Share your top choice of marketing?
I'll go first!
This works for me, while I know if I was a full time business/photographer I would choose a different method, especially if I had more resources. Thumbtack is right now has gotten me most clientele. While its not much clientele I get, its something for minimal investment. Briefly, it is a bidding site for jobs. Most jobs are not worth bidding on I agree as many would say. Sometimes you'd see fairly priced set budgets depending in the area you're in so it varies, for me its fair in my area, and I don't under charge in my market too. Now I go on and on about it, but that's the brief.
I use Thumbtack as well, and I agree with everything you said. I recently found a new site called "Image Brief" that sends you notifications of what agencies are looking for as well as what they'll pay and the terms of agreement. I haven;t landed one yet, but I've only been on it a short period of time.
I've used image brief for about a year, didnt get anything yet. But the big draw back is the competition is much more heavy handed as you're in a world wide market on this website. Which isn't bad, and will require you to have extremely well polished skills, having a very polished portfolio and stock library.