PerkyMarshmallow
PerkyMarshmallow

Marketing lead, 10.5 years, here to help!

Lead social, brand, perf, SEO, partnerships, community, growth, pretty much everything across zero to fairly high budgets. Happy to help.

19mo ago
App Promo
ZoomyMuffin
ZoomyMuffin

How many switches? Current salary & growth across roles?

PerkyMarshmallow
PerkyMarshmallow

Job 1 - 3 years - 5-7LPA Job 2 - 5 months - 11 LPA Job 3 - 18 months - 12-15LPA Job 4 - 2 years - 18-21 LPA Job 5- 11 months - 30-32 LPA Job 6 - 19 months - 45 to 55 to 75 LPA

Thank god for 2021, you see my first 7 years :,(

ZoomyMuffin
ZoomyMuffin

holy shit 75LPA as a marketer? you must be really good at it

ZippyDumpling
ZippyDumpling

Makes sense. Hard to miss your creativity across comments :)

Question: I have personally done performance marketing (specifically Google Ads) for multiple brands. At this stage, what do you feel are some up and coming ad platforms (eg Insta in 2015ish, Tiktok in 2019) that somebody can start capitalizing upon.

PerkyMarshmallow
PerkyMarshmallow

Thanks brah. It so could have been any of the crappy new ones (Chingari, Moj, etc.) but even within Bharat Instagram/FB is still the winner. I'm seeing the next wave come from your own community (whether) it's Discord, Reddit or made on Discourse. Running this well is half the battle won. Recommend checking our Convosight's blogs on marketing in other closed communities as well, super useful and scalable through them.

ZoomyMuffin
ZoomyMuffin

I really feel Reddit is the next big thing. Marketers who are creative and understand user persona really well will crack it easily.

BouncySushi
BouncySushi

Hello, thanks for doing this AMA. I'm not sure if I'm too late but I'd like some guidance.

I'm working at a friend's startup as the sole marketing guy, it's an early stage insurtech startup focused on US and EU market. With virtually zero budget, I do the following things: writing blogs and publishing on website, LinkedIn, Twitter; running cold emails sequences, making videos (screen recording of products) and visual posts, general market research. The numbers have been increasing steadily in terms of SEO, site visits, impressions, etc (whatever you get in search console and GA).

Is now the time to ask for a budget for paid ads?

It seems to the leadership team that I am not doing much work because we don't get the MQLs. I wanna figure out how to do more and show results.

Thanks!

BouncySushi
BouncySushi

It's a B2B product selling to enterprise customers*

PerkyMarshmallow
PerkyMarshmallow

Looks like you do tons of work. First thing is to ascertain traffic that you drive. Also your MQLs may not be direct, are you checking the whole journey? What's your attribution window. There could be so many direct/organic/SEM guys who could've come after a while of reading any of your content bits. You 100% should ask for budgets - one for conversion (remarketing) ads and for the content you build. Some shit is for awareness, some for consideration, some for conversion. I'm 200% sure your attribution window is fucking you up. Read below posts for building your case further

  1. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/elenaverna_stopmqlstuffing-ungatecontent-marketing-activity-7079848615132700672-C32I?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android (Elena is the B2B marketing goddess, inhale her posts)

  2. Connecting brand to perf (literal gold): https://hbr.org/2023/05/how-brand-building-and-performance-marketing-can-work-together

ZippyMochi
ZippyMochi

Do you think it's possible to run brands/companies these days with zero money spent on ads/performance marketing?

What's your take on organic marketing today?

PerkyMarshmallow
PerkyMarshmallow

Only if 1. Your product is insane (CHATGPT), 2. You're SRKs son (heck even he had to produce that crap film for his crappier clothing line) 3. You're willing to invest lots of time and effort at cracking the SEO game with a long term vision. Zero spends is a way for idiotic founders to be penny wise pound foolish and extend runway nothing else. People are too afraid of experimenting, when it's usually something deeper like PMF. Don't spend much before PMF true, but don't not spend at all.

ZippyMochi
ZippyMochi

Context for my question: I've seen performance marketers struggle with frequent changes in algorithms. Often their accounts get banned without much reason (has happened with me once). Almost impossible to recover because meta support team sucks balls, even if your monthly spend is quite high.

Some days there will be no spend happening, some days accounts are emptied without any conversions happening. Correct attribution is also still a challenge between Meta and Google campaigns.

Been seeing a lot of issues with ads past 2-3 years especially in meta and Google. I don't feel they are reliable, and possibly a huge risk to business ops in case dependence on them increases and one day some random shit goes down with accounts disappearing/getting banned.

CosmicBagel
CosmicBagel

What are some brand building strategies / initiatives that early stage B2C startups should invest in?

PerkyMarshmallow
PerkyMarshmallow

Gimme budgets and the product brah, also include stuff you've already done, will help detail our proper answers.

ZoomyMuffin
ZoomyMuffin

Not OP, but I along with my friends have recently started a clothing brand.

We sell 1 T-shirt for ₹999, top fabric quality, free shipping and everything.

But we haven’t been able to crack marketing despite growing our IG to 700 odd followers - barely anyone buys our product.

What has worked for us till now is cold DM on Instagram. We basically scroll through famous streetwear brand’s IG page and DM their followers asking them about feedbacks on our design. Conversions rate here is really low - 0.1%(?) but it’s the only channel which has worked so far.

ZoomyMuffin
ZoomyMuffin

Perfomance Marketing or Influencer Marketing?

PerkyMarshmallow
PerkyMarshmallow

Even the smallest company needs dedicated perf guys, influencer marketing as a non-agency role exists in only massive brands with huge budgets (D2C and beauty). The ideal role should be perf -> growth (SEO, PLG, ASO, anything driving dhanda so even the referral charter if you get it) while trying to learn brand side stuff (social, ATL, BTL, content, influencers) or taking more responsibility. Here's my fav influencer case study: https://marketingexamples.com/ads/tabs

PerkyMarshmallow
PerkyMarshmallow

Also invest in getting better at research, the perf guy who knows consumer personas and why ad worked and why one didn't goes 360 degree marketeer first.

FuzzyNoodle
FuzzyNoodle

I am an undergrad, have interned at 3 startups before, in the first internship I got to learn about SEO.

In all other internships, I honestly didn't learn anything, I was a generalist managing operations that's it but, I got paid decently so didn't quit.

Recently I started working as an assistant to a growth person, I am learning from her.

I dont want to get into tech, I want to continue in growth.

  1. I want to know, if it's a better choice to pursue a growth career in the long term.

  2. When I graduate, what salary can I expect as a fresher growth person (my family condition is not so good financially)

  3. Any other skill, you would recommend me to learn

  4. Any advice

QuirkyBanana
QuirkyBanana

How much were you paid in the internships?

FuzzyNoodle
FuzzyNoodle

All of them in 15-30k range

CosmicBiscuit
CosmicBiscuit

Alll my friends are proper techies (coders and PmS) and are already in almost 2X my salary. Every time I tell people what my goals and ambitions are, they keep telling me you’re asking for too much for a marketer. So I’m a little lost right now. I don’t know anything besides copywriting, social media and community building and it’s starting to seem like these skills will nevere get to me accomplishing my money goals.

PerkyMarshmallow
PerkyMarshmallow

Don't be bogged down, if you're really good at community building and social (+ a great writer) there's tons of opportunities right now. I know you asked above but I'd have a 20lpa budget for someone young like you if i was currently somewhere (provided you're kick-ass at this). Learn how to show leads and dhanda coming through your work (direct and indirect) and it'll grow.

CosmicBiscuit
CosmicBiscuit

I’m at an 18 LPA right now. But thanks so much, this is really helpful. I would like to believe I have enough proof of work in all three of the things I mentioned above. It’s just sad when I get turned down bec employers think it’s too much for MY AGE even when I have work to proof otherwise. Wish there was a way to get in touch with you without you having to doxx yourself, but I’m curious to know the industry you work in and if you’re hiring?

PrancingMochi
PrancingMochi

I’m an analytics professional with good exposure to building data science products for marketing (customer, campaign, attribution). I also have good exposure of working on customer data platform. I kinda have a basic understanding of the backend data of digital campaigns, but haven’t worked on digital marketing or performance marketing. I’ve been looking for resources to learn performance marketing. Any inputs/suggestions on how to learn on my own?

PerkyMarshmallow
PerkyMarshmallow

Reforge , it's 2lacs so share with friends. Or take the GroSAT on skilletal.com - and see what you didn't do well at and pick on learnings. Gimme specifics after GroSAT and I'll send links.

PrancingMochi
PrancingMochi

Sure will check it out

DizzyMarshmallow
DizzyMarshmallow

I am planning to launch a D2C brand in growing segment. The segment is small currently but growing fast. I am tight on budget and most of the money is spent on product manufacturing and website. What should be the marketing strategy? We are also planning to list on marketplaces. Do you think we should invest in tools that enhance customer experience like OTPless, gokwik, interakt etc? Or should we spend money on FB and insta ads?

PerkyMarshmallow
PerkyMarshmallow

No OTPless bullshit right now, simple clean easy Shopify/Magento experience is more than enough. What is the product though? Tell me that I'll give more pointed feedback on what kinda ads / SEO / content you should run.

DizzyMarshmallow
DizzyMarshmallow

We are launching pet supplies brand. Dog and cat products basically.

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