New players looking for advice

I started this mode last week and despite hating the majority of CoD for the past 15 years, this game is awesome. I got a few buddies to join and they love it too. I got a decent jumpstart playing with squad fill early on which helped me get some good loot and learn the basics. I'm not great, and my buddies are about the same, so when it's just us we struggle. We're just working on clearing missions and are in Act I Tier 3 so far. We mostly stick to the gray zone and occasionally dip into the orange. I'm using 3 strike team guys trying to get them gear and containment levels. They're currently between 18-30 now. I've got a customized M4 for my insurance weapon, and have unlocked I think 6 schematics so far.

Honestly I'm just looking for any advice to help us along and avoid getting team wiped like last night. My buddies are still learning how to be effective, and I'm not much further ahead of them. I've looked up a ton of stuff which has helped, and read a lot of posts on here. If there is anything you think you wish you had known at my point in the game I'd love to hear it. I feel like we're sort of aimlessly doing contracts, maybe getting Pap 2 once every 5 rounds or so, then not really sure what to do from there. The missions are perfect for us since it gives us some kind of clear goal to go after, but I feel like we could be missing out on some important stuff that would help us out this early in the game.

I gotta say that this mode surprised me with how much fun it is, despite my game freezing last night and screwing me out of some solid gear I collected. And I'm even more impressed with the community, especially for a CoD game. You guys have all been extremely helpful in game. I've had plenty of times already where people are joining our squad, dropping gear for us, running across the entire map to revive us, and being super patient when we're being morons lol. I've been looking for a great PvE mode in CoD since the original MW3 Spec Ops mode and this is the best thing I've played since then. I'd love to keep at it and hoping to get some good info to help my buddies improve too. Thanks again for being decent people out there, and any and all information is greatly appreciated!