growth @ Selzy // paid social @ FirstPour

I’ve been in digital marketing since 2017, and I kept seeing the same pattern: fuzzy results and no clear ROI.

I always wanted one thing — direct, measurable impact.

In 2022, I moved to a new country, started freelancing, and then built Dedicado Agency. Survival was simple: make marketing work.

I went all-in on B2B, tested multiple channels, and found outbound to be the most effective. For the first time, I saw Sales truly respect Marketing — we generated enough qualified leads to sign 3 new clients within a couple of months.

Since then, I’ve replicated the same playbook for multiple clients and for my own agency. It wasn’t easy: long days, heavy tooling investment, documenting processes from scratch, and building a team — with more than one moment of considering a return to full-time employment.

But it paid off.

Today, I know which projects can win with outbound — and which can’t. And I’ve gone beyond outbound to build full GTM systems (outbound + paid ads + organic content) that don’t just generate leads, but also build trust and awareness within a clearly defined audience — and turn that into demand.

If you’re building B2B and want a repeatable way to generate demand and pipeline, feel free to connect or DM.

Evgeny Kotelevskiy

After 4 years of working 100% remotely, I realised one simple thing:


This is the ideal work format for me.

Why ideal:

↳ You can focus 100% on work, eliminating water cooler small talks, coffee runs, and the like.

↳ The number of useless meetings decreases significantly.

↳ You choose where to work; in my case, the bike replaced the subway, and instead of the soulless skyscrapers of an office center, I started working in a cozy coworking space with a garden where roses bloom year-round 🌹.

↳ Conveniences like dress codes are a thing of the past - I never understood the relevance of clothing to professionalism.

I see two main advantages of remote work:

↳ Development of independence: there's no Maria or Peter sitting near you to give you hints or do something instead of you; you have to figure it out yourself.

↳ Considering all the above, your professional growth happens much faster.

What are your thoughts on the 100% remote format?

#remoteworker #remoteworklife #remotework

I created Dedicado Agency in 2024. The goal behind it was simple: prove to myself that I can make marketing work and make it clearly measurable.

Why this idea?

Before that, I’d seen so many teams (including myself) doing so many things that didn’t produce results:

- Generating reports for the sake of reports, full of BS
- Infinitely forwarding emails back and forth to approve one simple thing that could’ve been approved in 2 minutes
- Burning budgets on channels that didn’t generate any profit and inventing metrics to "prove" they actually bring results

The more I run my agency, the more I understand this story is less and less about money for me, and more about finding the connection between business results and marketing activities. And for that, I can tolerate a lot:

- Spending more and more money on tools, even if projects can go unprofitable
- Working with "hard clients" who aren’t very friendly, if I see they have product-market fit
- Focusing 100% on my work and on nothing else

That’s why the agency is called Dedicado [Dedicated].

Go all the way to the end.

I’d like to say this is a joke, but there’s zero irony here. I’m pretty damn serious.

🤑 How much does DIY outreach cost?

Last week I did a quick exercise to understand how much money you need for lead gen tools to launch properly on your own — and I was kinda shocked 🤪.

Let’s use our starter plan at Dedicado Agency as a benchmark.

2,000 contacts: 5,000 emails + 1,000 LinkedIn connections for $1,990/month

Let’s go:

↳ Lemlist (2 seats) — $198 (LinkedIn + email sender)
↳ Apollo — $100 (contact source)
↳ LinkedIn Sales Navigator — $120 (LinkedIn contact source)
↳ OpenAI API — $50 (to plug AI into spreadsheets, etc.)
↳ Apollo scrapers — $30 (so you don’t hit limits)
↳ MillionVerifier — $30 (email verification)
↳ Catch-All Verifier — $20 (to double-check emails after MillionVerifier)
↳ GetProspect — $50 (Sales Navigator scraper + email finder)
↳ Make.com — $19 (automations)
↳ Domains (10) — $130 (one-time payment)
↳ Google Workspace via Zapmail (12) — $70
↳ Apify — $100 (scrapers)

Then you choose:

🔴 Budget option:
GPT for Sheets — $30 (data work)
Perplexity Pro for 3 accounts — $20 (website research)

🟡 Optimal option:
Clay Explorer — $349 (data work)

🟢 Recommended add-on:
+ MasterInbox — $299 (reply management)

What you get in the end to launch your campaign:

🔴 Budget option:
$967 [$817/mo + $150 once a year]

🟡 Optimal option:
$1,317 [$1,167/mo + $150 once a year]

🟢 Optimal option with the recommended add-on (MasterInbox):
$1,616 [$1,466/mo + $150 once a year]

Writing this not only for you, but also for myself — to understand where the money is actually going. 😂

Outbound should work like this:

- A steady flow of interested leads
- Converting into meetings
- Meetings turning into sales

Yes, there can be nuances:

- The % of interested people can vary a lot
- You may need 2-3 follow-ups before someone agrees to a call
- The deal cycle can stretch out, and it’s not guaranteed a deal happens within a month

But the main thing is this:

!! Understanding that people are replying and that there’s interest. !!

If you have replies and you have interest, you can:

- Scale volumes multiple times
- Fine-tune your offer to make it more attractive
- Add extra channels (LinkedIn, WhatsApp, etc.)

But if you don’t have that, you need to think about 3 key things:

- Who you’re pitching
- What you’re pitching
- Do they actually need it

Because if at scale (1,000+ contacts) you’re not getting replies, most likely you’re not hitting the right audience with the thing they actually want.

Because if you are hitting it, people will forgive you for:

- Not-perfect deliverability
- AI-generated profile pics
- Domains that lead nowhere
- Your non-native or ChatGPT-ish English

All of that matters and affects conversion rate. But it’s not the core thing.

The core thing is understanding what your audience needs and communicating value that can actually satisfy that need.

That’s it!

Andrea Bosoni

2026 will be the year of authenticity with a comeback of raw and unpolished content like vlogging, real-time updates and personal blogs.

This is the stuff that will work. You don’t need tools, AI, or big budgets. Just something interesting to say.

This is true for people but also for products. Most companies aren’t set up for this. Forward-thinking ones will hire in-house creators great at storytelling.

The best strategy to get attention will be to do things and tell the world about your own unique experience.

If you think that in the future all companies will start to vibe code their own tools instead of using a SaaS you’re disconnected from reality because when a company buys a product what they’re really paying for is the certainty and safety that things will just work without any headaches.

Forget Reddit now AI search tools are starting to love LinkedIn. I saw a study made by Spotlight that shows how basically all the main ones are citing content posted on there 5x times more often than before. Makes sense as it’s tied to real profiles and not anonymous sources.

I wasn’t expecting this. According to Similarweb Threads has now more daily active users than X. Anyone knows if there is an active community of founders and marketers on it? The trend looks on the rise. I guess it’s time to give it another try.

If you’re trying to get your first customers your best bet is to do what I call the 5.1 surround.

It’s pretty simple:

- Pick 1 social media platform: concentrate all of your effort on the single channel where your target audience is most active.
- Keep repeating 5 things: post following a content strategy, engage with related conversations, message your ideal customers, partner with relevant influencers and run laser targeted ads.

People will get that “it’s everywhere” effect that will make you top of mind when they need what your product does.

The founder of an early stage startup is looking to hire a marketing generalist to lead growth.

We were chatting and he was curious to know what I’d ask candidates.

So I gave him a few questions off the top of my head:

1. My product has 2,500 users but 50 paying customers. Any idea about what could be wrong?
2. AI search is a hot topic. Would you be able to explain what query fan-out means?
3. A SaaS has a retention problem. What are 3 things you’d do to reduce churn?
4. I’m running an ad on Instagram that says “learning limited.” How would you fix it?
5. This brand started being more active on social media. Could you tell me how to understand if it’s working?

I told him there’s not necessarily one right answer but it would be really interesting to hear their reasoning.

If they’re able to go through all of them they’re definitely great marketing generalists.

New AI tool: Today we’re releasing Claude Code for marketing.

Me: Skeptical but the launch video has 3M views so let’s take a look at it.

New AI tool: It does a marketer’s work in minutes by browsing, clicking and posting like a human would.

Me: Ahh so what it really does is spam the web with automated comments pretending to be me.

New AI tool: The marketing hire is now optional.

Me: Hahaha no.

At some point while building your product you will get an urge to become better at marketing. It’s very important that you listen to that urge and just get started.

It’s counterintuitive but one of the best marketing strategies is to underpromise and overdeliver. You will likely sacrifice some growth in the short term but all the word of mouth that will come after will more than make up for it. Luckily most people do the opposite.

When you search for “product hunt alternatives” the site that ranks first right below the AI overview is… Product Hunt itself.

There are a lot of benefits to doing something like this for your product. Not only do you drive potential users to your site instead of somewhere else.

You might also get another chance for them to consider what you sell. Unfortunately most founders are too scared by the idea of linking out to competitors.

But if you don’t control the narrative somebody else is going to and it won’t be in your favor!

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