Hello marketers!

And bye, for I'm off for a 2-month vacation to rest, read, and recover.

This far, summer in London has been a balancing act between marketing consulting, audits, and interviews vs writing, literary events, and art exhibitions. All of it during a way-too-long heatwave.

I feel like a character from one of my recent prose poems who "creaks like a little door greatly unhinged."

As this newsletter lands in your inbox, I'll be walking along the far west coast at St Ives. As of next week, I'll be at my parent's summer house in southern Estonia, writing in my makeshift attic studio which I've titled The Tortured Poets Department.

In this Season Finale newsletter of Marketing Fix, I'll answer your questions on marketing strategy, freelance life, and more.

But first, a recap of the season's best posts & free resources.

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Best of Marketing Fix in 2025

Marketing Fix #29 | Summer Projects for Marketers

If you can't take the next 60 days off your marketing job, how to make the most of it during the breezy season? Featuring advice for projects such as conducting a 360° marketing audit, learning to design with Figma, and preparing for the Q3 high season.

Marketing Fix #27 | The No-Fluff LinkedIn Ads Playbook – Special Collab x GTM Strategist

In-between Huel metaphors and spaghetti GIFs, I shared the step-by-step guide for launching your first LinkedIn ads experiment with positive ROAS. I'm absolutely delighted to have had a chance to collaborate with Maja Voje on this.

Marketing Fix #28 | I'm leaving LinkedIn. Should you?​

A long-form article about my decision to leave LinkedIn: "I believe that the social platform has reached its final phase – end of civilisation, if you please – where 80% of posts & comments are generated by AI bots and people behaving like bots."

For more articles, see the Marketing Fix blog & full list of newsletter issues.

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Free marketing resources:

​155+ LinkedIn Ads Figma Library: High-resolution screenshots​ of fast-growth B2B brand ads, updated recently with new screenshots

​80 Marketing Audit Questions Library: Notion guide that's powering 350+ of marketing audits and counting

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Q&A x marketing & freelance life

Grazie mille to everyone who sent their questions for this AMA (Ask Me Anything) style Q&A.

There were more than 30 questions!! To avoid repetitions and keep this newsletter to a somewhat reasonable length, I've picked eight questions that I think would be most interesting ones to read about – and also most fun for me to answer.

Q1: How to become more of a “generalist” marketer, the trend that tech job market is moving towards?

Some months ago, Tom Orbach wrote about the new hot-ticket role with $300k+ annual salary. The job is titled "Marketing Innovation" and entails driving AI adoption in big-brand marketing departments.

While I agree that there's a shift towards AI adoption in marketing, I don't think that's the number one skill that makes you a great generalist marketer in 2025 and forward.

What makes a good generalist marketer is having proven experience in managing and implementing the full marketing funnel.

Founders and CEOs want to hire marketers (both in-house and freelancers) who can lay down a solid GTM (Go To Market) strategy and implement it as well. E.g. the hands-on design, copywriting, and managing of social & paid ad campaigns.

So how to become a good generalist?

Option A: Join a super early-stage startup as their first marketing person and grow into the CMO role. After 24-36 months in the company, you're likely to have tackled everything from strategy to specialist-level tasks.

Option B: Learn on your own, by starting a Substack newsletter or blog and writing about the topics you need to learn about. This is how I got started, back in 2018. I began guest blogging about Facebook ads for big marketing blogs, then shifted to having a personal marketing blog. This is how the guys at Bolt found me – and as there was written proof that I knew about performance & growth marketing, they hired me.

Back in 2020, I wrote a blog article on "how to learn marketing." Read it here.​

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Q2: Do you think freelance marketers need a niche to succeed? I noticed you’ve shifted from B2C Facebook ads to B2B LinkedIn — was that a strategic decision, or more about following what interests you right now? – Asked by Siim

In general, I think it is practical to choose a niche as a freelancer.

You will have to spend 50% of your time on self-promotion, and the clearer your services and ICP (ideal client profile) are, the more relevant content (blog articles, free resources, newsletter, LinkedIn posts, etc.) and offers you can create.

Personally, my specialty as a freelance marketer is to be the Swiss-army-knife CMO who joins a company for 3-6 months, creates a growth & marketing strategy, and also copywrites, designs, and manages all paid campaigns and more.

Sometimes, I also do one-off consulting and audit projects. This Holy Trinity of marketing services is also reflected on my Contact page.

While I have shifted from B2C to B2B marketing in recent years, I wouldn't say that B2B or LinkedIn ads are my specialty – there just happened to be more topics where I saw a content gap, and so I filled it.

I'm sure I would get even more project offers if I went more niche. But I optimise on having fun and having creative freedom vs repeating the same stuff over and over again to build a niche audience.

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Q3: When a B2B marketer tells you “we can’t get any leads,” what are the first audit questions and fixes you would suggest? – Asked by Marit

Some years ago, I wrote about the top 5 mistakes of slow-growth companies. The article was based on 20+ marketing audits I've done over my career.

Now, a few extra years wiser, I still believe that the most common problem is a non-existent product-market fit.

If you can't get any leads (but you are doing paid ads, organic social, content marketing, PR, etc.), ask and answer these five questions:

1. Do you know exactly who your ICP (ideal client profile) is?
2. Is your product among the top 5% of solutions available to solve your ICP's problem / to offer specific value?
3. Is your product/service offer better than that of your TOP 5 competitors at least in one way (quality, design, price, etc.)?

Most companies get stuck at point 3. But in case you answer "yes" my next two questions would be:

4. Are you reaching your ICP's with the right message at the right time in the right marketing channels?

5. Are your landing pages, ad campaigns, and ad creatives following all the best practices? (This is where you might want to hire an expert to help you with an audit.)

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Q4: How, and with what tech stack, do you track results for an omnichannel paid campaign, and do you factor organic lift? – Asked by Lenny

For omnichannel campaigns that run in both online and offline channels, I generally track per-channel results for online channels, and the general uplift in sales & revenue for the total campaign.

There are tools for brand perception monitoring and other hocus-pocus services. I like to simply track – in Google Sheets – the uplift from various campaigns and marketing activations, in KPIs such as website traffic, adds to cart, sales, revenue.

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Q5: Has writing stories, essays, and reviews taught you anything about writing marketing content or copy?

Yes, writing and reading have taught me everything I know about writing marketing content and copy.

I believe that having intellectual interests outside of one's work sphere is what makes 5% of marketers (and people in general) more successful and interesting than 95% of the rest.

In addition to reading fiction and poetry (not business self-help books or marketing blogs), I've always been interested in visual arts, contemporary ballet, and fashion (oh well...) – and the ideas I bring to my marketing projects (copywriting, design, branding) are informed by these non-work interests.

It's not just about mastering a second language by reading and writing in it. The most valuable thing about writing stories, essays, and reviews is training my brain to think on its own – an increasingly critical skill to maintain at the age of AI.

Whether you want to learn to write, draw, or act – the best way to become great at anything is by observing how those already great at it do it, and practicing by doing it yourself.

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Q6: Are you happy with your decision to move to London? Any insights from working/living in London vs Paris? Do you miss Paris or you're planning to stay in London for good?

I'm very happy with my decision to move to London, especially as I've finally met "my people" and "my scene" here.

By "my scene" I mean the literary scene, not marketing or tech scene, and it wasn't quite possible for me in Paris because I never learned to speak French to the extent of being able to write in it – it made no sense for me to learn French as a third native speaker-level language as I wanted to write in English.

Moreover, while Paris is the most hedonistic and beautiful city I know, it's actually quite small, and became repetitive after living there for two years. While London keeps on giving – there are endless neighbourhoods, events, restaurants, bookshops, museums, etc. to explore.

Another thing I like about London is that it's super green (huge parks everywhere, lots of houses with gardens). Living in Hackney, I feel as if living in a small quiet village. It's much greener and quieter than any arrondissement in Paris, any linnaosa in Tallinn.

Last not least, I find the "Londoner mindset" to be the perfect balance between the continental hedonism of the French and the hustling ambition of the Americans.

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Q7: Do you regret any “burning bridges” moments in your life, e.g. leaving Bolt at the peak of your career, saying no to freelance (money) projects to write your book, speaking out loud against something that many people disagree with?

I have this idea about life that as long as you're happy with the place you're presently in, no past mistake should be regretted.

The only way you ended up here was because of those mistakes. And this makes them non-mistakes.

Whenever I'm not happy with where I am in life, instead of complaining, I think how I can change it. And then I change it.

I suppose I'm an optimist, after all...

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Q8: What advice would you give to marketers trying to go from in-house to freelance?

Most importantly, ask yourself whether the freelance life is right for you.

Do you want to spend 50% of your time on self-promotion, creating blog articles and newsletters, posting on LinkedIn, etc.?

Can you handle the fluctuations in your daily schedule, income and time investment? Or would you rather have stable job with set working hours?

Before you leave your full-time job, secure freelance 2-3 projects to prove that you can get clients.

I got all of my first freelance projects via referrals, from friends and colleagues. Which means that you need to demonstrate knowledge and skill for anyone to want to work with you.

Are you self-driven or do you need someone to lay out your to-do list?

As a freelancer, you're the master of your own time. Will you be able to motivate yourself to work 20h per week on a self-promotion project that might bear fruit only 6 months later? Or will you slip and spend your non-paid time doing the fun stuff and watching Netflix?

All in all, if you're not sure, just try the freelance life for 12 months.

You should give it at least 6 months to even begin getting clients. And for the next 6 months, you can see how well you can manage your time and stress levels.

Honestly, freelancing is not for everyone. But it gives you the freedom you can never have in a full-time role.

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Summer update I'm going on a long summer break from July 1st, to finish my collection of prose poems and begin writing a novel. If you'd like to hire me as a marketing advisor in September, feel free to reach out now to secure availability. ​Read more & reach out here.​

Thanks for reading!
Have a good one, and stay (almost) clear of AI.

Karola