Exclusive articles

Practical writing on marketing budgets, brand and growth. Twice a week, no filler.

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  Exclusive29/10/202610 min read

  Same Video, New Headline, 20 Million More Views. How to Get Past the Doorman

  Iowa, 2011. A 19-year-old student named Zach Wahls stands in front of state lawmakers and talks about his family for three minutes. The video of the hearing goes online titled "Zach Wahls speaks about family." It does pretty well: about a million views. Then s

  Michal Krčmář · founder Don Marketer

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  Exclusive27/10/20269 min read

  59% of Shared Links Are Never Opened. People Don't Read. They Scan

  Last week I published an article on what performance marketing really costs. A few hours later, a friend of mine, a seasoned CMO, left a long, smart comment under my LinkedIn post. He explained that performance and brand aren't opposites, that they're supposed

  Michal Krčmář · founder Don Marketer

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  Exclusive25/10/20268 min read

  Half of People Miss the Gorilla. They Miss Your Ad Too

  Harvard, 1999. Psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris show people a short video: two teams of students passing a basketball. The task is simple. Count how many passes the players in white make. People count, they focus, they don't want to get it w

  Michal Krčmář · founder Don Marketer

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  Exclusive22/10/202610 min read

  What Does Performance Marketing Cost? adidas Put 77% Into It, Switched Off Google Search… and Almost Nothing Happened

  Why does your agency send you a beautiful report every month with a textbook ROAS, while nothing extra shows up in your bank account? Why does the same campaign that brought in customers by the truckload last year bring in half as many this year, for the same

  Michal Krčmář · founder Don Marketer

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  Exclusive19/10/20268 min read

  Will AI Make Marketing Textbooks Obsolete? Why Even the Most Modern Marketing Still Stands on Madison Avenue's Foundations

  Last week on LinkedIn, a university marketing lecturer asked a simple question: which marketing books should she recommend to her students? The replies caught her off guard. Books are useless, apparently – outdated by the time they're printed. PPC, SEO and web

  Michal Krčmář · founder Don Marketer

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  Exclusive14/10/20269 min read

  Separate Marketing and Sales Departments? In 2026, Only One Makes Sense: the Revenue Department

  It's the Monday meeting almost every company with more than ten people knows. Marketing reports: "We brought in 500 leads last month." Sales replies: "They were useless. We closed five." Marketing: "Because nobody called them back in time." Sales: "Because the

  Michal Krčmář · founder Don Marketer

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  Exclusive11/10/20267 min read

  Ads Promise an AI Social Media Manager for $17 a Month. Is It Worth It for Your Business?

  For weeks, my Facebook feed has been showing me the same kind of ad. In one, two business owners sit at a table. The frowning one "still does marketing by hand": 20,000 Czech crowns a month (about $850), 3 hours a day on social media, 3 months of onboarding. T

  Michal Krčmář · founder Don Marketer

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  Exclusive05/10/20268 min read

  9 Million Visits a Month, Almost No Ads: What a 2025 Startup Knows About Gen Z That Most Brands Miss

  Picture a company that launched in early 2025. No decades of history, no famous name, no storefronts. Less than two years later, it pulls in roughly 9 million visits a month, according to estimates from the analytics tool Similarweb – more than any competitor

  Michal Krčmář · founder Don Marketer

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  Exclusive24/09/20265 min read

  Percentage-of-Revenue Budget or CAC/LTV? Why It's Not a Fight, It's Two Different Questions

  A LinkedIn thread on "how much should I spend on marketing" recently produced two comments that flatly contradicted each other. One experienced marketer laid out a clean rule: 5% of revenue if you just want to hold your ground, 10-12% if you want to grow. Righ

  Michal Krčmář · founder Don Marketer

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  20/09/20266 min read

  What ROAS Actually Is - and Why "Good ROAS" Is a Different Number for Every Business

  Two business owners are chatting at a networking event about their ad results. The first says proudly, "I've got a ROAS of 3, I'm happy with that." The second frowns: "I've got a ROAS of 8 and I nearly lost money on it." Sounds like a contradiction - a higher

  Michal Krčmář · founder Don Marketer

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  Exclusive20/09/20266 min read

  WhatsApp vs. SMS in the U.S.: Why "Everyone Uses It" Doesn't Hold Up the Same Way in Miami as It Does in Prague

  Try this thought experiment for a second. You have an app that, across the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Brazil, India, or pretty much anywhere else in the world, is used by the overwhelming majority of the adult population - 2 billion people daily. Natur

  Michal Krčmář · founder Don Marketer

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  20/09/20266 min read

  Why Your Marketing Budget Should Be Based on Revenue, Not Profit or EBITDA

  Picture two companies. Both just closed a rough quarter. Both are sitting in the same budget meeting, looking for something to cut. And both reach for the same line item first: marketing. It's almost a reflex - profit is down, so cut the cost that "isn't essen

  Michal Krčmář · founder Don Marketer

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