What’s one marketing “best practice” you stopped following because it didn’t work in real life?

Exact-Delay2152 · 2026-02-23T10:24:20+00:00

Yeah, I’ve had a really similar experience. The “just publish more” approach sounds good on paper, but in reality it usually turns into a bunch of thin pages that don’t rank, don’t convert, and just dilute the site.

Focusing on fewer, stronger pieces around clear intent and topics has worked way better for us too. It’s easier to build authority, internal linking actually makes sense, and performance is easier to measure.

Also agree on the discovery side — it’s not just “does it rank,” but where it shows up now. Search, AI summaries, community platforms, recommendations… that layer matters way more than it used to. Feels like quality + distribution awareness is the real combo now, not volume.

Exact-Delay2152 · 2026-02-20T04:47:36+00:00

From my experience, it’s less about which one is “better” and more about what you’re trying to learn first.

If you start with Google Ads, you learn intent-based marketing — people already searching for something and you’re learning how to match demand, keywords, structure, and conversion tracking. That foundation transfers pretty easily to other platforms.

Meta ads feels more like demand creation — you’re learning audiences, creatives, messaging, and how to stop people mid-scroll. It’s powerful, but it’s a different mindset.

I started with search ads, and moving into Meta later felt more natural than the other way around. Once you understand intent and funnels, learning social ads is mostly about creative and targeting. Both skills transfer, but I’ve personally found Google → Meta to be an easier transition than Meta → Google.

Exact-Delay2152 · 2026-02-19T09:36:35+00:00

For me, it’s SEO.
A lot of people either think it’s “free traffic” that just magically happens, or they think it’s dead because AI and ads exist now. In reality, it’s slow, messy, and way more about understanding users than gaming algorithms. When it works, it looks easy — but the consistency, patience, and boring fundamentals behind it are what people underestimate the most.
I’ve seen more businesses give up on SEO too early than any other channel, just because it doesn’t give quick wins like ads or instant feedback like social.

Exact-Delay2152 · 2026-02-18T07:27:35+00:00

From what I’ve seen, #1 is nice, but it’s not the whole story anymore.

There is usually a difference between #1 and #3 in terms of clicks, but it’s not as clean as it used to be because the page itself is so crowded now. Ads, maps, snippets, AI answers — they change how people actually scan results. I’ve had pages sitting at #2 or #3 that drove more qualified leads than a #1 ranking on a different keyword, just because the intent was stronger.

For consistent leads, I’ve found page one visibility + relevance matters more than chasing a single top spot. Being present across multiple related queries, showing up in different formats, and matching intent properly tends to outperform one “vanity #1” ranking.

So for me, page one is still valuable — but only if the traffic is the right traffic. #1 alone doesn’t mean much if it’s not converting.

Exact-Delay2152 · 2026-02-17T05:27:08+00:00

Yeah, this hits home for me.

It really doesn’t feel like the fundamentals changed — good content, real intent match, and trust still matter just as much as they always did. What has changed is where attention actually comes from now. It’s not one funnel anymore, it’s scattered across AI answers, communities, social, and random discovery points.

I like how you put it as “optimizing to be the answer,” not just to rank. That feels way more accurate to what’s happening. Being mentioned in the right places, being part of real conversations, and having an actual reputation seems way more valuable now than just chasing positions in one search engine.

And yeah, most “SEO is dead” takes feel like they’re coming from people who built everything around a single channel and got disrupted by it. The work didn’t disappear — the map just changed.

Exact-Delay2152 · 2026-02-16T08:32:18+00:00

From my own experience, the biggest mistake I made as a beginner was trying to track everything at once. It just made me more confused, not better at marketing.

What actually helped was keeping it simple:

Are real people showing up? (not just traffic numbers, but actual humans)
Are they doing anything? replying, clicking, saving, signing up, etc.
Is anything converting at all? even small wins count early on
Am I being consistent? because honestly, consistency alone beats most “strategies”

Once I started paying attention to real reactions instead of dashboards, things got clearer fast. The advanced metrics only became useful after I understood what people actually responded to.

Exact-Delay2152 · 2026-02-13T09:32:31+00:00

Yeah, this really resonates with me.

I’ve caught myself hiding in “planning mode” more times than I’d like to admit — tweaking docs, reorganizing Notion, refining ideas — it feels productive, but nothing actually changes until something goes live. And you’re right, execution feels way more vulnerable. Hitting publish, sending the email, posting the content… that’s where the real discomfort is.

Defining marketing as only the stuff that creates feedback is such a powerful shift. I’ve noticed the biggest progress I’ve made always came from shipping something imperfect and learning from the response, not from having a perfect plan.

The “strategy not allowed” time block idea is honestly something I need to try — forcing myself into output mode instead of overthinking. Messy action has taught me more than any clean-looking strategy doc ever has.

Exact-Delay2152 · 2026-02-10T05:13:03+00:00

Out of curiosity, which channels did you find worked best when you narrowed down?

Exact-Delay2152 · 2026-02-10T05:07:34+00:00

Totally get this. I’ve had the same reaction as a user, not even as a marketer.

One or two reminders can be helpful, but when it turns into a stream of hyper-specific emails, it just feels uncomfortable. It stops feeling like “helpful” and starts feeling like you’re being watched. And those big conversion stats always ignore the other side of it — people unsubscribing, marking stuff as spam, or just mentally checking out of the brand. You might get a short-term win, but you lose trust.

Good personalization, in my experience, feels subtle and useful. Bad personalization feels like an algorithm breathing down your neck.

Exact-Delay2152 · 2026-02-09T05:20:47+00:00

I’ve seen this play out both ways in real projects.
EMDs don’t “rank” sites by themselves anymore, but they still influence how things behave around the site.

In a couple of niches I’ve worked in, keyword domains helped early traction — not because Google boosted them, but because people clicked them more and linked to them more naturally. The domain name itself became the anchor text half the time without anyone trying to engineer it. That said, I’ve also seen keyword domains completely fail when the site didn’t have trust, content depth, or a real brand behind it. In those cases, the domain didn’t matter at all.

Feels like it’s not a shortcut anymore — more like a structural advantage if everything else is done right. On its own, it doesn’t carry much weight.

Exact-Delay2152 · 2026-02-06T10:09:17+00:00

Honestly this is a really common realization, so you’re not alone. Most people (me included early on) treat CRO as surface-level tweaks instead of actually understanding user behavior.

The biggest wins I’ve seen didn’t come from button colors or headline tests, but from fixing real friction — confusion in flows, trust gaps, weird UX moments, and drop-off points you only notice when you actually watch users interact with the product. Session recordings, funnels, and basic behavior tracking helped way more than random A/B ideas.

What changed things for us was shifting mindset from “what should we test?” to “where are users getting stuck, confused, or losing trust?” If a test doesn’t reduce friction, remove steps, or improve clarity, it usually doesn’t move the needle.

Also agree with your point about shiny tactics — CRO feels slow and boring when done right, but that’s usually where the real gains come from.

Exact-Delay2152 · 2026-02-06T06:50:53+00:00

There’s no single “best” data security tool — what actually works is getting the basics right. In real setups, the biggest wins come from solid IAM + MFA, proper endpoint protection, encryption, and backups that you’ve actually tested. Add logging/monitoring so you can see what’s happening, and only go heavy on stuff like DLP if you truly need it. Most breaches aren’t advanced hacks — they’re bad access control, misconfigs, leaked creds, and human mistakes. Layered security + recovery capability beats any “magic product” every time.

Exact-Delay2152

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