Add Rooms To Your Life

Where do good ideas come from? This was the question Steven Johnson took four years to explore. And then distill his findings into an aptly named book: Where Good Ideas Come From.

The main takeaway, one that I recite just about once a month to the team, to myself, or to customers, is that of the “adjacent possible.” Opening doors.

The argument can be summarized in one sentence: at any given moment, there isare a set of ideas, inventions, or opportunities that are just one step away from what currently exists.

Ideas don’t just happen as lightbulb moments: they happen gradually as new steps reveal themselves.

Here’s an example:

Started with landline ->

Moved to mobile chips and batteries ->

That led to your cool flip phone ->

That led to smartphones ->

App stores: there’s an app for that ->

Ride-sharing revolution. You can now DoorDash a vanilla latte.

Travis Kalineck (Uber Founder) couldn’t go from landline to Uber. Too many rooms in between.

There were steps.

Doors to open.

Rooms to explore.

How do you harness the power of the adjacent possible? It’s simple. Open doors.

If you want to advance your career and innovate in your field, you need to ask yourself: Am I opening doors to the connecting rooms? The areas in my profession that are unknown to me and to most. Am I exploring the adjacent possible?

My goal was and still is to open doors. To operate a company on the frontiers.

Where do good ideas come from? Assuming GeoFli (change website content based on visitor location) is a good idea, the path to landing on the idea came from doing exactly this.

Here are the rooms I had to enter.

Enrollment marketing -> college fair circuit (think trade show marketing)-> digital marketing -> conversion rate optimization -> landing page builders -> personalized website traffic based on location.

Pintler Group has a core value to operate on frontiers. Another way of thinking about this: continue to open doors to rooms that didn’t exist three years ago. Or sometimes three months ago.

How to Find a Competitive Advantage:

Here’s the secret. The deeper you go and the more doors you open, the less crowded the rooms.

When you start in a career, you don’t know much. So all you can do is open doors and explore rooms. This is called gaining experience. A lot of people stop exploring. The key is to keep going.

Open doors to uncrowded rooms. This is your competitive advantage.

If the Room is Empty:

It applies to any career, passion, or area of expertise. In entrepreneurship, when I get to a room that doesn’t have a lot of people, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. It can mean a couple of things:

1. There’s actually not much happening. It smells of a college party that happened two days ago. The room used to be full. The party happened. Then ended. Think typewriter mechanics. Empty room. Not a lot of opportunity.

You could still be the best in the world in this room if that’s something that interests you. Typewriter repairman, for example.

2. You’ve actually skipped a couple of rooms. It feels empty because you’re lost. You haven’t spent enough time mastering Google Analytics and creating your own dashboards to know that it’s a solved problem. You’re in a room to build a dashboard that combines Google Ads and Meta Ads without having spent time in Data Studio (which does exactly this). Google owns this room and kicked everyone else out.

3. There’s a blue ocean here. You’ve found something that worked. There are still doors to open, but you’ve got a gut feeling there’s something here. The adjacent possible is on a frontier. And now I’m finding doors that have to be jarred open. Sometimes with a hard pull. Other times with a crowbar.

Think: building a new software to solve a pain point and combining industry knowledge with business acumen.

How this applies to building a business:

Innovate. I grew up in Rochester, NY. When I was born, the company that employed half of Rochester, Kodak, wasn’t based in Rochester: it was Rochester.

From 60,000 employees to 1,200 today (OG hipsters still use film). That leaves an impression on an entrepreneur.

When I moved to Montana and went to business school, at least three times a semester Kodak made its way into a case study, discussion or guest lecture on what NOT to do. It made books about combating complacency really fascinating to me.

The coolest part: the floor plan to explore rooms is friggin’ enormous. Like infinitely big. The AI rooms are filling rapidly. What if you do a 180? Turn around and go the other direction like this crossing guard in Burlington who makes 17k/month sending postcards. Snail mail? Really? Open the analog door. There might be some room.

How this applies to ambition:

You can be the one and only at something. The best in the world. Just keep opening doors until you’re the only one left in the room. Even if the last room is geography-based: “in Montana,” or “in my county,” or “in my school.”

How this applies to risk:

It took Alex Honnold ten years to free solo El Capitan. Started in a climbing gym. Then granite. His comfort zone expanded as he opened more doors. The adjacent possible grew. He free soloed a 100-foot wall. Then a 200 ft wall. Then familiarized himself with hundreds of routes in Yosemite. Lived in a van at the base of his objective. Expand. Expand. Expand. Until the next room was to free solo 3,000 vertical feet.

You don’t have to start a business or climb 3,000 feet without ropes. But your next good idea isn’t found in your current room. The best part? It’s highly adjacently possible that you’re a couple of doors away from an incredible career/entrepreneurial breakthrough.

Digital Marketing Internship: How 3 Months Changed My View

Digital marketing interns in the conference room working.

3 months into my digital marketing internship, it’s easy to underestimate how much I’ve learned—new software, new knowledge, new perspectives, and, surprisingly, a new love for Spindrift.

To be honest, this month has entirely changed how I see digital marketing. But let’s back up. If my perspective on digital marketing changed, what was it before? I have spent the past four years of college studying business and marketing. And while I have learned a lot, I realized that my definition of marketing was fairly vague. These past 90 days, I have been able to learn about what the real world of marketing actually looks and feels like. And I have been able to narrow down my broad idea of what marketing is.

What I knew about digital marketing vs. what I learned:

Everything you hear about marketing is that there is a “make it pretty” goal for ads and content. In reality, there is so much data and analysis that goes into creating those “pretty” ads. College courses insinuate that there is data, but don’t allow time to practice how to use it. I realized my definition of marketing wasn’t wrong— just unfinished.

As an intern, I have been able to become familiar with software such as Google Analytics, Looker Studio, and Meta Business Suite. Learning how to use these tools has not only allowed me to dip my toes in the vast world of digital marketing, but it has also allowed me to learn the intention behind everything. The reason for using a certain template, or allocating the marketing budget one way for a client and another for the next. Because there is so much more to marketing than making a “pretty post”. In reality, those “pretty” ads are backed by layers of data, testing, and strategy.

I learned that there are a million tiny ways you can succeed in marketing. It is not necessarily a simple one-click answer. It’s not “here’s our problem, let’s produce a bunch of Meta ads and call it good.” Not even close. Even for one singular Meta Campaign, it’s doing research, creating a strategy, building a campaign outline, choosing who you are targeting, producing creative, and writing copy.

A few things I learned that contribute to success in marketing:

First, Google Ads. Prior to these 90 days, I probably could have told you two things about Google Ads: one, it’s Google, and two, it’s advertisements. Yikes—not exactly a strong starting point. While I might be exaggerating a bit, it’s safe to say my knowledge was minimal. The good news? I’m learning. As an intern, I have started to break the ice on Google Ads, learn how they operate, and what makes them important to marketers. Understanding how Google Ads works has shown me how much intention goes into every decision marketers make—and how measurable success really is. I learned about SEO (search engine optimization), a tool that helps your ad or website show up when people search for similar things.

What about the text you see on social posts or ads? Turns out, there’s a term for that. It’s called copy. It also turns out that there are a few rules to follow when writing copy. Previously, I didn’t know the process of writing “words you see on ads”.

Now, I am starting to learn tiny rules that are essential to a great line of copy. For example, there is a certain character count you must follow. You must treat a “…” as its own word, including a space before and after it in a sentence. All of these seemingly unimportant rules are things that I have begun to add to my toolkit. These rules not only improve professionalism, but they also turn intention into action. It gets someone to click, sign up, buy, reply, or keep reading. I am excited to see how my copy improves with these rules in mind.

Here are my final thoughts:

As I begin to wrap up, I want to be clear. This article does not begin to include every single thing I’ve learned in these first three months at the Pintler Group. But it does explain how these months have changed my perspective on digital marketing and how excited I am to continue learning and growing as a marketer. I no longer see digital marketing as simply creating content that looks good. I see it as a thoughtful, strategic process—one built on data, testing, creativity, and constant problem-solving. I’ve learned that success in marketing isn’t about one big idea, but about a hundred small, intentional decisions working together.

If the first 90 days have taught me anything, it’s that there is always more to learn.

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The Barbell Method: Marketing at the extremes.

The Barbell Method:

Marketing The Extremes

The barbell strategy for investing comes from Nassim Taleb’s book, Black Swan. Though impossible to summarize in one sentence, I’ll give it a try. Essentially, you’re allocating money in two ends of the risk spectrum: low risk (Cash, Rental Real Estate, retirement accounts) and high risk (seed investing, startup of your own, speculative stocks).

We do this at Pintler Group to make our portfolio sturdy. Survive economic downturns while leaving the door open to an extremely high upside, and avoiding the middle entirely.

Okay. Three(ish) sentences.

I’m an entrepreneur, not a financial advisor. I’ll talk a little bit about my investment strategies, but the goal is to talk about how the barbell method can be applied to your marketing.

I’ve run a fair amount of marketing campaigns for companies of all shapes and sizes. Likely thousands of campaigns from retailers in downtown Missoula to onboarding Fortune 500 organizations with our software.

So this article is about the barbell strategy, and how I believe that if you use this concept in marketing, it can result in outsized returns. Insert marketing acronym here: ROI, ROAS, CPL, CAC. GEESH.

Below: example of a barbell investment strategy.

My Theory of the Case:

Companies rolling out the barbell marketing strategy as part of their playbook will enjoy outsized returns on their investment of time, money, and energy. And will separate themselves from the mediocre middle.

Nobody Ever Got Fired Marketing in the Middle.

Marketing in the middle (taking moderate risk investing in “proven” channels) doesn’t get you fired, but it will land you in the middle. Middle management. Middle of the road. Mediocracy.

Imagine you’re in a leadership position tasked with growing the company. Or maybe you’re the executive director of a non-profit.

I would think about allocating an annual marketing budget between the safe and the risky. All while avoiding the middle. The marketing barbell.

Barbell Summary:

Safe Marketing Activities. The “Blocking and Tackling” of Your Marketing Budget:

In investing (again, not financial advice), Taleb makes the case for allocating capital to extremely safe investments so you can weather an unforeseen black swan event: a sharp economic downturn, natural disaster, a global pandemic, or shifting macroeconomic trends.

While at the same time, having a small but focused amount of money in high-risk investments. Most may fail, but if one succeeds, there’s a tremendous upside.

Here’s how the concept can apply to your marketing.

Left Side: Blocking and Tackling

Low-frequency waves. Day after day. Month after month. Slowly compounding.

Lower Funnel Activation: Abandoned Cart Emails.

Retention Marketing: The marketing stuff that equals repeat customers.

Strong organic presence across platforms: LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit (being sure not to put all your eggs in one basket).

Social Monitoring: How is your brand talked about online? Defending the moat.

Tracking net promoter scores: exceeding expectations for and delighting current customers.

Again: very little (if any) risk is involved with the above. The high-interest savings account of a marketing company.

Right Side: Low Down-side, High Up-side

Now, let’s skip the middle for now and up the risk level. It’s time to gamble.

Of course, not all speculative investments return 100x BUT, but marketers can benefit from thinking like venture capitalists who need to return a 100x fund, the VC needs a very small number of extremely successful “winners”, like one or two, depending on deal size and fund.

Highly Speculative: High Risk. High Reward:

This is where you log out of the 100k/yr attribution software. This isn’t about blended customer-acquisition-cost, seven-day-view-through-rates, or reducing the CPM on the streaming TV for the Houston market. This is about hockey stick-type results.

Let’s run through some ideas:

Unconventional PR: Doesn’t have to be jumping out of space, but it is a classic example.

Guinness World Record.

You’re a surfboard upstart (actual employee project!) You’re not going to outspend the Goliaths. You’re not going to out-impress at Outdoor Retailer. So you’ve gotta think differently. How about setting a Guinness World Record for the longest river wave session in history? This might make for some fun headlines. And the downside if it doesn’t work? You’ve got to ride a river wave for a bunch of hours.

Total Loss: 5 Hours? Maybe 25 hours? What is that current record anyway?

Creating a YouTube Series.

Again, log out of the attribution software. This one is gonna be tough to measure the immediate impact. But it’s a right-side-of-the-barbell tactic. It’s difficult to move the boulder (record the first video), but once done, the object is in motion. Here’s an example of zero-to-one with our software RevelForms. And your competition is too distracted with attribution software to grab a camera themselves.

Potential upside? A story worth telling. A captivating founder journey that builds trust, buy-in, and buy-ers.

The potential downside: you have a video series of ten videos with a combined view count of 83. On to the next idea.

Total. Loss: 10k.

*Example of RevelForms YouTube page*

In-Person Events: Large and Small

Host a small event. Pay for it all. Buy the dinner. Add real value to attendees in the form of a quick deck. Hand it out and pay for colored printing.

Upside: You’ve added a ton of value to a small but mighty curated group. You’ve surrounded yourself with people smarter than you.

Downside: You picked up the check and never hear from them again.

Total Loss: 1k-20k.

Time / Resource Allocation?

10% of marketing energy/time/resources toward low-probability-of-success but high-impact tactics.

*Shown above is our very own Ana attending Spryng by Wynter conference in Texas*

Avoid the Middle. Okay. But What’s in the Middle?

“Media Buys”

$250k into an ad campaign with too-good-to-be-true key performance indicators and an account specialist “placing media.”

Audience Expansion. The SQUIRREL! effect.

You haven’t reached 100% of your target audience. Pretend you’re a university that is known for its veterinary science program. People from all over the country apply to it. They seek it out. And you have enrollees from 46 states.

There’s the capacity to grow it to the largest in the country. The tendency at this moment is to direct your gaze to the business school program. This is the wrong tendency. This is the tendency of the middle.

Brand Awareness:

No matter how awesome it is to report 1.7 million impressions. Unless you’re Jurassic Park 9, you don’t actually want to spend money here. There are so many places to spend marketing dollars today with way higher intent. Brand awareness campaigns are squarely in the middle of the barbell.

Top of Mind:

See Brand Awareness.

Chasing Vanity Metrics:

We see this quite a bit and call it out when we do. A blog post from 2019 contributes 30% of total traffic. The problem is, the blog post has nothing to do with the core product or service. New visitors to the site flock to the article. If bouncing from the page without taking any further action was a conversion, that traffic converts 100% of the time.

Things You (or I) Don’t Understand

“Omnichannel Bidtream Intelligence Engine”

“Incrementality-Calibrated Media Mix Modeling.”

“Supply Path Optimization Suite”

If it feels like a foreign language: hang up. Close out. If you’re wondering, the translation is we keep 80% of the marketing dollars you give us. But our reports and conference rooms are going to be glossy AF. Other translations include the middle.

There you have it.

Thanks again to Taleb and his books: Black Swan, Antifragile, Skin in the Game. His arguments inspired this method. Though he argues his approach from an investment standpoint, I believe it also applies to marketing and growing your business. It allows for a more antifragile strategy: one that not only withstands shocks and uncertainties but also thrives on them.

Avoid the middle. Embrace the extremes of safety and speculation. Low downside. High upside. Let’s go.

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Five Skills in Five Weeks: Starting My PG Internship

Here are my five key takeaways from my first five weeks in my digital marketing internship.

Starting a new internship can be both exciting and overwhelming, but my first month at the Pintler Group has been a really positive learning experience. From picking up new skills to getting a behind-the-scenes look at digital marketing: specifically performance marketing, I’ve already learned things that I know will be useful throughout my career. Here are five key skills I am working on.

1: Have a Solid Foundation of Research Before You Dive In

One of the first skills I’ve focused on is building a strong research foundation before starting any project. At Pintler Group, I’ve had access to several helpful tools like Answer the Public, Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and Reddit Pro. These tools have been helpful because they provide insight into what audiences are actively searching for, talking about, and engaging with online. Using them allows me to identify common questions, trending topics, and relevant keywords when building Google Paid Search campaigns, which helps ensure campaigns are based on real data rather than assumptions. Early in my internship, we worked on a mock campaign for Bloom Nutrition, where we spent a lot of time studying what people were searching for and what was trending in the market. It was interesting to see topics like supplements and health trends come up repeatedly and to understand how that information could shape marketing strategies. This showed me how important research is before jumping into creative work.

2: Content Creation with Strategy in Mind

Another skill I’ve been developing is creating content with a strategy behind it. At Pintler Group, we talk a lot about continuity and how important it is in marketing. Continuity means keeping a consistent brand message, look, and tone across platforms. When a brand looks and sounds the same everywhere, it becomes easier for people to recognize and trust it. I’ve learned how to apply this idea while also using each company’s brand pillars and core values, making sure every post, caption, and landing page stays aligned with the brand’s message. This has helped me understand that good content isn’t just creative, it also has to fit into a bigger plan.

Check out this friggin’ awesome Figma board Lily and I helped build as part of our content Tuesday initiatives. It’s everything you could want to know about continuity conversion optimization and it took us a ton of time. It will take you about five minutes to get through.

3: Be Confident in Your Ideas

Building confidence in your ideas can be really intimidating, especially as an intern when professionals in the field surround you. It can feel nerve-racking to speak up or share ideas when you’re not sure if they are “good enough.” However, I’ve learned that showing initiative and being willing to share new ideas is better than staying silent. One example of this is Content Tuesdays at Pintler Group, where we set aside time to focus on promoting our own business instead of just our clients. This semester, my fellow intern Lily and I have been responsible for creating internal content for Pintler Group’s social media. Each week, we brainstorm and pitch ideas that show off Pintler Group as a brand. While presenting ideas to experienced professionals can be nerve-wracking, the feedback has been really encouraging, and the process has helped us learn new tools and ways to improve our content.

4: Organization + Communication is Key

Staying organized has been a much bigger priority than I expected. Taking time to properly label files, organize bookmarked tabs, and keep track of tasks makes everything run more smoothly and saves a lot of time in the long run. In the marketing world, having a clean and easy-to-navigate computer system is important because projects move fast and information needs to be easy to find. A cluttered workspace can make you seem unprepared or disorganized, even if you are doing good work. Organization can be the difference between a campaign launching on time or missing a crucial deadline.

A bonus key learning in my digital marketing internship:

I’ve also learned that strong organization supports clear communication. Keeping people updated, maintaining a paper trail of conversations, and asking questions early all rely on having information that is easy to access and track. When organization and communication work together, it prevents confusion later and allows teams to move faster with confidence. Being organized and communicating clearly helps The Pintler Group work more efficiently and keeps projects on track.

Below: Click on the image to check out (a template of) my training board in Trello.

5: Ask for Feedback + Grow From It

Another important skill I’ve learned is how to ask for feedback and actually use it to get better. At first, it can feel uncomfortable to hear what needs to be changed, especially when you’ve put a lot of time and effort into something. But I’ve learned that feedback is meant to help you grow and succeed, not take away from your work. When I get suggestions or edits, I try to see them as chances to improve instead of as mistakes. Getting feedback also helps things stick in your mind for next time. Over time, this has helped me feel more confident and better at adjusting my work to meet expectations.

I know there are so many more small skills I will continue to learn during my internship at The Pintler Group, but I hope these are skills you can also take and apply to your own internship or even just your everyday workspace.

Below: One of our weekly professional developments in January was a summary from book club: “Radical Candor” by Kim Scott. Check out the deck below.

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Three Digital Marketing Lessons We Learned This Month

Every month, our team experiments with new marketing tools, platforms, and ideas. Some work better than expected, some surprise us, and all of them teach us something worth sharing.

#1: Connected TV

If you’re part of the “More Marketing Acronyms” fan club, we’ve got good news. That’s right. More acronyms and more confusing-sounding platforms and services that really are pretty straightforward.

The team put together a presentation on Connected TV for a higher education client interested in the “channel.” In the last two years, we’ve tested Disney’s self-service agency suite, Hulu, YouTube Connected TV, and MNTN. We’ve been kicking the tires a bit more aggressively on MNTN’s agency tools and are impressed with the targeting capabilities and the huge range of channels. Here’s slide ten from our deck on the attribution capabilities compared to traditional broadcast media. Spoiler alert, it’s way better.

#2: “Thursdays With ____.”

Each week, we highlight a different person on the team, a community member, a thought leader, or a subject matter expert to come in and teach us something.

This week, it was Thursdays with Andy, and the topic was AI agents. Andy is our Director of Growth, and he’s often rolling up his sleeves on bleeding-edge technology trends to support the efforts of our team and our clients. This week, the session was focused on AI Agents, starting with what the heck is an AI agent? To start, Andy demonstrated how he built an AI agent to read our client’s Google Analytics data and convert that into actionable insights.

And sure, we’d heard of AI agents, but it wasn’t something we were actively building in early 2025 … or really would know where to start in the process. That’s all changed. Andy demonstrated AI agents helping to add insight to our reporting that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.

#3: Instagram Highlights

If your Instagram Stories are still disappearing after 24 hours, you might be missing a huge opportunity.

Instagram Highlights are those little circular icons sitting right below your bio, and they might be the most underutilized marketing tool in your arsenal. Think of them as your zero-cost “micro website” that lives right inside Instagram: no app downloads, no platform jumping, no friction.

We recently revamped a tourism client’s Highlights strategy, and the results? Their profile transformed from a basic Instagram page into a strategic content hub showcasing tour packages, wildlife encounters, and glowing client testimonials – all permanently accessible.

Here’s what caught our attention: brands using strategic Highlights see 20% higher engagement and 30% more profile visits. But here’s the kicker, 50% of users who engage with Highlights actually visit the brand’s website afterward.

The game-changer is permanence. While Stories vanish, Highlights work 24/7 to guide prospects through your brand experience. We structure them like a sales funnel: awareness (your services), consideration (case studies), conversion (clear CTAs), and retention (testimonials).

Bottom line: stop thinking of Highlights as an afterthought. They’re your always-on sales team.

digital marketing marketing lessons

Understanding Meta Ad Placements

When building a campaign in Facebook Ads Manager, one of the key steps is deciding where your ads will show up, and therefore, where they’ll be seen. This is called ad placement, which refers to where your ads appear across Meta technologies.

In Ads Manager, Meta gives you two options: Advantage+ Placements and Manual Placements. Let’s break down what each of these means and what components we consider when selecting placements for a campaign.

Advantage+ Placements

(formerly known as Automatic Placements)

This is the default setting in Ads Manager. By choosing Advantage+ Placements, you’re letting Facebook’s delivery system decide how to distribute your budget across placements. Their goal? To serve your ads where they’re most likely to perform well and give you the lowest overall cost per optimization event.

Pros:

Easy to use
Quick setup
No need for in-depth analysis
Facebook does the heavy lifting

Cons:

You give up control
You can’t specify where your ads appear
No way to guide or suggest preferred placements

Manual Placements

As the name suggests, Manual Placements let you choose exactly where your ads are shown, both which platforms (like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, etc.) and where within those platforms (like Feed, Stories, or Reels).

Pros:

Full control over where your ads appear
Align your budget with audience-specific placements
Provides precision

Cons:

More time-consuming to set up
Requires deeper knowledge and strategy

Choosing a Placement Strategy: Advantage+ vs. Manual

At Pintler Group, we pride ourselves on knowing our clients and understanding where their audiences spend the most time. For example, when working with a concert venue, we recognize that the target audience skews younger and that video content performs well. In this case, we focus our placements on Instagram, especially in areas like Reels and Stories. Conversely, when working with real estate agents, we know their audience tends to be older and more active on Facebook. That’s why we prioritize Facebook placements over options like Threads, Messenger, Audience Network, or Instagram.

Because of this, we often rely on manual placements to ensure we’re delivering ads in the most effective spots.

However, that doesn’t mean Advantage+ Placements are the wrong choice, especially if you’re new to marketing or still learning about your audience. Advantage+ can be a great starting point while you gather performance data and insights.

High-Impact Manual Placements to Prioritize

After choosing manual placements, you’ll see 23 different options across the following categories: Feeds, Stories and Reels, In-Stream Ads (for videos and reels), Search Results, Messages, and Apps and Sites.

With 23 placements to choose from, there’s plenty of opportunity to experiment. We recommend testing different placements and reviewing your reports to see where your ads receive the highest engagement and conversion rates.

That said, here are a few placements we suggest starting with:

Feed Placements: Core Visibility Across Platforms

Facebook Feed
Instagram Feed
Instagram Explore

These placements are great because they’re high-traffic areas where users naturally spend their time. Feed placements sit at the core of both Instagram and Meta platforms, allowing your content to blend seamlessly with organic posts, making it feel more native and less disruptive.

Instagram Explore is especially valuable, as it reaches users who are actively seeking new content. This means your ad is shown to an audience that’s open to discovery and more receptive to engaging with new information.

We prioritize Instagram Explore over Instagram Explore Home because Explore Home displays your ad in a smaller grid format, while Instagram Explore shows your ad at full size as users scroll, giving it more visibility and impact.

Stories & Reels: Full-Screen, High-Engagement Formats

Instagram Stories
Facebook Stories
Instagram Reels
Facebook Reels

These placements are ideal for mobile users and visually driven audiences. Stories and Reels offer a full-screen, immersive experience that integrates seamlessly into the user’s content journey. These formats are especially effective for video content, particularly Reels, where users are actively seeking out video. In this environment, video consistently drives higher engagement rates compared to static images, making it a powerful format for capturing attention and encouraging interaction.

We prioritize these placements because they consistently deliver strong performance across a wide range of industries. While other options like Messenger or Audience Network can work in specific cases, these core placements are often the best starting point when testing ad performance.

Final Thoughts

Choosing the right ad placements can significantly impact your campaign’s performance. Whether you start with Advantage+ for ease or dive straight into manual placements for more control, understanding how and where your audience engages is key. At Pintler Group, we lean into manual placements because they allow us to be intentional, data-driven, and strategic.

Don’t be afraid to test, learn, and repeat. Placements aren’t one-size-fits-all—what works great for one campaign or audience might fall flat for another. Keep experimenting, keep learning, and let the results guide your next move.

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I Changed Careers, These 3 Skills Came With Me

People working in an office, using laptops and having a discussion.

When I decided to change careers, I started thinking about what really matters in the workplace, what stands out after the diploma is earned. In some fields, degrees are non-negotiable. But in others, it’s the real, transferable skills (often the ones you don’t expect) that make the biggest difference.

My previous career was in education—specifically, my degree was in Early Childhood Education, K–8, but I spent my time working in PK–2. Education is a field where a degree isn’t just suggested; it’s mandated. Traditionally, this career requires a four-year college education, student teaching, and passing the PRAXIS exam, all before you even enter the workforce.

Do I believe a degree should be required for individuals teaching the youth of America? Absolutely. But do I think that degree taught me everything I needed to be a teacher? Not at all.

Fast forward a few years: I found myself yearning for more education, craving a fast-paced, creative, and challenging work environment. One where, like teaching, no two days were the same, but unlike teaching, I had more flexibility in my approach. I wanted a role where I could flex not just my brain, but also my creative muscles. One that allowed me to level up both my personal brand and my career capacity. That desire led me to pursue and earn a Master’s in Business Administration, and ultimately transition into the field of digital marketing.

My MBA taught me incredible skills ranging from business best practices to data analytics, negotiation, accounting, client management, project management, and more. But, just like with teaching, my degree only laid the foundation. It was up to me to make the leap and find ways to translate and leverage those skills into a new (and honestly, pretty daunting) world of digital marketing.

What I’ve found in my career transition is that it’s not just the clearly outlined, textbook skills from a degree that matter; it’s the behind-the-scenes abilities, the soft skills, and the strengths beyond syllabi developed throughout the process of earning a degree. Those are the surprisingly marketable skills that made my transition into a new career, and into my current role in digital marketing at Pintler Group, a success.

It turns out that the qualities that helped me succeed weren’t tied to a specific course I took or article I read but how I communicated with others, how I adapted to change and how I was willing to step out of my comfort zone to talk to people. Three transferable skills stood out: the know how to communicate early and often, the confidence to talk to new people (even when it is uncomfortable) and the endurance to remain adaptable.

1. Communicate: Early and Often

This lesson comes straight from my teaching days: communication is everything. The only way to avoid problems is to get ahead of them. Every job has stakeholders, and for teachers, it’s parents. Regular, consistent communication is non-negotiable: monthly newsletters, daily check-ins at drop-off and pick-up, quick texts when something comes up. I can’t say it enough: communicate early and often.

This applied when I was a student, too, whether struggling on an assignment or stressed about an exam. The solution? Communicate with your professors early. They want you to succeed.

And now, as a Digital Marketing Manager, the same rule applies: communicate early and often. Launching a new campaign? Share early results, good or bad. Running into a bottleneck in design? Keep your client in the loop. Sending monthly digital marketing reports and holding regular meetings?

You guessed it—communicate early and often.

2. Talk to People (Seriously)

Talk to your friends, coworkers, classmates, and even your barista. Make connections. It doesn’t have to be a formal networking event, because honestly, everything is a networking event. Sure, it’s often said, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” but it’s just as much about who knows what you know.

Send cold emails. Set up meetings with strangers. I started my career in education by volunteering at a local nonprofit with a nontraditional educational model in Missoula. I liked what they were doing, so I sent a cold email asking to meet the owner. One meeting turned into regular volunteering, which turned into a college internship, and eventually a full-time job while I was earning my degree.

I took the same approach when transitioning into digital marketing. Reach out to people and places that interest you. They might not be hiring now, but that’s okay. Often, if they don’t have a spot for you, they’ll know someone who does.

In digital marketing, networking isn’t just about landing a job; it’s about building relationships that drive results. Whether connecting with clients, collaborating with creative teams, or staying on top of industry trends, those connections matter. Strong relationships create a foundation for collaboration and knowledge-sharing. Attending conferences and reaching out to others in similar roles, both across the state and the country, gives me the tools to elevate my career and my marketing work.

So, just like in my career transitions, I keep reaching out, because in marketing, relationships are everything.

3. Adapt

When I started in education, I had the practical skills: how to build early literacy, introduce handwriting, and lay the foundation for math. What I didn’t have was the day-to-day reality. Those we finished our chapter early but there are ten minutes until lunch moments. The we planned this field trip hike two months ago but now it’s pouring rain kind of days. Or the we’ve been waiting in line for school pictures for over 30 minutes chaos. (All true moments of crisis. Try herding 30 five-year-olds in their nicest outfits while keeping picture day looks intact.)

But really, talk about learning adaptability.

You quickly figure out what works. Maybe the solution is singing songs, playing counting games in line, or running through the rain pretending to be secret agents. Adaptability isn’t a buzzword—it’s earned by experience, by reading the room, and adjusting on the fly.

As a student, adaptability means managing expectations, sharing ideas, and being prepared to pivot after feedback. Knowing that a group project is exactly that: a group project, not just your vision.

In marketing, adaptability means working with internal teams, managing multiple stakeholders in the design and copy process, and—of course—opening Meta on any given day to find a whole new suite of features. You pivot, you problem-solve, you figure it out.

Transferable Skills

Changing careers is scary. But it’s not about leaving everything behind. Whether you’re moving into a new profession, earning a new degree, or stepping up to a different role, you bring the skills you’ve learned along the way with you. For me, teaching a room full of kindergartners, working through group projects, and navigating a career change brought communication, connection, and adaptability to the forefront.

No matter your career, mastering these three skills is essential, they’re powerful tools you can use to succeed in any profession.

career change digital marketing transferable skills

Planning Your Integrated Digital Marketing Strategy for 2022

The new year is the perfect time to change up your digital marketing strategy. If you haven’t done so already, you will want to analyze your digital marketing efforts and outcomes for 2021. Not only will this show you your marketing successes and areas of improvement, but you may use this to create a strategic plan for the new year. Here are some tips to help you plan a digital marketing strategy for 2022.

Research Your Industry or Niche

Industry research is key no matter the type of brand or business you manage. Staying up to date on the latest advancements and trends in your niche can help you better prepare for the future. Reading through specific topics or keywords on news.google.com is an easy and free way to stay updated on news within your niche.

You will also want to spend time performing keyword research on Google. While this is helpful for SEO purposes, reviewing these queries can help you better understand the current state of your industry. Take note of the top results shown by Google when you search different industry keywords. You can also use this method to see the most searched questions regarding your business. While you may use the keyword planner tool in Google AdWords, you can also search different questions into Google and see what the search engine suggests. See below.

For products and services specific to a location, try Google searching geo-targeted phrases like, “lawyers in St. Louis” and analyze the top results. Additionally, try to find what your competitors show up for on Google, and what kind of content they post online to attract these results.

Research Your Target Audience

There are many creative ways to conduct target audience research in 2022. However, one of the best tools today for demographic research are forums, more specifically Reddit. This is especially true for service-based businesses or businesses that solve complex or difficult issues.

For example, if you are a financial advisor, there are hundreds of subreddits with members asking questions exclusively about personal finance. These are members of your audience exposing their pain points, confusions, and frustrations right in front of you. You may use this research to better approach your clients during introductory calls and consultations.

Additionally, answering questions on subreddits relevant to your services is a great way to establish yourself as a leader in the field. Since your target audience is asking for help, why not answer them directly? What better way to prove your value and expertise than helping a potential client quickly, online, and for free?

Talk to Your Audience

While audience research is imperative for any business owner, speaking directly with the client is an invaluable practice. Even if you operate a business that is not client-facing, like an e-commerce store, speaking to a member of your target demographic will give you real-life insight that you can not copy and paste from the internet. There are also engineering as marketing tools you can implement. Specifically, converting your existing video content into video-lead-generation tools by adding forms on top of video.

If you’re a marketer that works with individual business owners, a great way to do this is by hopping on a client call with your client’s client. Pay close attention to the conversation between your client and their own client. What kind of questions is your client asking? How is their client reacting? Does the client seem pleased? How can your client create a better experience for their own client? This interaction is an opportunity to uncover a different side of your audience that can not be replicated online. It will also help you to create better, more relevant campaigns that are aligned with your client’s target audience.

Implement New Social Features

Your digital marketing strategy in 2022 should progress with the times. In the last 2 years, we have all seen the explosion of TikTok and Instagram Reels, and the power of video marketing only seems to be increasing. While it may seem scary to begin posting videos online for your brand or business, it could be what it takes to blow up your brand or business.

However, it’s also okay to be realistic. If after some time you realize this form of marketing doesn’t quite relate to your target audience at the moment, that’s okay, too! Maybe you don’t need a TikTok, but creating a few Reels each month is necessary. It’s important to try new things and test out new features, but it’s also crucial that your marketing efforts make sense to you and your brand.

Like any other social media campaign you create, your video marketing ideas and posts need to have a goal. If you’re posting videos for your brand without a true intention, then it is likely this platform will not work for you. Each video must have a goal, information or benefit for the user, and/or a call to action. If you’re unfamiliar with video marketing for social media, spend some time on both TikTok and Reels and try to see if any of the sounds or trends can be used for your business.

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Best Email Marketing Tips for Medium-Sized Companies

Best Email Marketing Tactics for Medium Sized Companies

4.3 billion people use email, which is more than half of the world’s population! That’s also more than the number of users on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media platform. It’s proven to be effective for marketers and business owners, too! In 2021, the average return on investment for an email marketing campaign is about $42-$50 for every $1. Creating and maintaining an email marketing list can sound like a daunting task, but it’s truly transformative for small-mid-sized businesses when executed correctly. Here are the best email marketing tips for medium-sized businesses.

Grow Your Email Marketing List

It’s common for businesses to offer a free resource such as an ebook or download. While these strategies may have worked in the past, it’s better to focus on providing your potential customer with information that is not only resourceful but applicable. This should be something that they can not only read, but also use.

For example, a physical checklist for an SEO manager or a list of approved vendors for an event planner. These two offerings not only provide the user with information but also a call to action or task.

Another easy way to grow your email marketing list is by placing an email opt-in for online orders on your website. This ensures that you’re adding quality leads to your email list that are already engaging with your brand. However, it’s important to ensure the email field contains an “opt-in” to comply with email marketing and spam policies placed by both the government and various email service providers.

It is also important to not cut corners when it comes to growing your list. In order to actually see a return on your investment and efforts, you need an engaged audience who actually wants to hear from you. Because of this (and many other reasons) do not buy or “rent” an email marketing list. This one mistake may lead to low open rates, no sales, and possible fines from Google or the government.

Email Marketing & Audience Segmentation

Once you’ve grown your email marketing list, it’s time to implement a maintenance plan. Over time, you will notice contacts that repeatedly bounce or ignore your emails altogether. These contacts take up space within your audience, lower your engagement and click-through rate, and do not provide any value. Because of this, you will want to clean your email marketing list every six months.

In order to increase your engagement, click-through rate, and general sales, you will need to segment your email marketing list. In fact, 77% of email marketing ROI comes from segmented campaigns. Segmentation sounds difficult, but it’s a super simple concept.

For example, say you own a company that buys businesses from those ready to retire. However, your service also includes finding a young entrepreneur to buy that business. Here, you’d have two completely different groups within the same audience that you are targeting: the buyer and the seller. The message, information, and resources you provide with the older business owner will differ from that of the young entrepreneur.

When you consistently send the wrong segment the wrong message, they will likely unsubscribe or ignore your emails.

There are two popular ways to segment your audience: demographic and behavioral segmentation.

Demographic segmentation includes factors like location or a company’s size. Behavioral segmentation includes actions like previous purchases, lifecycle stages, and customer loyalty. In short, this kind of segmentation allows you to cater to your audience based on their previous actions.

Avoid Spam and the Promotions Tab

When an email falls into the spam or promotions tab, the likelihood of obtaining an open or sale drops dramatically. Think about it, when was the last time you clicked on either of these tabs? Most users will either ignore or mass delete any messages that land in these two areas of an email account.

Unfortunately, a lot of business owners will spend time and effort on an email marketing campaign only for it to land in the spam or promotions tabs and go completely unseen by its audience. Luckily, we know a few tips to help you avoid the graveyard that is the spam and promotions tabs:

Audience Engagement: Each time a user ignores, deletes, or does not open an email sent from your address, the user’s email provider essentially counts that as a “mark” against you. Meaning, over time, if users are consistently ignoring your messages, the email provider will recognize that your emails are not resonating with the user. Then, the email provider will begin to place your emails into the spam folder. This is another reason why email segmentation and tailoring your message to different groups within your audience are extremely important.

Avoid Spam Trigger Words: Using particular words and phrases like ‘free’, ‘best price’, ‘cash’, ‘no obligation’ in your subject line can raise spam flags and cause your campaign to be filtered out of your recipients’ primary inbox. For more examples of words that can land your hard work right in the spam folder, check out this HubSpot article. False promises from the subject line can also have the same effect and make your message appear spammy.

Set Email Address: Oftentimes, you’ll see emails from companies that look something like “contact@apple.com” or “hello@apple.com.” For small-mid-sized businesses, it is best to steer away from the corporate or formal feel of these addresses to avoid falling under the promotions tab. Instead, try using something more personal by using a real name, like “steve@apple.com.” This has also been shown to increase user engagement because the user feels that they are speaking to a real person instead of an automated message or robot.

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How to Plan A Successful Holiday Marketing Campaign

It’s basically a fact of life that the holidays arrive more quickly when you are in marketing. As we get ready to flip the calendar to November, if you’re not already organizing your holiday marketing campaigns, now is time to jump on it!

With U.S. holiday retail sales predicted to increase by 2.7% to $1.093 trillion, just about every business owner should be in the midst of planning a holiday marketing campaign. A smart and strategic campaign positions your brand for an increase in traffic, sales, and brand awareness. Before you begin your journey, here are a few tips to help you plan out a successful holiday marketing campaign.

Planning a Social Media Holiday Campaign

Social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools in 2021. However, it must be used correctly in order to see a gracious return on your investment. When it comes to planning a social media holiday campaign, you may want to first ask yourself the following:

What is the reason for this campaign? What is our main goal?
Who are we trying to reach?
What social media channels does our audience use?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you’ll have a better idea of where your campaign will exist online as well as a set of solidified goals. Remember, any digital marketing campaign you create should support your brand’s main goals and objectives. Campaigns without an intended objective in mind become confusing, convoluted, and muddled.

If you’re lost on content ideas or don’t know where to begin when it comes to creating a social media holiday campaign, we suggest digging into your competitors’ past campaigns and analyzing the content they’ve previously posted around the holidays. Make sure to consider both successful and unsuccessful campaigns and try to take note of what element impacted the success of these campaigns.

Above all, your social media campaign needs to offer your clients and audience some sort of value within a definitive timeline. Without a value or incentive, your holiday campaign turns into general social media posting. A few ways to provide incentives during a social media holiday campaign include:

Seasonal products that are removed after the holiday season
- Hint: Introduce a holiday edition of one of your best-selling products
Partake in consumer holidays and big sales days like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, New Year’s Day, and Boxing Day
Special gift items with purchases
Offering additional membership points or rewards

Planning an Email Marketing Holiday Campaign

When it comes to email marketing, knowing your audience is crucial. If you use an email marketing management system like MailChimp or HubSpot, you know the importance of a properly segmented audience.

If you currently have different audiences, groups, etc. in your email management system, it’s a good idea to create individual campaigns for each audience. Different segments of your audience have different needs and will likely respond better to messaging that is targeted to them specifically.

If you’ve never segmented your email marketing audience before, now is a good time to start! Consider the different demographics and groups within your audience, and how you can craft content that each group will respond to.

When you begin creating your email marketing holiday campaign, it is crucial that you optimize for the mobile experience. According to Email Uplers, mobile opens account for 46% of all email opens. Additionally, studies have shown that 69% of mobile users delete emails that are not correctly optimized for mobile viewing. So, if you spend time and effort on a beautiful design but it’s not responsive on a mobile device, you may not see much of a return on your investment. With over 62% of U.S. consumers aged 21-45 saying they rely on just their mobile device for their entire shopping journey, companies and brands need to pay close attention when it comes to mobile design and optimization for their email holiday campaigns.

Planning an SMS Holiday Campaign

Not many business owners think of adding an SMS or texting messaging campaign into their holiday marketing efforts, but you’d be surprised by the tactic’s results. In fact, 72% of retailers have increased their advertising investments for holiday mobile marketing this year. Not only is an SMS campaign easy to implement, but its results are also rapid-fire fast. According to Klaviyo, 90% of text messages are read within just 3 minutes.

If you’re struggling to find content for an SMS holiday campaign, you may want to alert your clients of:

A new product launch
A special promotion code available for SMS subscribers only
New product launches
Pop-up events
Digital or physical events

Planning Your Paid Social Media Campaign

Sometimes pushing out organic posts on social media isn’t enough during a noisy holiday season. While you might need to stretch your paid social media budget to outperform your competition during this period, your return on ad spend can be quite high. Having an idea of your goals for your KPIs prior to launch will help you know if and when you may need to pivot or readjust throughout the season.

As we’ve pitched throughout this article, having a plan for your audience and timing can make or break your campaign. Start your advertising early! With customers being pulled in many different directions this time of year, it’s often the case that the more they see your ads, the better.

If you have data from your CRM about customers who have previously purchased during holiday seasons past, take that information and create an audience! While remarketing to these individuals can likely prove lucrative, consider expanding beyond them to a lookalike group as well.

Pintler Group Digital Marketing

The Pintler Group is the leading firm for medium to large companies and organizations that do not have a full-time digital marketing team of their own. We get seriously thrills from planning and executing superior campaigns – whether it’s during the holidays or not! From content and email marketing to paid search, social, and podcasting, our integrated strategies drive real results for our clients.

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