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asked on Ask HN, 15 July 2026

How do you do marketing in the age of slop?

Do the things slop cannot fake: show up in the few places your buyers ask questions and answer them properly, write fewer and more specific pieces, and prove claims with something checkable. Cold outreach at volume is the part that stopped working; one-to-one, personal messages still get read.

By The Marketinque TeamReviewed September 2026

What did people in the thread say?

  • The founder who asked mentioned his product once in a thread and got a flood of AI-written outreach in return. His conclusion: cold outreach does not work, and forums convert best. source
  • A reply put it simply: producing things is cheap now, and distribution is the bottleneck. source
  • In a neighbouring thread, a couple of handwritten emails a day were still working while mass cold email went to spam. source
  • LinkedIn added a button to report a post as AI slop, on every post. source

What would we do?

  1. Publish less, and make each piece carry something only you know: your numbers, your mistakes, your customers’ words.
  2. Answer in the threads where the question is asked, say that you built the thing, and name the alternatives too.
  3. Make pages that prove rather than claim: real screenshots, real prices, a changelog with dates.
  4. Drop any piece whose only job is volume.

Where does marketinque help, and where not?

marketinque’s drafting prompt carries a list of the words and moves that mark text as machine-written, and the review panel names any that slip through before you approve.

Where it does not: That lowers the odds of slop; it does not make a draft sound like you. The edit is still yours, and on a post that matters it should be a real one.

We build marketinque, so weigh this section accordingly. It is free while projects open by waitlist.