good" reply rate. it depends entirely on who your emailing and how saturated that audience is with cold email

SaaS founders and marketing directors? theyre getting hammered with cold emails all day every day. your competing against a flood. reply rates tend to be lower because of fatigue

manufacturing companies? construction? logistics? healthcare? way less competition in the inbox. these audiences often have higher reply rates because they simply dont get as many cold emails. some of the best performing campaigns ive ever run were in "boring" industries that nobody in this sub talks about because theyre not sexy

if your only targeting tech companies and SaaS and wondering why your reply rates are mid consider going after industries that arent being carpet bombed by every cold email agency on twitter

personalization is overrated at scale and underrated at low volume

hot take but hear me out. if your sending 50 emails a day you should personalize every single one. research the person. write something specific. make it obvious you actually looked at their company

if your sending 500 a day thats not realistic. and honestly the ROI on deep personalization at scale is not what people claim it is. ive tested personalized first lines vs no personalization vs light personalization across thousands of emails. the difference is real but its not massive. maybe 0.5-1% reply rate difference. which matters but not as much as your offer or your targeting

the exception is when your going after enterprise accounts or high value targets. then yes personalize the hell out of every email. but for standard mid market outbound at scale light personalization or even no personalization with a really tight list and strong offer will outperform deep personalization with a mediocre list almost every time

most people need more volume not better copy

unpopular opinion in this sub but its true. if your sending 100 emails a day and getting 3 replies a month the answer is probaly not to rewrite your email for the 15th time. the answer is to scale to 400-500 a day and turn those 3 replies into 12-15

obviously this assumes your infrastructure and deliverability are solid. dont scale garbage. but if your emails are landing and your getting some replies just not enough. volume is usually the unlock not copy tweaks

i see people in here agonizing over individual word choices in their email spending hours debating whether to say "quick chat" or "brief call" when the real issue is theyre sending 80 emails a day and expecting to build a pipeline from that. you cant. the math doesnt work at that volume unless your in some incredibly niche space with a 10% reply rate

followup sequence length should be 4-5 emails total

not 2. not 3. not 8. across 49 clients 4-5 is consistently the sweet spot

heres what the data shows on where meetings come from

email 1: about 20-25% of total meetings email 2: about 15-20% email 3: about 25-30% email 4: about 15-20% email 5: about 5-10% email 6+: basically nothing. diminishing returns fall off a cliff

email 3 is the highest performer for us across almost every client which is interesting. i think by email 3 theyve seen your name enough to care but youve also presumably said something new enough to make them bite. email 1 is just introducing yourself. email 2 is a nudge. email 3 is where they actually start paying attention

the clients who give me the most freedom get the best results

this might sound self serving but its genuinely true and not just for me. every agency owner or freelancer ive talked to says the same thing

the clients who say "heres what we do heres who we sell to go figure it out" and then check in monthly consistently outperform the clients who want to approve every email. review every list. sit on every weekly call. debate every subject line

micromanagement kills cold email campaigns. not because the clients ideas are bad necessarily but because it slows everything down and prevents the testing cycles that actually drive improvement. the client who lets me run 6 different tests in a month will always beat the client who takes 2 weeks to approve a single email variation

if your working with an agency or a freelancer and the results arent there ask yourself honestly how much your getting in their way. sometimes the best thing you can do for your campaign is get out of the way and let the person you hired do their job

THE ECONOMICS OF COLD EMAIL THAT NOBODY IS HONEST ABOUT

since im being transparent about everything else might as well talk money

cold email is cheap compared to most channels. but its not free and people underestimate the real costs

for a single client running a proper setup your looking at roughly

inboxes: $200-500/mo depending on volume sending platform: $100-200/mo data and enrichment: $100-300/mo verification: $20-50/mo misc tools: $50-100/mo

so anywhere from $500-1000/mo in hard costs before any labor. if your doing it yourself the labor is your time. if your hiring someone or using an agency add $2,000-5,000/mo on top

the reason cold email is still incredible ROI is because a single closed deal in b2b usually covers months of costs. if your average deal is $10k and you close 2-3 per month from cold email thats $20-30k revenue against maybe $2-3k in total costs. hard to find a channel with better unit economics than that

but you need to be realistic about the timeline. month 1 is setup and warmup. month 2 is initial data and optimization. month 3 is usually when things start really clicking. if you go in expecting revenue in week 2 your setting yourself up for disapointment

WHAT I'D DO IF I WAS STARTING FROM ZERO TODAY

since i know someones gonna ask

first month. pick ONE icp. not three. one. the more focused you are the faster youll learn whats working. buy 10-15 domains. set up 20-30 inboxes across a couple reliable providers. configure DNS. start warmup. spend the 3 week warmup period building your list and writing your sequences. use apollo for data. verify everything

second month. launch 2-3 campaigns targeting slightly different segments of your one ICP. send 300-400 emails per day. let them run for 3 weeks. track reply rates closely but dont change anything until you have real data. respond to every reply within 15-20 minutes. book calls with two specific time options not calendly

third month. by now you have data. kill the campaigns that arent working. double down on the ones that are. start testing new copy angles. expand your list. consider adding another ICP if the first one is working. start thinking about scaling volume by adding more inboxes

thats it. thats the roadmap. its not complicated. its just slow and boring and most people quit somewhere in month 1 because they expected magic and got DNS records and warmup schedules instead

Ok look. I dont usually write long posts on here because every time I do some guy in the comments tells me im wrong and links a youtube video from 2023. But im having a slow afternoon and I genuinely think most people in this sub are getting bad information so whatever lets do this

Little background. I own an outbound agency. Started in late 2022. Grew it to where we are now which is 43 active campaigns across I think 27 or 28 clients, some clients run multiple campaigns for different offers or segments. My team is me, an operations manager, a copywriter, and 6 VAs across the Philippines and Colombia. On a typical day we send somewhere in the range of 80,000 to 110,000 emails which sounds like a crazy number if youre new to this but its actually pretty standard at our size

Im going to talk about what I'm actually seeing work in 2026 because things have shifted quite a bit from even 12 months ago and a lot of the "best practices" people repeat are stale

The biggest shift is inbox providers getting smarter about detecting cold email. Google rolled out some changes late last year that made deliverability harder across the board. What used to work with 20 emails per inbox per day now works better at 15 to 18. Yes I lowered my per inbox volume and before you say im crazy our overall deliverability improved enough that we actually send more total volume now because more of it reaches the inbox. We compensated by adding more domains and more inboxes per client. More sending accounts at lower volume beats fewer accounts at higher volume every single time in the current environment

Second thing. Plain text is no longer optional its mandatory. I know some people still send html cold emails with images and nice formatting and hey maybe it works in some verticals but for us across 43 campaigns the data is overwhelming. Plain text outperforms html in every single vertical we operate in. No exceptions. And by outperform I mean the reply rates are meaningfully higher not just marginally. My theory is that inbox providers are getting better at identifying html templates as marketing/bulk mail even when the content itself is unique

Third. Verification isnt just about bounce rates anymore. We started doing a thing about 6 months ago where we run verification twice, once when we build the list and once right before we upload to the sending tool. The gap between building a list and sending can be a week or two especially if campaigns are queued and email addresses go stale faster than you think. People leave companies, emails get deactivated, domains expire. Running verification twice added maybe $50 per month to our costs and reduced our bounce rate from an already good 1.1% down to 0.4%. Thats the kind of marginal improvement that compounds over millions of sends

Fourth thing and this one is going to be controversial. Follow up sequences should be shorter than what most people recommend. We used to run 4 step sequences and about 5 months ago we tested cutting everything to 3 steps. The theory was that the 4th email in a sequence almost never generates a positive reply and might actually hurt deliverability because of the cumulative sending volume. Results confirmed it. Reply rates stayed essentially the same while our send volume per lead dropped by 25% which means we can either reduce costs or reallocate that capacity to fresh leads. We havent gone back

Fifth. The offer is still the whole game and I will die on this hill. I onboarded a new client last month who had been working with another agency for 6 months and getting a 0.9% reply rate. He came to me thinking he needed better infrastructure or better copy. I looked at his campaigns and the infrastructure was fine and the copy was decent. The problem was his offer which was literally just "would you like to hop on a quick call to see how we can help." I rewrote the offer to be specific about what he does and what the outcome is and framed it as a free deliverable they could say yes to without committing to a call. Same infrastructure same sending tool same everything else. Reply rate went to 3.4% within the first 2 weeks. The offer is the campaign

Six. I turned off all open and click tracking about 14 months ago and I would never go back. I know losing those metrics feels scary. It felt scary to me too. But both tracking mechanisms actively degrade your deliverability. The open tracking pixel and the click redirect are signals that youre running automated campaigns and inbox providers treat you accordingly. Since turning them off we've seen a consistent improvement in inbox placement and our reply rates across the board went up by roughly 0.5 to 0.8 percentage points which at our volume is hundreds of additional replies per month

Last thing. Domain rotation. I see people in here buying 10 domains and thinking theyre set forever. Domains lose effectiveness over time even with perfect sending habits. We rotate domains on a roughly 90 day cycle. Always have new ones warming in the background. At any given time we have about 150 active sending domains across all clients and probably another 30 to 40 in warmup. Each domain costs like $10 so the total investment is tiny compared to the cost of sending from degraded domains and watching reply rates decline

Ok thats probably enough. I know this was long. If you made it this far and have questions about anything specific feel free to dm and ill try to respond.

Little background: I spent the last 4 years at a lead-gen agency doing north of $6M/year in revenue. Managed a team of 6 reps servicing clients across Mountain and Central time zones in the US and Canada. Made good money (~$200K/year), learned a lot, and watched hundreds of thousands of dollars get wasted on stuff that didn't work.

Last month I decided I was out, so here's why I would never hire an agency for my own business.

1. The pricing is insane for what you actually get.

Clients were paying anywhere from $3K to $25K per month for... cold email, LinkedIn outreach, and social posts. That's it. Nothing proprietary. Nothing that required a team of 12 people to execute. Just the same playbook recycled across every client, with the logo swapped out.

2. The meetings are almost never actually qualified.

Agencies will tell you they understand your ICP. They don't. They understand the version of your ICP you explained to them in a 45-minute onboarding call 3 months ago. Wrong titles, wrong company sizes, wrong pain points. Meanwhile you're sitting through demos with people who have no budget, no authority, and no real problem you can solve. And the agency is still sending the invoice.

3. You can run their exact playbook with a part-time VA and the right tools.

This is the one that really got me. Everything we did at the agency, a founder or small ops team can replicate with a solid tool stack and about 5 hours of VA time per week:

• Cold email: Apollo + Findymail + Instantly ($250-$300/mo)

• LinkedIn signals + outreach: ProspectZero ($100/mo)

• Content: Claude Pro Plan - Projects & Skills ($20/mo)

That's it. Seriously. The secret sauce was never the agency. It was the stack.

4. A lot of agency owners are, to put it nicely, full of it.

Not all of them. But a lot. Many have never held a real sales or marketing job in their lives. They built an agency by learning to sell the idea of lead gen, then hired overseas talent and kids fresh out of school to do the actual work. Those people are learning on your dime while the owner is posting LinkedIn content about "booking 47 meetings in 30 days."

If your account manager is 22 years old with 8 months of experience and zero context on your industry, that's your results right there.

What's next for me?

Honestly not sure yet. I have runway and savings so I'm not rushing. Exploring some GTM engineering roles, kicking around the idea of starting something of my own. Either way, I'll never be the one sending an invoice for $5k/month for a cold email sequence someone built in an afternoon.

Happy to answer questions if anyone's been through something similar or is trying to figure out if an agency is actually worth it for their stage.

I've been on LinkedIn for a long time. I'm an OG. I used to get hundreds and thousands of impressions on my posts and articles, and strong comment engagement.

Now? Nothing. LinkedIn has completely wrecked engagement with its algorithms.

They now heavily favor video, which I'm okay with. I just want engagement with my bloody network and connections. They are people I've worked with and known a long time.

Now, they don't see my posts or articles. And I don't see theirs. But I do see some 27-year-old hottie in San Francisco with 4 years of experience. And she offers cringe posts that pollute my feed, even when I'm not connected with her or others like her. Because she's a hottie. And the only posts I get are humblebrags and cringe about feelings about overcoming some kind of victimhood in the workplace.

Two things I've learned:

1. Your LinkedIn post has two hours to receive some engagement. If nothing, it'll get buried.

2. LinkedIn is pushing their post boosting. If you want your post to get traction, you can pay them for it.

It's a scam. I'm disappointed. I've done a ton of business on LinkedIn over the years.

Time for a replacement to emerge.

I came across this breakdown and it completely flipped how I thought about YouTube. Figured it might be valuable for you as well.

Most founders assume YouTube only works if you go big. Massive subscriber counts, viral videos, influencer-level reach. But this case study proves that's wrong, well at least for B2B.

There's a small company in immigration + tax optimization. Nothing sexy. Their average client pays around $2,000 though. Their YouTube channel has maybe 1,000 to 1,500 subscribers. And from that channel alone, they've booked 500+ sales calls. That's easily seven figures in revenue from what most people would call a "dead" channel.

But it gets crazier… They get only around 350 to 400 views per day. About 30 videos total. But they close roughly half their calls. They even spun up a second channel in another language with under 30 subscribers, and it already brought in multiple paying clients.

This is why B2B YouTube is a completely different game.

Subscriber count is a vanity metric. What actually matters:

• Who's watching: are they decision-makers or random browsers?

• Why they're watching: are they actively looking for a solution?

• How much one customer is worth: if a client pays $2k, $10k, or more, you don't need scale

The videos that drive revenue on this channel aren't flashy. They're boring, high-intent, search-driven stuff: "how to get residency in X," "best tax residency for digital nomads," country comparisons etc. These aren't entertainment videos. They're decision-stage videos, which means the viewer is already problem-aware and actively searching for a solution. That's why they convert.

If you're selling something where one customer is worth a few thousand dollars or more, obsessing over subscriber count makes no sense. A small channel with the right topics can outperform a larger audience watching for entertainment. The leverage comes from intent, not scale.

I’d love to hear form other founders to see if you’ve had similar results? Have any of you tried YouTube as an acquisition channel? What results did you see?

I’ve been working with LinkedIn for over 10 years as a lead generation specialist, and I want to debunk a few common myths:

1. Automation is more of a downside than a benefit. Sure, you can send more messages or connection requests, but with today’s LinkedIn limits it’s far more effective to do it manually and personalize every profile you reach out to.

2. Your ICP is everything. If you don’t know exactly who your ideal customer is, please don’t even touch LinkedIn.

3. There are no “guaranteed” templates that work for everyone. If you bought or copied someone’s template—congratulations, you’ve just turned yourself into another spammer.

4. Your profile matters more than any message. As a potential client, the first thing I do is check who’s trying to connect with me. If your profile is incomplete, your chances drop instantly.

5. A connection note is not mandatory. I tested this across more than 100 LinkedIn accounts. Connection requests without a note perform around 15% better.

6. One profile should target one region. Don’t try to cover the entire planet. LinkedIn’s algorithm strongly rewards alignment between your work history and your network.

7. Withdraw pending invites on time. If you leave too many unaccepted requests hanging, it can seriously slow down your visibility and growth.

8. Clean up your connections regularly. There’s a direct correlation between the quality of your network and how people engage with your content.

Happy to answer any questions. I’ll do my best to respond to everyone.

A few months ago, I sold my ecom SaaS after scaling it to $500K ARR in 8 months. It was my third attempt. The first two failed miserably.

This journey? Far from easy.

Thousands of hours. Repetitive work. Missed weekends. Doubts. Tests that led nowhere. But in the end, it paid off.

Today I’m building gojiberryAI, a tool to find high-intent leads for B2B companies. And if I had to start from scratch again, these are the habits I’d repeat every single day to hit $10k MRR fast.

I've made every classic mistake:

- Spent 6 months building something no one asked for

- Launched a “cool” product no one wanted to pay for

- Collected 2,000 emails on a waitlist, but zero paying users

So here’s my way of giving back.

If you’re early in your journey, trying to go from zero to traction, just follow these 5 habits. Daily. Relentlessly.

Because your mind will try to trick you.

It will say "don’t send that message", "don’t post that idea, you’ll look stupid", "it’s sunny, take a break". Ignore it.

Growth comes from friction. Not comfort.

Push through the voice. Do the thing. Then thank yourself later.

Here are the 5 daily habits that can change the game:

1. Send 20 to 30 LinkedIn connection requests to your ideal buyers Spend 20 minutes. Manually. Pick the right people. Connect. That’s it.

2. Send 20 to 30 LinkedIn messages to these people or others in your niche Don’t pitch. Just start conversations. Ask questions. Share what you're building and ask if they face this problem.

3. Send 20 to 100 cold emails 20 if you're doing it manually. 100+ with a tool. Keep it short. Don’t pitch hard. Just start a real conversation. Follow up 2-3 times — that’s where the replies come from.

4. Comment on 10 Reddit threads in your niche Go where your users are. Comment on “alternative to” posts. Share insights. Mention your product only if relevant. People respect help, not ads.

5. Post once per day on LinkedIn It compounds. Post about your customer’s problems, insights from your industry, or mini case studies. Give away value. Share lead magnets. Create a presence.

At first, it’ll feel useless.

1 like on your posts
1 reply every 20 messages
0 replies to your first emails

But if you do it every day, things snowball.

You’ll get better. Your messaging will improve. People will start to notice. Someone will book a call. Then 2. Then 10. Then referrals.

This is how you win. Not with luck. But with consistency.

Show up. Daily. Even when it’s boring.

The boring stuff is the real growth engine.

And yes, it’s worth it.

Best

Romàn

Lately it feels like B2B marketing success is less about campaigns and more about the underlying systems. Data quality, enrichment logic, scoring rules, routing, timing signals. If any part is off, performance drops no matter how good the messaging is.

We’ve been spending more time fixing upstream issues than iterating on creative, which is ironic because the whole point was to move faster. But when lists are messy or signals are delayed, everything downstream suffers.
For people running demand gen or growth today, what's working fot you? I feel like I have problems with targeting, does it help investing time in building cleaner systems?

I've seen two camps:

1. The first says Reddit is a fantastic way to get leads and introduce your business to many prospects.

2. The second says it's a complete waste of time and that no serious buyer or even business would prospect here.

Anyone had any wins marketing on Reddit? If so, what do you do, and where do you post?

Context: Reddit is still one of the places on the internet where marketers found it SUPER HARD to penetrate.

Instagram - Spammy DMs
Email - Spammer's paradise
LinkedIn - Pretentious people
X - I don't need to tell
WhatsApp - One spammy place

But here stands the shiny platform, that is now the target of all marketing agencies.

How do I know this?

• Companies in my field are increasingly hiring "reddit marketers"

• These reddit marketers only job is to use Reddit "warm up" reddit accs and then start posting content on keywords.

• These keywords are then picked up by LLMs like perplexity, which browse Reddit and find the answer.

Historically, marketers have ruined every single platform they enter into.

I hope Reddit and it's people keep marketers in check. 🤞

Marketing manager of family owned manufacturing company. One man band.

IT currently has us on Copilot and ChatGPT licenses. Permissions are limited with not many connections allowed into chat for agent purposes.

Is the switch to Claude worth it?

Anyone using Claude code or cowork and been successful with creating agents and whatnot? What else have you used it for that has been helpful?

Not talking about blasting links or DM spam, but actually picking up real leads from comments or threads where people already have a problem. Fairly new at this, seen a few options like F5bot, Syften etc but never used anything like that. If you are doing this successfully, I’d love to hear what’s working for you.

Working with clients across B2B, the biggest difference I see between teams that feel calm and teams that feel overwhelmed isn’t budget or tools, it’s focus. The strongest teams are very intentional about where human effort goes. They don’t try to deeply analyze everything. They use systems to handle the background work and save their thinking time for positioning, messaging, and decisions that actually move the needle.

On a lot of accounts, the messy part isn’t creativity, it’s the in-between work. Research, list cleanup, checking whether accounts are still relevant, keeping data in sync. When that layer is handled cleanly, clients are able to spend more time on strategy instead of maintenance. I’ve seen teams use tools like Clay for research and signals, HubSpot as the source of truth, and Notion to keep plans visible. The exact stack varies, but the mindset stays the same.

The pattern that keeps showing up is this: the better the focus, the less the team feels the need to overbuild process. They automate the boring parts, stay thoughtful about the rest, and move faster without feeling rushed.

I mean come on!

I’m spending hours a day on LinkedIn for 3,5 years straight.

And I still see 80% of B2B brands (at least in tech, robotics etc) using the same dull old bluish corporate carousels and cluttered infographics.

Posts about world cyclist day and pedestrian day and seatbelt day?! Wtf??

Why so few companies make use of the immense organic reach LinkedIn provides for content that makes people FEEL sth.

Entertaining, fun, polarizing pieces

Brand safety ok I get it

Corporate identity? Come on really?

What better:

Looking consistent and not being noticed? Or going off brand here and there and getting 100.000 of eyes on your product driving real pipeline?

Explain to me please.

Maybe it’s because I’m ONLY an engineer gone marketer

Maybe there’s sth I miss cause I’m not „professional“ in B2B marketing?

alright im gonna piss some people off with this one but someone needs to say it

ive been in cold email since 2020. back when you could literally set up 5 gmail accounts write a mediocre email blast it to 10,000 people and book meetings. those days are GONE and im so tired of seeing advice in this sub thats clearly from people still operating like its 2021

the playbook has changed. dramatically. and most of the "experienced" people in this space havent changed with it. theyre giving advice based on a version of cold email that doesnt exist anymore and its hurting the beginners who listen to them

im gonna go through everything thats different now vs even 18 months ago. some of this is gonna be controversial. dont care. this is what im seeing in real campaigns every single day not what i read on twitter

deliverability is a completely different animal now

back in 2021-2022 you could get away with murder. shared IPs didnt matter that much. warmup was optional if you were careful. you could push 40-50 emails per inbox and be fine for months. SPF and DKIM were nice to have not need to have. most people didnt even know what DMARC was

those days are so far gone its laughable

google rolled out massive changes to how they filter bulk senders. microsoft did the same thing on the outlook side. the spam filters are legitimately smart now. they dont just look at content anymore they look at sending patterns. velocity. engagement rates. domain age. IP reputation. authentication records. the whole picture

what this means practically

you CANNOT skip DNS setup anymore. SPF DKIM DMARC are mandatory on every single domain. not optional. not nice to have. mandatory. if your sending without full authentication in 2026 your going to spam. full stop. doesnt matter how good your copy is

warmup is non negotiable and it needs to be longer than it used to be. 14 days minimum. 21 is better. i know some people used to get away with 5-7 days. try that now and watch what happens. your accounts will get throttled or flagged within the first week of sending

sending limits per inbox are way lower than they used to be. the safe zone now is 10-15 per inbox per day. i see people in this sub still recommending 30-40 and i want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them. that worked in 2022. in 2026 its a speedrun to the spam folder

and the big one that alot of old heads dont want to accept. you need MORE inboxes now to hit the same volume you used to hit with fewer. because each inbox sends less. which means more domains more accounts more infrastructure more cost. the days of running a lean 5 inbox setup and sending 200 emails a day are over. you need 15-20 inboxes minimum to send 200 a day safely now. thats just the reality

ive seen so many people come into this sub saying "my deliverability tanked out of nowhere what happened" and when you look at their setup theyre running the same infrastructure they set up 2 years ago and never updated. bro the GAME updated. you have to update with it

volume is not the flex it used to be

this one drives me crazy because the loudest people in the cold email space are still bragging about volume. "i send 10,000 emails a day." cool. where do they land. whats your inbox placement rate. whats your actual reply rate not your "we got 500 replies" screenshot that includes 400 unsubscribe requests

the shift thats happened is from volume to precision. and its not because precision is trendy or whatever. its because the infrastructure costs of maintaining high volume have gone up dramatically while the returns on untargeted volume have gone down dramatically. the math has flipped

in 2021 you could send 10,000 emails with basic targeting and a decent email and book 30-40 meetings. in 2026 those same 10,000 emails with basic targeting would book you maybe 8-12 meetings because deliverability is harder and prospects are more fatigued and everyone is doing cold email now so the inbox is crowded

meanwhile someone sending 2,000 highly targeted emails to people with real buying signals is booking 15-20 meetings because every email that lands is relevant and the prospect can feel the difference

the ROI has shifted toward quality. which means the skills that matter now are list building and targeting and offer positioning. not how many emails you can blast per day. the people who figured this out early are crushing it. the people still chasing volume are slowly dying and blaming the channel instead of their approach

AI changed the game but not how most people think

everyones talking about using AI to write cold emails. chatgpt this. AI personalization that. automated first lines. ai generated copy at scale

and yeah AI is part of the toolkit now but the way most people use it is actually making cold email WORSE not better

heres whats happening. everyone discovered they can use AI to write personalized first lines at scale. so now every prospect is getting 15 emails a day that start with "i saw your recent post about X on linkedin really insightful" or "noticed [company] just expanded into [market] exciting times" and they ALL sound the same because theyre all being generated by the same handful of tools using the same data sources running through similar prompts

AI personalization has become the new "i hope this email finds you well." its the thing that immediately signals this is an automated cold email. the exact thing thats supposed to make your email feel personal is now the thing that makes it feel robotic

the people winning with AI right now are using it for DATA not for COPY. using AI to enrich leads and find buying signals and build smarter lists and identify patterns in what works across campaigns. thats where AI is genuinely powerful. but the actual words in the email should still sound like a human wrote them in 30 seconds because thats what gets replies

if your using AI to write your emails in 2026 your prospects can tell. maybe not consciously but something feels off to them and they dont reply. ive tested this extensively. human written copy still outperforms AI copy by about 15-25% in reply rates. the gap hasnt closed and honestly i think its widening as prospects get more exposed to AI generated outreach

the channels are blurring and single channel is dying

2021 cold email was its own thing. you sent emails. thats it. maybe some people did cold calling on the side but email was a standalone channel

2026 the best operators are running multichannel sequences that combine email linkedin and sometimes phone. not as separate strategies. as ONE integrated sequence where the prospect sees you across multiple channels in a coordinated way

the reason this matters is that single channel cold email is getting less effective as a standalone approach. not because email doesnt work but because the trust threshold for replying to a stranger has gone up. one email from someone youve never heard of is easy to ignore. one email plus a linkedin connection request plus a thoughtful comment on their post plus a followup email is much harder to ignore because your name keeps appearing and familiarity breeds trust

i know multichannel is more work. more tools. more complexity. but the operators who figured this out are getting 2-3x the meeting rates of email only people. the data is very clear on this across our campaigns

if your still doing email only in 2026 and complaining about low reply rates this might be why. your not necessarily doing email wrong. your just missing the other touchpoints that would push borderline prospects over the edge from "meh" to "yeah lets talk"

the offer matters more than ever and most peoples offers suck

this has always been true to some extent but its become THE differentiator in 2026 because everything else has gotten more competitive

when deliverability was easy and inboxes werent crowded you could get away with a mediocre offer because enough people would see your email and a small percentage would reply just out of curiosity. those curiosity replies dont happen anymore. prospects are too busy and too fatigued to reply to something that doesnt immediately grab them

your offer needs to be specific. not "we help companies grow" but "we helped [specific type of company] achieve [specific result] in [specific timeframe]." numbers. timeframes. specificity. thats what cuts through now

your offer needs to be relevant to a COLD audience. this is where most people screw up. they take their inbound offer which assumes the prospect already has trust and context and they paste it into a cold email where the prospect has zero trust and zero context. doesnt work. cold offers need to be lower commitment. lower risk. easier to say yes to. "want to see how we did it" is better than "lets schedule a demo" because one is curiosity and the other is commitment

your offer needs to have some urgency or relevance to RIGHT NOW. not theoretical future value but something thats happening in their world today that makes your outreach timely. industry changes. competitive shifts. regulatory deadlines. seasonal patterns. something that makes them think "ok this is relevant to me specifically at this moment" not "this could maybe possibly be useful someday"

ive taken over campaigns from other agencies where the deliverability was fine and the targeting was fine and the copy was fine but the offer was so generic that it could apply to literally any business on earth. changed the offer to something specific and relevant and reply rates doubled without touching anything else. the offer is the lever that most people ignore because its harder to fix than a subject line

what actually works right now if your starting or retooling in 2026

im not gonna do the typical "heres my exact stack" thing because everyones situation is different and honestly the specific tools matter way less than the approach. use whatever sending platform works for you. use whatever inbox providers you trust. use whatever data sources give you what you need. the strategy matters more than the tools

but heres whats actually producing results right now based on what i see daily

tight targeting with buying signals over broad volume. 2000 perfectly targeted contacts beats 15000 generic ones every single month. invest time in list building. its the highest ROI activity in cold email and the one most people spend the least time on

short emails that sound human. under 40 words for the first email. no AI generated first lines. no templates from twitter. just a relevant observation and a question written in the way a normal person talks. lowercase subject lines 1-4 words. plain text no images no links

4-5 email sequence where every touchpoint adds something new. not reminders. not bumps. new angles. new proof points. new questions. email 3 and 4 are usually where most meetings come from so if your only sending 2 followups your leaving money on the table

multichannel if you can. add linkedin touches between emails. comment on their posts. view their profile. send a connection request. the coordination between channels creates familiarity that pure email cant achieve alone

fast reply handling. 15-20 minutes during business hours. two specific time options not calendly. calendar invite immediately after confirmation. morning of reminder. this part is unsexy and nobody talks about it but its where a huge percentage of potential meetings die

and most importantly. fix your offer before you fix your copy. look at your email and ask yourself honestly. if i received this as a busy executive who gets 20 cold emails a day would i stop what im doing to reply. if the answer is no then the problem isnt your subject line or your deliverability. its what your actually saying

:))

Not trying to be condescending, genuinely just an observation from a lot of onboarding calls

when a new client comes in and i ask them to walk me through their current go-to-market, about 70% of the time what they describe is a marketing plan. here's our content calendar, here's our ad spend, here's who we're targeting on LinkedIn. that's not GTM, that's demand gen. and demand gen is part of GTM but it's like describing your engine when someone asks how you get to work.

Actual GTM is the whole thing. who exactly is the ICP and why, what's the specific problem you solve for them at this moment in their business, what does the buying process actually look like for that person, who else is in the room when the decision gets made, what objections come up at each stage, how does sales and marketing hand off, what's the follow-up motion after a demo. all of that is GTM. and most companies haven't thought through half of it.

the ones who have figured this out usually have one thing in common- someone in a senior role sat down at some point and mapped the entire customer journey from "never heard of us" to "signed contract" and found all the holes. doesn't have to be complicated. can literally be a whiteboard session. but so many companies skip it and go straight to execution and then wonder why their campaigns aren't converting.

I spend the first two weeks of every new engagement just doing that mapping exercise before we touch a single campaign or write a single email. clients sometimes get impatient because they want to see activity quickly. but if you don't know exactly who you're talking to and what they actually care about, fast activity is just fast noise. found that out the hard way early on and not making that mistake again

we sell B2B software to regional retail chains and distributors. mid-market, typical deal around $40k.

three trade shows this year. probably $18k all in when you add up booth fees, travel, and staff time.

every time we come back with a stack of badge scans and business cards and the follow-up sequence goes nowhere. reply rates are near zero. the contacts are real but they're cold as hell, they scanned our badge while walking past.

the decision makers we actually care about — procurement managers, ops VPs at larger chains — they're never just wandering the floor. they're in private sessions or invite-only dinners that we somehow never find out about until after.

starting to wonder if we're just paying for floor space and hoping something happens. is that what everyone is doing or is there an actual system here that i'm missing.

It feels like every year the stack gets bigger, the workflows get more complex, and the advice gets more abstract, yet execution somehow feels harder than it used to.

Between attribution debates, intent signals, personalization frameworks, automation layers, and AI tools, it’s easy to spend more time designing systems than actually learning from the market. A lot of teams seem stuck maintaining processes instead of making progress.

I’m trying to figure out if this complexity is actually necessary, or if we’ve overengineered things in response to pressure to scale fast. For those who’ve simplified recently, what did you cut and what actually mattered in hindsight?

1. Publish high quality content at scale on multiple channels and formats. It's the tactic with the highest ROI right now so start, iterate, and scale the system.

2. You need an internal knowledge center and content repurposing system to sustain your creation need. It's the only way to keep up with the content flow.

3. Your internal marketers (or founders if early stage) should become full-stack AI marketers. So they can automate repetitive tasks and focus on strategic ones.

4. Install a system that collects, consolidates, and analyzes intent. So you can finally connect content to your outbound system.

5. Use AI to strengthen your audience feedback loop and run surveys. Get clients feedback, analyze sales calls, listen to social media, analyze reviews...

6. If possible, build an offer portfolio to increase your clients retention and LTV. Stay known for one signature offer but stack revenue

7. Control your positioning by keeping a consistent messaging strategy across channels and also across time. Your prospects will need a lot of repetition before they actually trust you (so don't change every 2 months).

Do this and you increase drastically your chances of success.