After running AdTribe for six years and managing over $100M in ad spend, I learned how hard it is to build and keep a world-class media buying team.

Finding great talent takes months.
Training takes even longer.
And the wrong hire can cost you clients and profit fast.

So I built the service I wish existed back then — Haven.

Haven is a white-label media buying partner that helps marketing agencies scale without hiring.

For $799 per account, you get a complete senior-level growth team:

✅ Media buyer
✅ Creative designer
✅ Video editor
✅ Developer
✅ Performance strategist

No hiring. No overhead. No training headaches.

Today, more than 20 agencies partner with us to handle their paid media.

A few of them said it best:

Olivia Kean, CEO at Fusion Hub
👉 “It’s allowed me to focus on the things I love, knowing they’re crushing it on their end.”

Kory Baraba, CEO at Grow Fast
👉 “We’ve worked with 4–5 different media buyers from Haven, and they’ve all been amazing.”

See more client stories here: https://www.hirewithhaven.com/clients

If you run a marketing agency and want to scale fulfillment without adding headcount,
connect with me or reach out at dmitry@hirewithhaven.com

Dmitry Fesenko

I'm running two marketing agencies full-time.

These 7 tools generate 20-30 qualified calls every single month:

1/ HeyReach

Sends 30-40 connection requests daily to agency owners.
Acceptance rate: 42%. Reply rate: 14%.
Gets me in front of 200+ decision makers weekly.

2/ Clay

Enriches every lead with company data before I reach out. 
Tells me their employee count, estimated revenue, tech stack. 
I know if they need help before they know it themselves.

3/ Unipile

We run LinkedIn outbound from 7 team member profiles. 
Unipile manages all conversations in one inbox. 
No more account switching.

4/ N8N

My SDR loves n8n.
We automated everything from intent signals to data cleanup to routing warm leads into our CRM.
Zero manual work.

5/ Smartlead

Cold email on steroids.
Warms up 10 email accounts. Sends 300 emails daily.
Gets me in front of agencies not active on LinkedIn.

6/ RapidAPI

Pulls LinkedIn data straight into my CRM.
Shows me who viewed my posts, who engaged, who is quietly checking my profile.
Perfect timing for warm outreach.

7/ Folk CRM

Tracks every prospect from first touch to placement.
One dashboard shows pipeline value, conversion rates, follow-ups needed.
My close rate jumped from 20% to 45% once I could see patterns.

These tools run 24/7. 
All I do is show up to calls.

Total monthly cost: $847/month

What sales tools are actually moving the needle for you?
👇 Share below.

CEO at Haven | Hire world-class media buyers for 65% less than in the US | $100M+ in managed ad spend

7 sales tools

When I started my first agency in 2018, I made a huge mistake.

I hired full-time employees way too early.

At the time, I had only one year of media buying experience and was managing 15 clients as a freelancer.

I decided it was time to build something bigger than myself and start an agency.

Over the next 6 months I hired:

→ 6 full-time media buyers
→ 1 social media manager
→ 1 part-time developer

On the outside, it looked like I made it.

Big team. Cool office. Friday parties.

The reality?

I was maxing out credit cards to pay salaries.

My lead flow was inconsistent, so most media buyers were operating at half capacity.

Our service quality was mediocre because I had no hiring or training process.

Client churn was high.

Then Covid hit and I had to let go most of the team and cut all bonuses for the rest.

It was rough.

Looking back, I made my life much harder than it needed to be.

If I had to do it again, I would:

→ Stay a freelancer longer and save more money
→ Keep raising prices until I had 10 solid clients
→ Outsource some clients to a contractor or a white label partner like Haven
→ Hire a full time media buyer only when their salary is no more than 25% of agency revenue

The lesson?

You don’t need a big team to build a real business.

You need a good offer, a good lead flow, and a fulfillment partner you can rely on.

Agency life is already hard.

Don’t make it harder.

We will hire a vetted offshore media buyer for your agency in under 30 days or you don’t pay.

Over the last 7 years, we’ve hired and trained 50+ media buyers for my two agencies, AdTribe and Haven.

Most of our talent comes from Ukraine and Eastern Europe. They work hard, learn fast, and know the platforms inside out.

It has been my secret weapon.

A few months ago, an agency owner DM’d me asking if we could hire and train a media buyer for his agency.

That one message turned into our Media Buyer Placement Offer. 

Since then, demand exploded.
We even brought on a full-time recruiter to increase our hiring capacity.

Here’s what agencies get when they work with us:

✅ World-class offshore talent with real platform depth
✅ Every candidate is vetted by our Head of Paid Media
✅ 90-day replacement guarantee
✅ Additional support and access to our SOPs

Keep in mind, this is not our main focus. 

We still hire and manage our own internal team of media buyers running ads for 90+ accounts.

So we only take up to 5 placements per month.

If you’re hiring in the next 60 days, DM me.

We've rebuilt our media buyer compensation system 6 times in 7 years.

Here's the full evolution:

↳ 2018: Tiny base, no bonus

Started my first agency with no money. Hired juniors who'd never heard of marketing and taught them Facebook ads.

My current Head of Paid Media started at $500/month.

↳ 2019-2020: Higher base + fixed bonus

Fixed bonus per account managed.

It was simple and easy to calculate, but incentivized the wrong things: quantity over quality.

↳ 2021: Weighted bonus

Paid a consultant $3K to build the "perfect" system.

Weighted by account complexity, niche difficulty, retention metrics.

 Once we hit 50 accounts, payroll took 10 days to calculate.

It was too complex to maintain.

↳ 2022-2024: retention system + CEO bonus

Fixed bonus per account plus extra for 6+ month retention. Added "CEO bonus" for outlier accounts that were unusually demanding.

This system lasted the longest.

↳ 2025: % of rev or fixed bonus

Split the team into AdTribe and Haven. 

Media buyers who worked with direct clients earned % of revenue, media buyers who worked with agencies got fixed bonus per account. 

Couldn't generate enough volume for both. Merged them back after 6 months.

↳ 2026: Revenue share

We're changing compensation again to reflect our new pricing. 

Stay tuned.

***

After 6 iterations, what I learned is that there is no perfect system.

What works depends on your stage and who you want to attract. 

A 25-year-old takes risk for reward. A 35-year-old with a mortgage wants predictable income.

Your compensation structure IS your culture.

Choose wisely.

"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome." - Charlie Munger

The main thing that kills agency margins is simple:

too many managers who don’t do any billable work.

At Haven, every team lead and even our head of paid media manages at least a few strategic accounts.

Four reasons:

→ it keeps our COGS low
→ they stay sharp and keep practicing their craft
→ they actually understand what good looks like
→ fulfillment doesn’t suffer when a media buyer takes a vacation

At the end of the day, your best managers never stop being practitioners.

Otherwise, you end up building a company where managers manage managers and no one knows how to do the work.

🚀 October 2025 results at Haven

Ad spend: $1.2M
Revenue: $3.1M 
Leads generated: 91,870

Top-performing niches: 

→ Apparel & Accessories ($1.8M in rev) 
→ Home & Lifestyle ($517K in rev) 
→ Food & Beverage ($320K in rev)

Platform breakdown: 

→ Meta: 58% 
→ Google: 41% 
→ LinkedIn, TikTok, Taboola, Email: 1%

Wins this month: 

✅ 71% of accounts hit or exceeded targets
✅ Introduced a new media buyer placement offer ($12,500 in contracts closed)
✅ Onboarded a few new agencies (ecom + B2B)
✅ Team started logging all inputs in Asana
✅ Hired a new media buyer

P.S.

Q4 is almost done. 
Black Friday is around the corner. 
This is when most agencies scramble.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

At Haven, we help marketing agencies scale without the stress of hiring.

Our senior media buyers run Meta and Google ads under your brand so you can take on more clients and protect your margins.

We have one spot left to fill our 2025 capacity.

Your CAC is irrelevant.

Ask yourself:

Would you rather pay $200 to get someone who spends $500?

Or $1,000 to get someone who spends $5,000?

I had this conversation last week with one of our MedSpa clients.

We kept pushing their hangover drip because it had the lowest CAC. On the surface, it looked like the right move.

Then we dug deeper.

Hangover drip customers almost never come back. 
They buy once and disappear.

Wellness drip customers are the opposite.
They turn into long-term clients spending over $5,000 every year.

Yes, the CAC to acquire them is higher.
But the CAC to LTV ratio makes way more sense.

Lesson?

Don't just push ad spend toward the products with the lowest CAC.
Focus on the offers that attract whale customers with the highest LTV instead.

That's how you build a great business.

I used to think my main job as a founder was to hire smart people and let them cook.

Turns out, that’s only part of the equation.

Even the most talented team needs structure. Your business should run like a well-oiled machine, not depend on individual brilliance.

And that comes down to systems.

If your operations are messy, even A-players won’t save you.

From how you onboard new talent to how you define “great work,” everything needs to be documented, clear, and repeatable.

And once you set those standards, your job still isn’t done. You have to make sure everyone actually follows them.

That means meetings, reviews, accountability, and constant communication.

My point is, building an agency is hard. Very hard

It’s a never-ending cycle of winning clients, fulfilling work, hiring, and managing people.

But there’s a way to remove at least half of that stress.

👉 Hire Haven

We handle most of the client fulfillment so you can focus on growth.

And finally take a vacation without your phone blowing up.

Last week, we did an account audit for one of our agency partners.

Here’s the message they sent us after sharing it with their prospect 👇

"We had a great call yesterday evening. The prospect should be signing this week."

And this isn’t an exception.

Our audits convert over 50 percent of prospects into paying clients for our partners.

Here’s what the audit covers:

→ account structure 
→ creative strategy 
→ competitors analysis
→ website & CRO recommendations
→ a clear step by step action plan

It costs only $199.

The best part? Every new partner gets one audit for free.

DM me “audit” and I’ll send you the details.

Every agency has access to the same AI tools.

ChatGPT costs $20. Claude costs $20. Everyone can afford it.

Which means the tools themselves are not an advantage.

Knowing how to write prompts is not advantage either. 
You can literally ask ChatGPT to write the perfect prompt for you.

So what actually gives you an edge?

Data.

Data is the moat.

The more high-quality data you have, the better your AI outputs will be.

Once I realized this, we:

→ Moved all spreadsheets into Airtable 
→ Started logging every action in Asana 
→ Stored 7 years of campaign performance in our database 
→ Updated SOPs so LLMs can actually digest them 
→ Added ChatGPT to all our Slack channels
→ Saved all my LinkedIn posts and newsletters for voice training

Piece by piece, we're building our agency's second brain.

It's not sexy. 
Most people would rather build another ChatGPT wrapper that produces mediocre results.

We're aiming for excellence and willing to do the boring work.

That's what it takes to build a true AI-powered agency.

I was skimming through "Unreasonable Hospitality" the other day, and one line popped up:

"The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.”

It's true in restaurants. It's even more true in agencies.

 After hiring 50+ media buyers over 7 years, I've learned the best ones are always detail-oriented and organized.

They:

→ use clean naming conventions
→ show up to meetings on time
→ never miss a deadline
→ document their tests 
→ set up campaigns without mistakes

When hiring at Haven, I look for these small signals first. Not their experience. Not their certifications. The details.

Because if someone can't follow a simple naming convention, they won't follow complex SOPs either. If they're sloppy with campaign structure, they'll be sloppy with your budget.

Excellence starts with the details.

We stopped running Haven like one big team.

Instead, we built it around pods: 
small independent teams that operate like mini agencies inside Haven.

Each pod has a team lead who acts like a CEO.

They hire their own people, manage their own mini P&L, and take full ownership of results.

It changed everything.

Before, I had to review every decision, jump into Slack threads, and fix small fires every day.

Now, team leads make decisions fast, solve problems on their own, and take full accountability for outcomes.

Each pod has its own strengths:

Pod #1 - Meta and Klaviyo 
Pod #2 - Meta and Google 
Pod #3 - Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn 

Team leads are incentivized like founders.

They earn a percentage of their pod’s profit, so when the pod wins, the whole agency wins.

Extreme ownership is how we scale without losing quality.

Each month, our media buyers review what's working across 90+ accounts.  

Here are 6 things that stood out in November:

1/ New case study for CPG

We scaled a beef jerky brand from $5k in ad spend to $25k/month at 3.0 ROAS.

 What worked:

→ BOGO offer 
→ Build your bundle LP
→ Creative diversity
→ ABO < CBO

2/ Smaller radius = higher ROI for local businesses

Wellness client kept expanding radius to get more leads. Cost per lead kept climbing.

Worse: No one drives 10+ miles for IV therapy.

We cut radius to 5 miles. 
Optimized GMB.
ROI has increased from 2.5 to 4.97

His clinic is fully booked now.

3/ Inventory kills momentum

Tableware client: $4-5K daily revenue during peak season.

Ran out of stock. Had to cut ad spend. Revenue crashed to $2K/day.

We had winning ads pulling 3.5 ROAS but nothing to sell.

Another reminder why I don't start my own ecom store 😅

4/ Excluding branded keywords backfired

Client wanted more new customers. We excluded branded keywords from PMax.

→ ROAS tanked
→ New customer rate increased only 2% 
→ Competitors started bidding on their brand

Never leave your branded search unprotected.

5/ Pmax for lead gen clients 

Most lead gen PMax campaigns fail. Google drives tons of volume, but nothing converts.

Why? You're optimizing for cheap calls, not revenue.

Solution: push offline conversion value back to ads manager

We did this for a MedSpa client and increased appointment value by 67%. 

Treat every lead gen account like ecom. 

6/ Friction kills conversions

Client's 25% off sale failed completely.  

The problem: Promo code buried in the creative. Not auto-applied at checkout.  

The fix: Code in headline + Meta's promo extension or Shopify auto-apply URLs.

Small friction = big revenue loss.

P.S.  Managing 90+ accounts means we see patterns before they become trends.  

If your agency needs media buyers who actually know what they're doing (and cost 65% less than US talent), DM me

I posted my first LinkedIn post back in 2020.

It got 6 likes.

I remember spending hours writing it and thinking it was a waste of time when I could be doing something more important.

So I stopped.

But here’s what I realized:
If I had stayed consistent, both of my agencies would probably be 3x bigger by now.

I finally started posting regularly this year.

Here's what happened:

→ my calendar got packed with leads
→ I met amazing people who became close friends
→ hiring talent became 10x easier

The math is simple:
More visibility = more opportunities.

But here's the thing most people miss: it's not about going viral.

It's about showing up consistently so the right people find you when they need you.

If you run a B2B business, LinkedIn is still the best marketing channel to go all in on.

The best time to start was 5 years ago.
The second best time is today.

We used to send 30 to 40 invoices manually every month. Now it's all done automatically in Airtable. 

Before...

...everything lived across spreadsheets and Slack messages

...invoices for small one-time projects were getting missed 

...our accountant had to log in to Stripe and send every invoice by hand

...no one really knew which invoices were already sent or still pending

In short, it was messy. 

Once we moved our entire back end to Airtable, it finally made sense to automate the whole thing.

And we did. Here's how it works now:

→ A script pulls all active accounts with the retainers we charge
→ Head of Paid Media goes through the list and approves everything
→ Agencies confirm their accounts through Airtable Interfaces
→ Airtable pushes invoices straight to Stripe through API

Now, I don’t even think about invoicing anymore (almost 😅). 

The team reviews their part, agencies confirm their active accounts, and Stripe sends everything on its own.

It finally feels like a real system instead of something I had to babysit every month.

Airtable has been our biggest operational win this year.

Super happy we made the switch.

Another week, another round of wins from our agency partners 💪

Love seeing these messages pop up in Slack.  

90+ accounts under management.  
18 agency partners. 
Wins like these every single week.  

This is why we do what we do.

Our $199 audits are closing deals for agency partners.

Here's what one of them just told us: 

"Whoever did the audit, please tell them they did a great job! I like how they incorporated infographics and embedded videos directly in the audit. Overall it was very thorough and helped me close this client."

We've done 30+ audits in the last 3 months.

They convert over 50% of prospects into paying clients.

 Here's what every audit includes:

→ Full account structure analysis 
→ Creative strategy breakdown with examples 
→ Competitor analysis with actual ad screenshots 
→ Website & CRO recommendations 
→ Step-by-step action plan for the first 90 days

After reviewing dozens of accounts, we see the same patterns:  

Most agencies are leaving money on the table with poor campaign structure. 
Creative testing is almost non-existent.
Landing pages don't match ad messaging.  

The audit shows prospects exactly what they're missing. And more importantly, how to fix it.

Price is $199. 
But every new partner gets their first audit free.

We only do 10 audits per month because our Head of Paid Media reviews each one personally.  

If you have a prospect on the fence, DM me "audit" and we'll help you close them.

When I started Haven, I wanted it to be fully productized.

Same deliverables.
Same process.
Same price

But I learned very fast that with agencies, this is not gonna work.

Every agency I talked to had its own workflow, its own reporting style, its own way of communicating with clients.

I couldn’t force them into our system, so we had to change our approach.

Now, for each agency we work with, we create a separate Notion doc:

"How to work with agency X"

Each doc covers: 

→ how they like communication
→ what reports their clients expect
→ what “good” means in their niche
→ what we need from them to do our best work

It does make our ops more complex.

Just think about it:
we are managing more than 90 accounts across 18 agency partners in multiple niches: ecommerce, home improvement, medspa, apps, coaching, and a few others.

Each agency and each niche needs a tailored way of working. There is no one-size-fits-all.

But the deeper we integrate ourselves into those agencies, the longer they stay.

We still have agencies that worked with me 7 years ago when I was a freelancer. 

And in the agency world, retention is the only thing that really matters.

If you can retain clients for years, you can always optimize your processes to improve margins.

But if you lose clients left and right, your agency will always feel like it’s on fire.

One of the most useful things I use AI for has nothing to do with writing or creative work.

Every month, I ask Claude a simple question:

“Which clients are at risk of churning?”

It analyzes our Airtable data: ROAS, retention, % of goals hit, creative performance. 

Then gives us a breakdown like this:

🔴 High-risk clients
🟠 Medium-risk clients
🟢 Stable clients

My head of paid media and I review it together.

We use it to:

→ Spot accounts that need attention
→ Identify patterns across underperforming campaigns
→ And plan cash flow accordingly

Instead of waiting for clients to Slack me “hey, can we hop on a call?”, we reach out first. 

We flag the performance concern and bring solutions before they have to ask.

Most people use AI to write posts or make funny videos with Sora.

But the real unlock is data analysis.

What used to take hours in spreadsheets now takes 30 seconds.

How are you using AI in your agency?

Another week, another round of wins from our agency partners 😊

I've worked with 100s of brands over the last 10 years in marketing and sales, driving millions in revenue directly from social media. 

Most brands fail at building social communities that convert online, and instead, rely heavily on paid ads or retail to drive growth.

That's because most brands are doing it wrong, with no strategy, no understanding of their customer, and no proper evaluation and strategy refinement process.

I've learned all the hard lessons in the last 10 years about social media marketing and now my team and I work with 7-9 figure brands to skip the hard lessons and get it right.

If you want to get social media working for your brand, start here:

1. Request a free social opportunities audit (DM me, or email me at natasha@marrmediagroup.com).

I'll uncover the low hanging fruit you can address immediately to produce better content, drive more engagement, and start generating sales from social media right away. Uncover what you need to get some quick wins under your belt.

2. Follow me on LinkedIn for content on building social for your brand.

I post content about what to pay attention to, how to structure your team, and other info on using social to grow your brand online.

3. Book a call with me to chat about how we can help your brand build, execute, and scale a social strategy that will result in more direct sales.

Done with you: Our Social Accelerator Program was designed for start ups and small brands. We'll build your strategy, and completely run the strategic direction for your socials while your in-house team executes it. We fill the gaps you have internally, to get you the most out of social.

Done for you: Our full service Social Media Marketing completely alleviates your team from the day-to-day of social. We build, execute and evaluate a strategy to grow your brand's awareness, build loyal fans, and turn content into customers for your DTC brand.

Natasha Chilcott

I’ve been thinking a lot about how obsessed brands still are with reach on social media. More followers. More impressions. More “eyeballs.”

But when you actually look at what’s working for brands (big and small), it’s not mass reach that moves the needle, it’s micro-communities.

The small pockets of people who:

-Comment regularly
-Reply to your Stories
-Vote in your polls
-DM you with real questions
-Show up to everything you do

That’s where trust is built. That’s where referrals come from. That’s where offers land. And the platforms have quietly been giving us more tools to lean into this:

-Instagram Broadcast Channels for “inner circle” style updates
-Facebook & LinkedIn Groups for focused, ongoing conversations
-Interactive Stories (polls, questions, sliders) to listen instead of just talk
-Lives to create real-time, shared moments with your people

It reiterates the most important metric for 2026 isn’t “How many people follow us?” but “How many people would miss us if we stopped showing up?”

Curious, are you still chasing reach, or are you intentionally building a micro-community around your brand?

Your social sucks, ask me why | Building social communities that convert for stand out DTC brands

This is kind of a weird thing to admit as someone who works in social media, but here it goes ….


I will be deleting the social apps off my phone for the lead up to Christmas.

Truth is, I can’t be bothered comparing my Christmas shopping, activities, crafts, decorations, etc. as a mom this season. 

It’s sort of all consuming and exhausting as a parent trying to do all the things, making every season magical, while being bombarded with everyone else’s content that makes me feel inadequate.

You may wonder how I can even do this being that it’s my job. But truthfully, I just stick to the platforms on my desktop during work hours which works absolutely fine and doesn’t result in scroll jail. 

I’m just here to say, if you’re in social media marketing, or you just need a damn break every once and a while- take it. 

You’ll thank yourself when you can really be present and enjoy the holiday season without comparison. 

PS. I will not be avoiding LinkedIn because truthfully, this is the one platform that I really enjoy being on the daily. 🙃

No alternative text description for this image

So, you hired a social agency for $2,500/month, and now you’re frustrated they’re not acting like your full-blown strategic partner?

Let's be honest, at that price point, you hired an execution team:

 → They post the content you give them
 → They manage community responses
 → They report on performance
 → They keep the social machine running, 'keeping the lights on'

This is execution, and there’s nothing wrong with that if that's what you're looking for.

Working with a strategic social growth agency is completely different.
A true growth partner is focused on:

 → Building the strategy that fuels long-term brand momentum
 → Mapping content to revenue-driving customer journeys
 → Analyzing what’s converting (and what’s not)
 → Leading experimentation, storytelling, and platform-specific growth
 → Owning the outcomes, not just the checklist

Those are two entirely different levels of support… and they come with very different investments.

If you want a partner who thinks strategically, who steps into your brand, who carries your growth goals on their shoulders, you need to be realistic about your investment into that partnership.

If you want task execution and consistent posting, that’s great too. Just don’t confuse the two.

The team you’re paying $2,500/month to execute simply isn’t scoped (or priced) to architect your growth engine, stop expecting something you're not paying for.

If I've showed up in your feed and you're wondering who I am and why you should care - here goes a little re-introduction:


-I got into social media marketing over 10 years ago when I finished my bachelor's in Gold Coast, Australia.

-I started brand-side and made the transition to agency in 2017 when I returned to Canada with my Kiwi-import (now husband).

-In 2017 I started a social media agency called SHOUT Marketing and grew that for 6 years before selling to another agency.

-In those same 6 years I introduced 2 new little humans to the world (that was tough with no time off 😅 ).

-I did a transition with the agency who bought mine and hated everything about it because it wasn't a values alignment with client care and quality of work (live and learn about who you sell to).

-In 2023 I found Tessa May Marr and Marr Media Group here on LinkedIn and didn't know what to expect, but it was the best thing that could have happened (dare I say, for both of us? 😋 )

-Over 2 years later I am still here, working in social media marketing, partnering with some incredibly stand out brands and people, really proud of our team and the work that we do. 

It's been a journey. I've personally been involved with 100s of brand's socials in the last 10+ years.

I've learned a lot. But my biggest takeaway has been that I've never known it all. And this is the industry that just keeps giving: roadblocks, curveballs, challenges, you name it.

No doubt there are a lot of people talking about social in your feed. So, what makes me the authority? 

I'd like to think a little experience over the years, a passion for building epic brands, and the absolute determination to be the best at what we do at Marr Media Group. 

Thanks for being here and sharing this space with me. 🤝

What if you could identify your highest social engagers, auto-DM them a thank you, send them a special offer, and invite them into a VIP micro-community?


Well my friends, you can, and you should.

Yesterday I posted about micro-communities on social and how they're crushing compared to mass reach. Today on our #StayCurious call at Marr Media Group we talked about some of the tools we can use to identify those engagers and build deeper connections with our client's audiences.

Manychat still stands out as a great choice to create DM campaigns. This allows you to set up a variety of flows and automations like sending a quick note to every new follower, or having the ability to reward high engagers with exclusive offers and invitations to join your IG broadcast channel, or private discord.

Given that over 70% of brands STILL do not bother responding to their comments and messages, your brand can easily stand out by implementing a proper community management and outbound engagement strategy.

This all tracks to the larger theme of quality connections on social over mass reach and how significant this shift has been. 

Ask yourself:

-are we investing in our community?
-how can we creatively engage those we've built great affinity with?
-are we treating social as a monologue, or a conversation?
-what tools should be invest into in 2026 to help us manage and nurture these social relationships?

Vanity metrics don't make you more sales, highly engaged audiences who you build affinity and loyalty with do!

Join me on Wednesday where I'll be talking about micro communities on social and how powerful they can be in moving the needle and taking social from something you 'have to do' to a channel that consistently drives qualified sales traffic.

Link to register is in the comments below. 👇

View company: SocialNext Marketing Alliance

Big reach is out. Real connection is in.

The brands winning in 2025 aren’t chasing virality, they’re building micro-communities that care.

This Wednesday, Natasha Chilcott of Marr Media Group leads a SocialNext Marketing Alliance community webinar on how to:
✔️ Create content that connects
✔️ Leverage niche spaces and micro-influencers
✔️ Turn small communities into your brand’s growth engine

This 30-minute session will inspire marketers and business owners to rethink their social media strategy, from broadcasting to belonging.

Register now to save your spot! Link is in the comments.

Show of hands, how many of you are still investing into creator partnerships without knowing whether it's driving any sales? ✋ 


Time to switch things up for 2026. I wrote a quick summary of some of the ways you can swap reach for revenue with creators in the latest issue of Beyond the Feed. 

Check it out below 👇 and let me know what questions you have!

View newsletter: Beyond the Feed | DTC Social 

As a DTC brand leader, investing in influencer marketing can be a great growth tactic, but it can also be an epic waste of time and money. Unfortunate

Open article: How to Optimize Creator Partnerships for Sales by Natasha Chilcott • 4 min read

How to Optimize Creator Partnerships for Sales

This is SO COOL. 


It's been such a pleasure working with the Zak Designs team over the last 2 years. This brand was traditionally retail for decades and looking to better leverage social media to connect with their end consumer. 

Over the time working together, there have been so many highlights, but reading this article was insanely cool. Zak Designs is officially a top brand that over-indexes with millennials and DAMN they are in good company in this category. 👀 

Building your brand organically has an impact. Pairing organic with the great work Johnni Grenaa and team have been doing has been a winning formula. 

Can't wait to see what 2026 brings for this amazing brand and team we're so fortunate to collaborate with.

taplio

The Battle

Dmitry Fesenko

Natasha Chilcott

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreDmitry Fesenko's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreNatasha Chilcott's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Dmitry Fesenko

Natasha Chilcott

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Dmitry Fesenko's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreNatasha Chilcott's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreDmitry Fesenko's LinkedIn Performance