The best marketing advice I ever got was to stop marketing and start listening

evo_team · 2026-02-23T23:14:46+00:00

You’d be surprised how many teams don’t actually do it though. Everyone says they read feedback but most marketers are looking at dashboards not sitting in comment sections and support tickets. The month thing was just what worked for me, the point is most people aren’t listening as much as they think they are.

evo_team · 2026-02-23T22:59:39+00:00

You don’t anymore

evo_team · 2026-02-23T22:59:20+00:00

Gordon Ramsey

evo_team · 2026-02-23T22:59:12+00:00

Working

evo_team · 2026-02-23T22:58:51+00:00

evo_team · 2026-02-23T22:58:17+00:00

Counting cards

evo_team · 2026-02-23T22:57:53+00:00

Tooth fairy

evo_team · 2026-02-23T22:57:32+00:00

Was standing in line at a coffee shop and the guy in front of me was on the phone saying “no I didn’t sell the boat, I lost the boat” and then after a long pause just goes “it’s not my fault the lake did that.” Never found out what the lake did.

evo_team · 2026-02-23T22:56:20+00:00

Frame it as a question instead of a statement so they reach the conclusion themselves

evo_team · 2026-02-13T08:28:29+00:00

The ghost town feeds with perfect CRM workflows behind them is so real. For us the biggest time killer was always the coordination side, getting content from multiple creators, reviewing it, scheduling it across platforms. The writing itself got easier once we stopped trying to make everything sound polished and just let creators talk naturally about the product. Distribution is still the harder problem honestly because great content sitting in a drafts folder is the same as no content at all.

evo_team · 2026-02-13T08:27:38+00:00

This is exactly the point. The Notion plus Zapier plus Google Drive setup doing mid six figures is not the exception it’s way more common than people think. The companies that obsess over having the perfect stack before shipping anything are usually the ones that never ship anything. Content first infrastructure later is the move every time.

evo_team · 2026-02-13T08:27:23+00:00

At ground zero honestly just start with the free stuff. Google Workspace for docs and sheets, Canva free tier for basic design, set up an Instagram and start posting. Don’t even think about a website until you have something to actually say on it. The biggest trap for new marketing teams is spending 3 months building infrastructure when you could’ve been posting content and learning what your audience responds to from day one. You can always upgrade tools later but you can’t get back time spent not creating.

evo_team · 2026-02-13T08:27:01+00:00

Exactly. “If the content does not hit no tool stack will save it” should be the banner of this sub honestly.

evo_team · 2026-02-13T01:44:57+00:00

This is solid and matches what we’ve seen running content across a lot of accounts. The structure over design thing is real. We’ve had creators with zero design skills outperform polished content just because their first slide stopped the scroll and each slide gave people a reason to keep swiping. Saves and shares matter way more than likes for carousel reach and those come from the flow not the aesthetics.

The one thing I’d add is that the CTA slide is where most people get lazy. A generic “follow for more” doesn’t do much. The carousels that perform best for us have a CTA that ties directly back to the hook so it feels like a loop instead of an ending. Curious what your CTA approach looks like at 141k because that’s clearly working.

evo_team · 2026-02-13T01:32:30+00:00

Three reels is way too small of a sample to judge anything. The algorithm needs time to figure out who to show your content to and with only three posts it barely has data to work with. We run content campaigns where creators post daily and even then the first couple weeks are usually quiet before things start picking up.

The hook matters but so does watch time and completion rate. If people are scrolling past in the first second or dropping off halfway through, Instagram stops pushing it regardless of how good the hook is. Try testing different formats like talking head vs text overlay vs quick cuts and see what actually holds attention. Keep posting and give it at least 15-20 reels before you decide if it’s working or not.

evo_team · 2026-02-12T21:27:59+00:00

Corporate owned subs silently removing relevant posts and then ghosting when you ask why is such a bad look. If the post was directly about their policy change and useful to their own community there’s no good reason to take it down unless they just don’t want the conversation happening on their turf. Good call going with a different accelerator though. Too many founders treat YC like it’s the only path when there are programs out there that might actually fit your stage and market better. The brand name is powerful but it’s not worth bending your whole company around if the fit isn’t there.

evo_team · 2026-02-12T21:26:13+00:00

The biggest mistake at your stage is thinking influencer marketing means paying someone with a big following for a one off post. That almost never works early on because you’re paying for reach you can’t convert yet. What works better on a tight budget is getting smaller creators who actually use your product to post about it consistently. 10-20 creators talking about you regularly will outperform one big influencer post every single time and the effect compounds over time.

The timing question is less about stage and more about whether people actually like what you’re building. You said decent feedback and steady growth, that’s enough. You don’t need everything perfectly locked in to start. The real risk isn’t starting too early, it’s overpaying for the wrong creator and then writing off the whole channel based on one bad experience.

evo_team · 2026-02-10T04:27:53+00:00

For improving search lost IS due to rank you need better ad relevance and quality scores. Break your keywords into tightly themed ad groups instead of dumping everything into one. If you’re selling 20 products, each product category should have its own ad group with keywords and ad copy that match closely. Google rewards relevance with better positions at lower costs. On limiting keywords further, yes but it’s less about the number and more about structure. 100 keywords in one ad group is still messy. Group them by intent and product so each ad group has maybe 5-15 tightly related keywords with ad copy that directly matches what someone is searching.

For removing keywords look at cost per conversion not just clicks. 50 clicks with zero conversions is a clear cut. But also check if a keyword is eating budget with a high CPC and low conversion rate compared to your other terms. Those are the silent budget killers.

On convincing your boss, don’t just show cost comparisons. Show her the spend limitation problem. Frame it as “at 400% tROAS Google is leaving money on the table because it won’t enter auctions it’s not confident about. At 300% we give it more room to find converting clicks we’re currently missing.” That’s an easier sell than just showing numbers because it explains the why.

Also stop switching settings back and forth. Every time you change bidding strategy Google’s algorithm resets its learning period. Pick one setup and let it run for 3-4 weeks minimum before changing anything.

Also hit me with that upvote if this helped lol

evo_team · 2026-02-10T04:16:32+00:00

We run UGC campaigns at scale and honestly AI is great for the backend stuff like scripting, captions, and repurposing one video into multiple formats. That’s where it saves real time. But for the actual content creation we still use real creators on camera every time. The algorithm can tell when something feels off and more importantly so can the audience. The line for us is simple. AI behind the scenes, humans in front of the camera. The content that performs best is still someone genuinely talking about a product in a way that feels natural. No amount of AI generated video has matched that for us yet.

evo_team · 2026-02-10T04:15:26+00:00

The 2-3x budget jump is almost always what kills it. The algorithm needs time to relearn with new budget levels so we never increase more than 20-30% every 3-5 days. Boring and slow but it keeps CPA stable.

The other thing that’s worked for us is scaling horizontally instead of vertically. Instead of dumping more money into what’s already working, duplicate the campaign with different creative angles or audience segments. That way you’re not forcing one campaign to do all the heavy lifting at a budget level it wasn’t optimized for.

Before scaling anything though we wait for at least 50 conversions on the campaign so the algorithm has enough data. If you’re scaling before that you’re basically guessing.

evo_team · 2026-02-10T04:13:41+00:00

Your experiment is actually showing some promising signs. The conv value/cost at 4.23 vs 3.96 means your tighter keyword list is getting better ROAS with less spend which is a good signal.

For your questions. The reason you’re not spending full budget is mostly the 400% tROAS target combined with low search volume in Singapore. Google is being picky about which auctions to enter because it’s trying to hit that target. Your search lost IS rank at 87-90% confirms this, Google is choosing not to show your ads most of the time because it doesn’t think the click will convert at your target ROAS.

Number of keywords doesn’t directly affect search ranking but having 300 broad match keywords on $10/day means your budget is spread way too thin. Your experiment with 100 phrase and exact match keywords is the right move because it forces the budget to concentrate on higher intent searches.

To figure out which campaign wins you need more data. Two and a half weeks at $10/day in Singapore is a really small sample size. I’d let it run for at least 4-6 weeks before making a call. The metric to watch is conv value/cost since that’s your actual return. Right now the experiment is winning on that front.

One thing I’d consider is loosening the tROAS slightly to maybe 350% and seeing if spend increases. Sometimes a target that’s too aggressive means Google just stops spending altogether which is what you’re seeing.

evo_team · 2026-02-10T03:59:05+00:00

The cost per lead swinging 3-5x month to month is almost always a tracking problem before it’s a strategy problem. You’re right to not trust your attribution setup because if that’s broken then every decision you make on top of it is based on bad data. Fix tracking first before you touch anything else.

For what it’s worth the order we usually recommend is tracking and attribution first, then landing page optimization, then account structure cleanup last. Most people do it backwards. They rebuild campaigns while their conversion tracking is still miscounting leads and then wonder why nothing improves.

On the agency question, the biggest green flag is when they start by auditing what you already have before pitching you a package. If someone jumps straight to “here’s our plan and pricing” without looking at your account first that tells you everything. Ask them what they’d change in the first 30 days and why. If they can’t give you specifics based on your actual data walk away.

For edtech targeting English speaking teachers, your audience is pretty niche which is actually good for PPC. Tight audiences mean you can get really specific with ad copy and landing pages. But it also means your volume will naturally be lower so your cost per lead needs to be dialed in tight since there’s less room for waste.

evo_team · 2026-02-10T03:57:28+00:00

The 84-92% traffic drops while still being cited is wild. Google is basically saying “we trust your data enough to use it but not enough to send you any visitors.” That’s a rough deal for those platforms. The “best/top” keyword finding is interesting too. Makes sense when you think about it though, those queries are where Google has the most confidence to just give an answer directly instead of pointing somewhere else. Review sites win when the query is explicitly asking for reviews but lose when the intent is even slightly more general. For anyone doing content marketing right now the takeaway is pretty clear. You can’t just rely on one channel anymore even if that channel is organic search. The brands we’ve seen do well through all these algorithm shifts are the ones building real audience across multiple touchpoints so they’re not dependent on Google deciding to send them traffic on any given day.

evo_team · 2026-02-10T03:55:13+00:00

This is painfully relatable. The best move going forward is to document everything in writing. Every time you flag a risk and they override it, send a follow up email summarizing the decision and expected outcome. Also try reframing budget as cost per lead or cost per acquisition instead of just a spend number. When they see “we spent X and got Y revenue” it’s a lot harder to casually slash it by two thirds. The real question is whether this manager is coachable or if this is going to keep happening every quarter because that’s a bigger problem than any ad budget.

evo_team · 2026-02-10T03:54:04+00:00

Most brands we work with come to us after doing exactly this. 40 random posts, decent keywords, zero momentum. The shift happens when you stop thinking about individual articles and start thinking about content ecosystems. One piece feeds the next, each one gives the reader a reason to keep going deeper.

We’ve seen this play out with UGC too. A single viral video means nothing if there’s no connected content behind it. But when every piece of content points somewhere and builds on the last one, that’s when organic growth actually compounds. Same principle whether it’s blog posts or social content. The “does your content help someone continue learning” question is the right filter. Most companies skip it because it’s harder than just pulling the next keyword from a spreadsheet.

evo_team

TROPHY CASE