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The Swedish meatball lollipop is here – but can you guess the brand collab behind it?

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Are you brave enough to try it?

During this year’s April Fools Day, Ikea ‘announced’ an unexpected collaboration with iconic confectionery brand Chupa Chups, and thus, the infamous Swedish meatball lollipop was born. While conceptually a little stomach churning, the playful stunt got people’s attention, prompting the pair’s latest move to make April Fools’ dreams a reality.

Yes, that’s right. The Swedish meatball lollipop is now a real thing. As the world’s first (and hopefully last) meatball-flavoured lollipop, the bizarre campaign is a perfect blend of the iconic brands‘ offbeat energy, proving that leaning into absurdity can build an unforgettable global campaign.

Developed by Ingka Group (Ikea’s largest retailer), the April Fools joke soon turned into a tangible opportunity to engage shoppers in a fresh, unexpected way. Leveraging curiosity around the meatball-flavoured lollipop, the limited-edition, in-store experience will allow a select few customers to try the mysterious flavour. Blending a gameified competition experience with the exclusivity of the product, the campaign offers Ikea shoppers a new immersive way to interact with the brand, stepping outside the comfort zone of generic ad campaigning.

“April Fools’ moments and brand partnerships are both well-worn tools. What interested us was the space between them, where cultural surprise can do real commercial work,” says Vincenzo Riili, at Ikea Retail (Ingka Group). “From the beginning, this was never about a one-day joke. The April Fools’ tease was the first chapter of a bigger story, designed to test and build demand, as well as brand love. The consumer response confirmed that people did not know they wanted a meatball lollipop until they were told they could not have one.”

Ikea x Chupa Chups collab

(Image credit: Ingka Group/Chupa Chups)

“Chupa Chups has always been about fun, creativity and surprising flavours,” says Martin Hofling, global marketing manager at Chupa Chups. “Partnering with Ingka Group allowed us to take those values into a completely new cultural space. Transforming such an iconic savoury flavour into a lollipop is unexpected by design and that’s exactly what makes it memorable.”

What do you think?
Would you try the meatball lollipop?
Yes! I’m intrigued 🤔
Absolutely not! You couldn’t pay me to try it 🤢
 

The campaign runs through to June, concluding with a tasting opportunity for customers visiting IKEA stores operated by Ingka Group. For more Ikea news, check out the brand’s playful Brighton ads featuring a fowl surprise, or take a look at its slick new ads that hide an important detail.

Feature image credit: Ingka Group/Chupa Chups

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Sourced from CREATIVE BLOQ

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AI Is Collapsing the Shopping Funnel

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BY DHRUV PATEL

For most small and mid-sized (SMBs) e-commerce businesses, the hardest part of growth today isn’t building a better checkout. It’s adapting to how radically shopping behaviour has changed.

A few years ago, researching a major purchase might have taken 30 minutes across multiple tabs—comparing prices, reading reviews, checking availability. Today, that same research happens in a single ChatGPT prompt: “Find 10 stores selling a PlayStation 5, compare bundles, and tell me the best deal based on my preferences.”

AI-driven search has compressed what used to be a predictable funnel into seconds. And when the funnel collapses, checkout stops being just a conversion point. It becomes the only moment where you still have control.

The funnel still exists, but it’s collapsing fast

On a basic level, commerce hasn’t changed. Customers still learn, decide, and buy. What has changed is speed.

AI-driven discovery has compressed research cycles that once required multiple searches and comparisons. Payments have compressed too. Wallets, tokenization, and one-tap checkout have removed nearly all friction from buying.

Customers now arrive at e-commerce sites from everywhere at once—AI search, social feeds, creator links, comparison tools—often making decisions in seconds. More channels mean less control over how they get to you.

But that fragmentation also creates a new advantage.

Checkout is no longer the finish line. It’s the one moment where every signal finally converges and where growth can be won or lost.

This shift is driving what many operators describe as distributed commerce: a model in which buying decisions, monetization, and growth are shaped across channels, brands, and platforms, then executed in a single moment at checkout.

Why context now drives revenue

Historically, most commerce systems treated checkout as context-free. Once a shopper reached the cart, intent was assumed to be fixed.

That assumption is becoming expensive.

How a customer arrives matters. A shopper who compared prices across multiple sites is likely price-sensitive. Someone coming from social may be inspiration-driven. A customer landing from AI search may already be optimizing for speed or value.

In distributed commerce, upper-funnel signals must shape what happens at the transaction moment—what products appear, which offers surface, and how monetization works.

Delivering the same experience to fundamentally different buyers doesn’t just leave revenue on the table. It weakens trust.

For SMBs, this means a shift in focus

For small and mid-sized businesses, distributed commerce isn’t about doing more across every channel. It’s about concentrating leverage where control still exists.

Instead of trying to master every acquisition surface, the priority becomes making smarter decisions at the transaction itself. Instead of treating checkout as the end of the journey, it becomes the place where signals are interpreted and acted on in real time.

The shift isn’t about complexity. It’s about focus.

Infrastructure still matters more than headlines

AI dominates headlines, but infrastructure determines whether distributed commerce actually works.

Three layers are becoming essential:

1. Product and catalogue infrastructure: It enables brands to offer relevant complementary products without owning inventory, fulfilment, or returns. Shared catalogue models allow adjacent products to appear naturally at checkout while fulfilment remains distributed.

2. Payments infrastructure: This has become table stakes. Embedded wallets and tokenized cards make transactions fast and invisible, regardless of who fulfils the order.

3. Data infrastructure: This allows businesses to collaborate without exchanging raw customer data or exposing competitive intelligence. Signals move, ownership doesn’t.

Without these layers working together, relevance breaks down at the exact moment it matters most.

Measurement in a post-impression world

As commerce and media converge, impressions matter less than outcomes.

Growth leaders are increasingly focused on a simpler question: Would the purchase have happened anyway? Customer acquisition cost, unit economics, and incrementality are replacing attribution theater.

Channels embedded inside the transaction are uniquely positioned to answer whether they truly influenced behavior—especially when you can see how long customers spent on your site and whether they were returning customers.

The real competitive advantage

The biggest obstacle to adopting distributed commerce isn’t technology—it’s adaptability.

Rigid organizations struggle to test new formats, rethink data foundations, or change how monetization works. More resilient companies experiment continuously, refining their systems before competitors force the issue.

The long-term opportunity is clear: Blur the line between advertising and commerce while preserving trust and economics. In distributed commerce, ads function as utility and relevance becomes native.

For founders and operators, the takeaway is straightforward. The next generation of commerce platforms won’t be built around pages or funnels. They’ll be built around context, connectivity, and collaboration. AI has already changed how customers arrive. Now it’s time to change what happens when they do.

Feature image credit: Getty Images

BY DHRUV PATEL

Sourced from Inc.

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The New SEO: From Rankings To Recommendations In AI Search

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By Robert Burko

Last summer, I was in Portugal, and I started noticing something funny. You could almost tell who was on a “ChatGPT tour” of the city. People were moving with purpose, from one viewpoint to the next, following the same AI-generated itinerary.

That moment stuck with me because it captures what is happening to SEO right now.

For most of the last two decades, SEO mostly meant one thing, where you ranked on Google (and occasionally Bing). The customer journey was familiar. Someone searched, scanned a list of links, clicked and explored.

Now the journey is increasingly “ask, get an answer, take action.” And the platforms shaping that journey include ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google itself, which is inserting AI summaries, what Google calls AI Overviews, into search results. Google describes these overviews as an “AI-generated snapshot with key information and links to dig deeper.” It also cautions that AI responses may include mistakes.

Marketers are trying to name this shift AEO, AI SEO, GEO and more. The acronym matters less than the behaviour. Search is moving from rankings to recommendations.

Why Traditional SEO Metrics Are Getting Less Reliable

When an AI summary appears, many users never click a website at all. Pew Research Center found that “users who encounter an AI summary are less likely to click on links to other websites than users who do not see one.” In addition, when an AI summary is present, clicks on the sources cited inside the summary are rare.

This matters because many businesses still evaluate SEO primarily through organic traffic and rankings. Those metrics are not disappearing, but they are becoming incomplete. Increasingly, visibility is awarded before the click, directly within the answer layer. If your brand is not present in that layer, you might not even enter the consideration set.

The New Consumer Journey Is Compressed And Conversational

In a traditional search journey, consumers often ran multiple searches, compared options, read reviews and explored several websites before deciding.

In an AI-first journey, that process compresses. A user asks a broad question in natural language, gets a shortlist, asks one or two follow-ups, then takes action. The AI is not only retrieving information, it is shaping the path. That is exactly what I saw on those streets in Portugal. The “research” happened inside the conversation, and the itinerary followed.

This shift changes what it means to win in SEO. It is no longer only about being found, it is about being suggested.

What It Takes To Earn AI Recommendations

There is no single trick that guarantees an AI assistant will mention your business. Anyone promising a guaranteed formula is likely oversimplifying. But there are practical moves that consistently improve your odds because they make your business easier to understand, easier to trust and easier to cite.

1. Write content that answers, not content that markets.

AI systems tend to surface clear explanations and decision support, not sales copy. If your content is vague, overly promotional or thin, it is less useful to an answer engine.

2. Make your business easy to interpret.

AI systems build confidence through consistency. If your services, positioning and “about” information are unclear or inconsistent across your website and public profiles, you are harder to recommend.

3. Build credibility outside your own website.

In an AI-driven landscape, third-party validation becomes even more important. Credible references help establish that your business is real, recognized and worth including. This is also where traditional PR and thought leadership can quietly compound.

4. Create content that mirrors how people ask AI for help.

AI queries are often framed as “best option for X,” “how do I choose” or “what should I do if.” Content that maps to those questions, with direct answers and helpful structure, is more likely to be used.

5. Expand how you measure SEO performance.

Organic traffic still matters, but it should not be the only indicator. You need a way to understand when and where your brand shows up in AI-generated answers, and what topics you are being associated with.

The Leadership Takeaway

The SEO landscape is changing because consumer behaviour is changing. People are outsourcing more of the research process to AI, and even traditional search engines are becoming answer engines. Google’s own documentation on AI Overviews makes this direction clear.

A recent AP-NORC poll reported by AP News found that 60% of U.S. adults use AI to search for information. If your strategy still assumes the customer journey starts and ends with blue links and rankings, you are already behind. The new goal is to earn visibility where decisions are being shaped, inside the answers, not only in the links.

In the old SEO model, you won attention by ranking. In the new model, you win consideration by being the brand the system trusts enough to recommend.

Feature image credit: Getty

By Robert Burko

Robert Burko is CEO of Elite Digital, a digital marketing agency focused on modern marketing operations. Read Robert Burko’s full executive profile here. Find Robert Burko on LinkedIn and X. Visit Robert’s website.

Sourced from Forbes

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I Used to Be a VC. Now I’ve Found a Better Way to Build a Company

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BY DAVE WHORTON

If you want to create an Evergreen company that’s designed to last, follow the example of some of the world’s largest tech companies: Don’t raise large amounts of venture capital.

These days, many founders feel pressure to raise tremendous amounts of venture capital. But it wasn’t always like this. Most people are surprised to learn that four of the most valuable companies in the world barely raised any VC funding at all by today’s standards.

Apple is believed to have raised less than $1 million before its IPO. Amazon raised about $8 million. Microsoft raised about $1 million. Google raised $25 million. Add it all up, and it’s less than $35 million in total VC funding. Granted, that’s about $74 million in today’s dollars, but it’s still a relatively small investment that led to four companies that are worth around $14 trillion today.

Before billion-dollar VC rounds became common, there was a way of building companies that was capital efficient. I was there when it all changed, and I, too, came to believe that a growing company needed a massive VC war chest to succeed. Now I don’t, and you shouldn’t either.

The Rise of “Get Big Fast”

Our story begins when I was recruited to Kleiner Perkins by its legendary partner John Doerr in 1997. Amazon had just gone public. John was a proponent of “get big fast” (or “growth at all costs,” as it was later called). That playbook still exists.

I had gone to business school at Stanford with the idea that I wanted to start my own company, but I got very caught up in this world of venture capital and the get-big-fast model. There couldn’t have been a more exciting time than the three years I spent at Kleiner Perkins. The last major project I worked on was Google. John was the lead investor, and I was his right-hand guy. I was the one reviewing the term sheet with Larry and Sergey.

It wasn’t until a few years later, when I was running my own company, Good Technology, which was backed by Kleiner Perkins and Benchmark, that I started seeing the negative side of the get-big-fast model. As an entrepreneur trying to build something, the expectation for me was that the company would be worth $20 billion. That was a massive number in the early 2000s, and I felt a lot of pressure.

Instead of building something to serve the customer base I was passionate about, I was looking for a big idea in a big market that could create a really big company quickly. The market we identified was the personal digital assistant space. At the time, Handspring was competing with Palm. We started with an MP3 player that plugged into the back of the Handspring Visor. Soon it became apparent that the even bigger opportunity was in wireless messaging and the ability to get your email, contacts, and calendar onto your device so they’re up to date all the time. So we started working on that, too, in our first year.

That was a really stressful time for me. I was working extremely long hours. In the first 180 days, we hired about 45 employees. We launched the MP3 player in six months. In the early days of the company, my son was born and my father had an accident that left him hospitalized, so I was up at the hospital trying to be there for my family while also trying to get the company off the ground.

And looking back, I had a serious problem: The company didn’t really have a purpose outside of “I need to make this really big and valuable.” I eventually hired a CEO to replace me who ended up effectively pushing me out of the firm. Motorola bought the company in 2006 for over $500 million, but I was burned out. I didn’t want to do another startup.

I went back to VC, and was working on launching my own firm when I had a conversation with a founder that stuck with me. We had first met when I was at Kleiner Perkins. Her name was Jessica Herrin, and she had co-founded WeddingChannel.com, a pioneer in bringing registries online. Now she was launching a new company, and was looking for a modest amount of funding.

She told me she liked me and my partners at Kleiner Perkins but hated our model. I couldn’t understand what she was saying. This is a great model, I thought. We’re building incredibly valuable companies. People were making a lot of money. She said she wanted to build something she could run for the rest of her life. To me, that sounded like a lifestyle business. She took that as an insult.

“It absolutely is not a lifestyle business,” she told me. She wanted to build a big, international company. I said it wasn’t possible without major funding. According to the get-big-fast playbook, building a brand like that would take about a quarter-billion dollars of outside funding. She said I wasn’t looking at the right time frame. She was focused on building this brand over 20 or more years.

I ended up giving her a bit of money, but I was sceptical. Five years later, her company Stella & Dot had passed $100 million in annual revenue and hit No. 67 on the Inc. 5000 list—all without raising a big VC growth round.

An Alternative Funding Path

While Jessica was launching her company, I started my own early-stage venture capital firm in 2006. My goal was helping companies stay capital efficient and get to early profitability, an approach that looked more like the traditional venture playbook before the get-big-fast model. It took me very little time to figure out that I was swimming against an incredibly strong current. When any business I invested in got traction and needed to raise more money, the first question from other investors was, “Why aren’t you raising significantly more capital to grow faster?” We couldn’t write big follow-on checks, so founders would go back to the get-big-fast model. It just wasn’t working.

I still wanted to help entrepreneurs build growing companies. So I decided to go on a learning journey. I wanted to talk to more founders who were ambitious and wanted to build a business of scale but had chosen not to raise venture capital or private equity.

I met people like Mac Harman at Balsam Hill, a bootstrapped company that’s a leading designer and distributor of artificial Christmas trees. I also met with companies like Cargill, which is the largest private, family-owned company in the U.S. I started seeing some patterns in these interviews I was having with people who run the kinds of lasting businesses that I call (and have trademarked as) Evergreen companies. Evergreens are noble trees that grow every year. They are highly resilient and live to be hundreds of years old.

I ended up inviting a group of these founders to come up to Sun Valley, Idaho, in 2013 to talk about what it’s like to scale a company without major funding. They seemed to appreciate being able to gather with others who were like-minded, because they had so few peers who were thinking this way. They were extremely generous in sharing their ideas, experiences, and mistakes.

That gathering led to the founding of the Tugboat Institute, a community for CEOs of Evergreen companies. We now have more than 300 members, and hundreds of other CEOs have decided to use this model, which Bo Burlingham and I detail in our book, Another Way.

Get-big-fast has endured and evolved in the modern era, and is now referred to as blitzscaling. But the vast majority of VC-backed companies fail, and the playbook is suited for a small few.

Evergreen companies are refining an alternative model—one that proves you can grow without taking outside capital and with little debt. These companies design their business models to generate cash early and grow from their own fuel without significant capital expenditures. Many also focus on a single product for a long time. For instance, Andy Taylor, executive chairman of Enterprise Holdings, told me he credits the 69-year-old family business’s relentless focus on the rental car market for its longevity.

It may seem novel, but almost all the great American companies were built like this before the venture industry exploded. I believe it’s time to bring back this rich tradition that created amazing companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon—one that lets founders grow a business that will withstand the test of time.

Feature image credit: Dave Whorton. Photography by McCade Gordon.

BY DAVE WHORTON

Sourced from Inc.

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The 1 Ratio That Predicts Your Company’s Survival

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BY SYDNEY SLADOVNIK

How to make sure you’re investing in the right kind of innovation for your company.

very company needs to be innovative to survive, but what does that really mean? And how do you know if your business is nailing it?

One way to be sure is to track your company’s innovation contribution ratio, which, according to Inc. columnist and growth coach Bruce Eckfeldt, is “a vital measure of how innovation fuels growth and keeps your business ahead of the competition.”

Finding your innovation contribution ratio means calculating the percentage of revenue or user engagement driven by new products or features launched within a set timeframe.

A common timeframe is the past 12 months, but that can change depending on industry, business goals, and business size, says Tristan Kromer, founder and CEO of tech startup Krobar AI and consulting firm Kromatic. Cameron Kolb, the founder and CEO of ExitPros, looks at revenue from products, services, or initiatives launched in the past two to three years, divided by total revenue. For a company with $2 million in annual revenue and $600,000 from new services launched in the past 36 months, the ICR would be 3:10 or about 30 percent, he adds.

Is that a healthy ratio? That depends on which type of innovation your business needs—incremental, adjacent, or disruptive. Businesses should look at their size, industry, and goals to sort themselves into one of these three buckets.

Inc. spoke to several experts, innovators, and business owners about the different ways businesses should be measuring their innovation contribution ratio.

The Three Types of Innovation

Most companies are innovating incrementally. They’re not trying to upturn an industry or completely shift their business model. That means their innovation contribution ratio is going to be comparatively low.

Jeff DeGraff, Inc. columnist and clinical professor of management and organizations at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, says that people become more risk-averse over time. For business owners, this means that the more established their product or service becomes, the more they’ll try to de-risk—spending the majority of their time, effort, and money on tangible and predictable items like increasing revenue and engagement, rather than on speculative ventures like new products.

Adjacent innovation, meanwhile, is when a business owner leverages their existing business into another vertical—such as Apple moving from smartphones to smart watches. Such a move can help diversify market exposure, expand audiences, and open new revenue streams.

Very few companies are chasing disruptive innovation, namely because it doesn’t always make sense to change a business model that other people can adopt and scale. Tech companies more frequently fit into this bucket given the fast-evolving nature of AI and software. The explosion of tech and artificial intelligence is the most basic example of disruptive innovation—tech companies haven’t lost their nerve yet and are willing to take steep risks, DeGraff explains.

When to Invest in Innovation

Before Luminary launches a new program or product, the education and networking platform asks customers whether they’re even interested, says founder Cate Luzio. “Innovation should solve real problems for real people,” she says.

During the growth-at-all-costs decade preceding 2022, many companies substituted spending for building, Mike Seckler, CEO of HR SaaS company Justworks, explains. They “raised capital and used it to acquire customers rather than earning them through products and services that people genuinely valued. The companies that prioritize innovation, in the real sense of the word, tend to build more durable businesses because their growth is rooted in actual customer value,” he says.

On that note, Luzio says to start simple. “Innovation doesn’t have to be expensive or flashy.… I do believe in progress over perfection.”

Founders seeking advice from ExitPros, meanwhile, are often looking for ways to divest from their companies, but that doesn’t make innovation less important. Quite the opposite—Kolb says he encourages his clients to implement new growth levers so that innovation doesn’t become founder-dependent. That might look like a recurring revenue stream, the use of AI, diverse pricing models, or expanding into new verticals.

“For innovation to truly add to a business’s valuation, it must be repeatable, documented, profitable, and transferable to a new owner. Anything else is simply a form of experimentation, rather than strategic value creation,” Kolb says.

And innovation doesn’t always have to be about products or external-facing components. Internal innovation can be just as important.

Seckler looks at innovation from a comprehensive view. “I’d encourage business owners to be cautious about trying to distil innovation into a single number,” he says. Utilizing an innovation contribution ratio to measure revenue tied to products launched in the past 12 months can be a useful directional signal, but it shouldn’t be the sole roadmap, he warns. “Some of the most impactful innovations don’t generate direct revenue quickly. They improve retention. They reduce churn. They unlock adjacent opportunities.”

Measuring the Cost of Innovation

While an innovation contribution ratio measures how much you’re innovating, it doesn’t necessarily drill down into the cost of all that innovation.

Founders should clearly define innovation for their business, delineate new initiative reporting, and margin positive activity as opposed to activity for its own sake, Kolb says, noting that each initiative must be scrutinized for its potential for transfer, scale, and risk. One of the biggest mistakes founders make is launching new offerings and not measuring impact. “Innovation is only driving the valuation when documented, and [when] its measurable, real impact is aligned with the enterprise value realization horizon,” he says.

For Justworks, continuous innovation is existential. “Small businesses are evolving rapidly—they’re hiring globally, managing hybrid teams, and navigating a shifting regulatory environment,” Seckler says. “More broadly, I think innovation is what separates companies that earn their growth from companies that try to buy it.”

For a small business, the practical approach can be whittled down to a few honest questions: Are the new things we’ve built or launched actually being used? Are customers telling us these things matter? Is our investment in new capabilities translating into either stronger retention or meaningful new customer acquisition? “If you’re seeing positive signals on those fronts, you’re likely innovating effectively—whether or not you’ve formalized a ratio,” Seckler says.

Feature image credit: Photo illustration: Inc. Art; Unsplash (2)

BY SYDNEY SLADOVNIK

Sourced from Inc.

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Your Marketing Dashboard Is Lying to You

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Strong metrics don’t guarantee revenue. Here’s why B2B teams keep missing the connection — and how to fix it.

The Gist

  • Marketing activity does not always translate into revenue. Strong campaign metrics and lead volume can create the appearance of success even when business growth remains flat or difficult to attribute.
  • The real problem is structural misalignment. When marketing and sales operate with different goals, metrics and ownership models, both teams can perform well individually while the business still struggles to connect activity to revenue.
  • B2B growth improves when marketing is tied to revenue systems. Shared metrics, account-focused strategies and tighter coordination across the customer lifecycle help turn marketing from a demand engine into a measurable driver of pipeline and long-term value.

In many B2B companies, marketing performance looks strong on dashboards — campaigns generate leads, engagement metrics are rising, and marketing activity appears successful. Yet when leadership reviews revenue growth, the connection between marketing efforts and actual business outcomes often remains unclear.

This disconnect creates one of the most common challenges in modern B2B organizations: the gap between marketing activity and real revenue impact.

Marketing teams often focus on campaigns, brand visibility and lead generation, while sales teams are responsible for closing deals and driving revenue. Without clear alignment between these functions, even well-funded marketing programs can struggle to produce measurable business results.

Table of Contents

Why the Marketing–Revenue Gap Happens

In most cases, the problem is not a lack of effort. The gap appears because marketing and sales are often evaluated by different metrics and priorities.

First, marketing teams are frequently measured by lead volume rather than revenue contribution. High numbers of leads may look impressive in reports, but if those leads do not convert into qualified opportunities, the business sees little real impact.

Second, marketing and sales often operate in separate structures. Marketing focuses on demand generation and brand visibility, while sales focuses on pipeline and deals. Without shared goals and data transparency, both teams end up optimizing for different outcomes.

Third, the B2B buying process has become significantly more complex. Purchasing decisions now involve multiple stakeholders across departments. Traditional lead-based marketing approaches are often too narrow to effectively engage these buying groups.

When Marketing Metrics Don’t Reflect Business Growth

Another challenge is the growing gap between marketing dashboards and executive-level priorities.

Marketing reports may highlight impressions, clicks, or marketing-qualified leads. However, executive leadership typically evaluates success through revenue growth, deal size and pipeline health. Understanding customer analytics can help bridge this gap by connecting marketing activities to actual business outcomes.

If marketing activity cannot clearly connect to these business metrics, its strategic value becomes difficult to demonstrate.

A Practical Example: When Marketing and Sales Operate as One System

In my experience building a corporate client division, one of the most effective decisions was integrating marketing and sales into a single operational flow.

When we built the corporate department, marketing and sales were not separated functions. I worked across both roles — from the first client interaction to contract negotiation and long-term account management with corporate clients.

This structure ensured that marketing insights, customer feedback and revenue outcomes were fully connected. Every new client, every market signal and every customer interaction became part of a shared understanding of growth.

As a result, marketing was never disconnected from revenue performance — it was embedded directly into the business growth process.

Bridging the Gap Between Marketing and Revenue

Closing this gap requires more than adjusting marketing tactics. It requires structural alignment between marketing, sales and revenue leadership.

One effective approach is shifting from broad lead generation to account-focused strategies. Account-Based Marketing (ABM), for example, allows marketing and sales teams to coordinate efforts around specific high-value accounts.

When both teams focus on the same companies, messaging becomes more consistent, engagement becomes more strategic, and marketing activity connects directly to revenue opportunities. Effective customer journey mapping helps both teams understand and optimize each touchpoint in the buying process.

Shared metrics also play a crucial role. Instead of evaluating marketing only through campaign performance, companies can track pipeline contribution, deal acceleration and revenue influence. Metrics like customer lifetime value provide a clearer picture of long-term revenue impact.

These metrics create a clearer connection between marketing initiatives and business outcomes.

Rethinking the Role of Marketing in B2B Organizations

Companies that successfully close the marketing–revenue gap typically rethink the role of marketing altogether.

Marketing stops being a standalone demand-generation function and becomes part of a broader revenue engine that includes sales, customer success and business strategy.

In this model, marketing supports the entire customer lifecycle — from initial awareness to deal acceleration and long-term customer value. This approach aligns with emerging marketing trends that emphasize integrated revenue operations.

Conclusion: Marketing Needs a Strong Tie to Revenue

As B2B markets become more competitive, organizations can no longer afford a disconnect between marketing activity and revenue impact.

Companies that align marketing and sales around shared revenue goals gain a significant strategic advantage. Their marketing becomes more targeted, their pipeline stronger, and their growth easier to measure.

In many organizations, the real challenge is not marketing performance — it is organizational alignment between marketing activity and revenue ownership.

Feature image credit: standret | Adobe Stock

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Mariia Golitsyna is an international B2B marketing and business growth strategist with more than 15 years of experience working with enterprise clients and global brands. She specializes in growth strategy, enterprise partnerships and the alignment of marketing with revenue in complex B2B environments.

Sourced from CMSWIRE

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Build Relationships, Build Your Brand, Build Your Business

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These proven strategies foster loyalty, trust and advocacy while boosting retention, referrals and your brand’s impact.

In the financial advising world, success isn’t just about production. It’s about people: The clients who trust you to guide them through life’s biggest financial decisions.

Building strong relationships with your clients is more than just a nice-to-have; it’s the secret sauce that can set you apart in a crowded industry.

One of our advisers, Dale Smothers, founder of R.D. Smothers Wealth Management in Campbellsville, Kentucky, and a Kiplinger contributor, puts it this way: “We are in the relationship business, not the sales business. If you view yourself as a relationship manager, things get a whole lot easier on the back end.”

By focusing on meaningful, personalized, branded touchpoints, Smothers has created a client experience that not only strengthens relationships, but also helps his firm stand out from the competition.

Strong relationships: Your best investment

As Smothers’ comment suggests, trust is everything. Clients want someone who understands their goals, values and dreams — not some impersonal investment picker who just manages their money. That’s why strong relationships are the foundation of a thriving practice.

But relationships aren’t just about connection — they’re also about perception. Every interaction with a client is an opportunity to reinforce your brand and remind them why they chose you. From the tone of your emails to the design of your newsletters, your brand is always communicating.

About Adviser Intel

The author of this article is a participant in Kiplinger’s Adviser Intel program, a curated network of trusted financial professionals who share expert insights on wealth building and preservation. Contributors, including fiduciary financial planners, wealth managers, CEOs and attorneys, provide actionable advice about retirement planning, estate planning, tax strategies and more. Experts are invited to contribute and do not pay to be included, so you can trust their advice is honest and valuable.

Here’s how great client connections and a strong brand can transform your business:

Retention and loyalty. When clients feel valued and understood, they’re more likely to stick with you, even during market turbulence or life changes

Increased assets. Satisfied clients are more inclined to entrust you with additional assets as their wealth grows and their financial needs evolve

Referrals and advocacy. Happy clients spread the word. They’ll refer friends and family and become vocal advocates for your services

By investing in your relationships and your brand, you build long-term success.

Strategies to ‘wow’ your clients

Great relationships don’t just happen. They’re developed through consistent, thoughtful actions that show clients you care and remind them of your unique value.

The good news? You don’t need a massive budget or endless hours to make a lasting impression. Small, meaningful gestures — especially branded ones to reflect your identity — can go a long way in creating connections that clients remember and value.

Here are some strategies to help strengthen your client relationships and keep your brand top of mind:

1. Celebrate milestones. Recognize birthdays, anniversaries, retirements and other significant life events with personalized cards or small gifts. Branded touches, such as a card with your logo or a gift box featuring your firm’s colours, make these moments even more memorable.

2. Send personalized newsletters. Regular newsletters tailored to your clients’ interests and financial goals keep them informed and engaged. Include updates about your firm, market insights and even personal stories or staff celebrations to add a human touch.

Branded newsletters reinforce your identity with every mailing.

3. Offer educational resources. White papers, guides and other educational materials can position you as a trusted professional while providing real value to your clients.

Adding your logo and branding to these materials helps ensure your knowledge is always associated with your name.

4. Host client events. Invite clients to exclusive events, such as seminars, appreciation dinners or webinars. These gatherings foster a sense of community and provide opportunities for deeper connections.

Branded invitations and event materials can elevate the experience and leave a lasting impression.

5. Stay consistent with touchpoints. Regular communication — whether through emails, phone calls or mailings — keeps your brand in clients’ thoughts and reinforces your commitment to the relationship.

Looking for expert tips to grow and preserve your wealth? Sign up for Adviser Intel, our free, twice-weekly newsletter.

The power of personalization

Smothers has seen first hand how personalized, branded marketing can transform client relationships. His firm uses Advisors Excel’s Print on Demand service to deliver customized newsletters, milestone cards and other branded materials that resonate with clients in a meaningful way.

“Clients often mention the joy of receiving something in the mail that feels relevant and heartfelt, not just another generic update,” he says.

These gifting and communication efforts have also helped R.D. Smothers Wealth Management stand out in a crowded market.

Smothers notes that “the majority of prospects who come into our firm before they become clients are leaving their adviser because they feel like they’re not cared about or don’t have a relationship with that company.”

By consistently engaging with clients in a personalized and authentic way, Smothers’ team has built a loyal client base that not only stays but also advocates for the firm.

Executing these strategies doesn’t have to be time-consuming, either. Services such as Print on Demand simplify the process, allowing advisers to customize and order branded materials, from guides to gifts and invites to informative events — quickly and efficiently.

Stronger bonds, stronger business

In the end, the effort you put into developing and maintaining client relationships pays off — not just in loyalty and retention, but in referrals, advocacy and long-term growth.

By focusing on personalized, consistent communication and leveraging the power of your brand, you can gain clients for life and build a practice that thrives on trust, connection and a strong identity.

Feature image credit: Getty Images

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Sourced from Kiplinger

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Why and how referral marketing is exceeding paid search and paid social

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By Mark Choueke

Referral marketing is often an overlooked strategy. However, Mark Choueke, marketing director at Mention Me, explains why it can be an effective route for marketers and how it works to earn customer trust.

For marketers yet to turn their attention to the extraordinary customer acquisition mechanic of earned growth, referral might be the last marketing channel to come to mind.

For those already giving their customers a participating role in their brand’s success, it’s the last marketing channel they’d switch off.

This was literally true for Lindsay Newell, head of UK marketing at Bloom & Wild, one of Europe’s largest online florists. She knew the customer lifetime value the business derived from referral marketing exceeded that of both paid search and paid social.

So much confidence did the business have in its referral marketing program as a growth driver that when it was forced to ‘turn off’ marketing in May 2020 after the Covid-19 pandemic prompted the first lockdown, referral marketing was the only channel it left running.

The florist grew its UK referrals by 800%, despite promoting it at fewer points in the customer journey than previously.

Newell, meanwhile, says her team tests constantly to learn how various markets and customer cohorts respond differently to messaging and incentives through referral campaigns.

Such success stories were once rare for a marketing channel that is now fast growing into its own skin and becoming comfortable with a more pivotal, strategic status in the marketing stack.

Traditional household brands and established retailers are now joining pure play online businesses in approaching customer acquisition and experience with an ‘advocacy-first’ mindset.

This shift toward earned growth isn’t a replacement for anything. Comprehensive Referral Engineering® programs act as a valuable addition to, and amplifier of, existing marketing strategies.

Menswear brand Spoke put its first-party referral data to work across its paid social channels to target consumers that looked like the retailer’s most valuable referrers. The experiment saw a 65% increase in conversion rates, a 30% jump in ‘return on ad spend’ and a 12% reduction in the cost of acquiring new customers.

Crucially, though, none of the above speaks to the single most important opportunity addressed by a move toward earned growth.

That is that advocacy – and importantly the level of participation it encourages in those we sell to – is slowly shifting the emphasis of marketing from the brand to the customer.

Referral done properly is data-driven – but it’s customer-led.

Amplified in the past two years by the forced loss of so many day-to-day freedoms we once took for granted, consumers are hungry for autonomy and self-determination. They want a more direct role in the way they shop for (and engage with) the products and services with which they choose to identify.

Consumers want to participate; to interact, share and recommend. Your buyers’ e-commerce journeys don’t begin on screens. Increasingly they start with offline conversations; not about your brand or product, but about their interests, their passions and their needs.

What does that mean for your brand? Well, it means your best marketing in 2022 will likely happen in the most ‘un-marketing’ moments.

It means your effective media channels will include everyday occasions in your customers’ lives: chats between parents at the school gates; picnics and pub nights; weekend walks and barbecues with friends; Sunday roasts with the family.

Customer participation will become as crucial in delivering experiences that match your buyers’ expectations as personalization has been in recent years.

For while automation driven by big data has transformed customer experience capability, the spreadsheets and numbers that dominate our customer experience conversations risk becoming somewhat divorced from the end users they represent.

Abstract scores only tell us so much about our customers’ values, beliefs and versions of what a relationship with our brands should look like.

New perspectives and a shared commitment to twinning comfortably volunteered first- and zero-party data with more innovative partnerships will get brand marketers closer to the customer stories that end users would recognize, buy into and participate in.

Referral is a rare marketing discipline, carried out in the cultural mode and language of consumers – normal people who don’t share the marketer’s vocabulary of ‘funnels,’ ‘touchpoints’ and ‘conversions.’

Our businesses are drowning in third-party data (though perhaps not for much longer). Yet how much does this data really tell us about our customers? There’s an unfilled gap between the reported customer insight that much of our data promises, and the legitimacy – the purity – of customer participation. It’s a gap similar to that between reading sheet music and being in a live audience while witnessing a spine-tingling performance.

After thousands of years of retail, your customers still sell your stuff better than you do, without even trying. Now we have the expertise to understand the psychology of referral and the science to drive, track and measure it, you can give your best customers the power to grow your companies.

By Mark Choueke

Marketing director Mention Me

Sourced from The Drum

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How I Doubled My Revenue Using This ‘Outdated’ Science-Based Marketing Strategy

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By Joy Gendusa | Edited by Chelsea Brown 

The research is clear on this one thing — and I’ve used it to take my business from $60M to nearly $120M in 5 years.

Key Takeaways

  • Direct mail is back: Print works differently — and better — in our brains. Research shows that physical materials improve recall and comprehension. Direct mail also requires less and creates stronger emotional responses than digital ads.
  • Every generation sees mail as more trustworthy. Roughly 76% of consumers say they trust direct mail, compared to just 43% who trust ads on social media.
  • The best results come from integrating print with digital. Mail creates credibility and emotional connection. Digital reinforces that message and makes it easy to respond.

We’re living in a strange time for marketing.

We’ve never had more ways to reach people, and yet it’s never been harder to actually stick in their minds. Messages flash by. Feeds refresh endlessly. Ads disappear the second you scroll.

But the things we can touch, hold, and spend time with … those linger. They’re processed differently by the brain, and they’re recalled more clearly after the moment has passed.

That’s where print — and the tangible experience it creates — lives.

Some of the biggest brands in the world have quietly come to the same conclusion. Walmart launched its first-ever home catalogue just a few months ago on the heels of J.Crew and Patagonia bringing theirs back. Nordstrom returned to mail with a new piece this past Christmas that’s fully interactive — complete with stickers! And IKEA expanded beyond catalogues by mailing a letter that was also a flat-packed apartment.

None of these companies abandoned digital. They balanced it. It’s a high-wire act that I’ve spent years mastering. My current marketing outlay includes mailing over 232,000 postcards and spending more than $50,000 on digital advertising each and every week! I hear you wondering: “How’s that working out for you?”

Well, we entered 2020 as a $60 million business, and last year we nearly hit $120 million in annual revenue.

The truth is clear: Direct mail is back. Here’s why it’s happening.

Print works differently — and better — in our brains

There’s real science behind this.

A study conducted by the University of Tokyo showed stronger recall among participants when writing on physical paper instead of using digital devices for notes. Researchers concluded that the tactile quality of paper was a key factor in helping the brain encode information more effectively.

Additional university research reinforces these findings. A more recent study from the University of Valencia found comprehension is 6-8 times higher with physical reading materials, and that print helps readers take in and recall information more effectively.

Print is also easier on the brain. Research shows people expend 21% less cognitive effort when engaging with physical mail compared to digital ads. Less effort means less resistance — and more openness to the message.

And mail doesn’t just stick in people’s minds; it hits them emotionally, too. Research highlighted by the USPS found that people felt more excitement and desire for the products being advertised when they interacted with direct mail compared to digital ads.

For me, it’s simple: We’re human beings, and direct mail offers the type of experience we’re biologically engineered to respond to.

Every generation sees mail as more trustworthy

There’s a persistent myth that younger generations prefer digital while older generations favour traditional marketing. But the data tells a very different story:

About 72% of Gen Z say they’d be disappointed if they stopped getting mail altogether, and 82% of millennials say they find print ads more trustworthy than digital ones. And a majority of both (81% of Gen Z and 78% of Millennials) wish it were easier to disconnect from digital devices.

That trust gap shows up across all age groups. Roughly 76% of consumers say they trust direct mail, compared to just 43% who trust ads on social media. What’s even more telling is 39% of consumers say they’re less likely to trust brands that communicate only through digital channels.

That tells you something important. Trust is built when your marketing shows up in the real world and in more than one place. That’s why the best strategy isn’t print or digital — it’s both. Mail creates credibility and emotional connection. Digital reinforces that message and makes it easy to respond.

Leverage this by reinforcing your marketing across different channels with a cohesive message. Use the same images, colours and offers when you can, and ensure that cohesive feeling translates from one step to the next — from direct mail to online ad to landing page or website.

Each marketing channel should echo and reinforce the others, guiding prospects from awareness to interest while building enough confidence to prompt action.

The grassroots results of small businesses trying direct mail are eye-opening

Yes, global household names are bringing back direct mail. But the real proof shows up in small and mid-sized businesses every single day.

I’ve seen countless first-hand examples that direct mail grows businesses at every stage.

For more than two decades, my team has collected and published 1,168 real-world case studies showing how print mail drives trust, recognition and results — and we’re still adding new success stories every single day. Here are just a few of the most recent ones contributing to the grassroots comeback of direct mail.

One of my ecommerce clients credits integrated online and offline marketing with growing her business from just two employees to 12 and more than doubling her average sale from $24 to $54. Just as important, it helped her step out of the long shadow of Amazon’s marketplace and build a brand she owns and controls.

A real estate investor tied direct mail retargeting into his follow-up, sending postcards automatically to website visitors who left his site without converting. He mailed 111 postcards and closed on a new property worth $70,000 in revenue. He only spent $647 on this approach, putting his ROI at a staggering 10,710%.

These aren’t outliers. They’re what happens when print is used strategically, consistently and as part of a bigger system.

If your goal is to be remembered, trusted and chosen — the evidence is clear.

Direct mail isn’t old-fashioned. It’s human. And when you test it, integrate it and stick with it, you’ll understand why so many business owners and marketers keep reaching for it.

By Joy Gendusa 

Edited by Chelsea Brown 

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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Your TV is watching you — how to turn off data collection on LG, Samsung, Roku and more

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Your smart TV knows too much about you

Your smart TV is collecting detailed information about everything you watch. From which apps you open to what shows you stream, your TV monitors your viewing habits and reports back to the manufacturer. That data gets used for targeted advertising or sold to third parties.

This tracking happens through technology called Automated Content Recognition (ACR), which samples pixels from your screen to identify what content you’re watching. It works whether you’re streaming through apps or watching from external devices like cable boxes or game consoles.

1. Samsung TVs

Samsung TVs use Tizen software and include tracking features for viewing data, voice recognition, and advertising.

Go to Settings, then Support, then Terms & Privacy, then Privacy Choices. This menu contains all the privacy settings you need to adjust. Select Viewing Information Services to disable ACR tracking. This stops Samsung from monitoring what content you watch

To turn off personalized ad tracking, select Interest-Based Advertising. This prevents Samsung from using your viewing data to target ads. If you use Samsung’s voice features, select Voice Recognition Services to disable voice data collection. This stops the TV from recording and analysing voice commands.

2. LG TVs

LG smart TVs run webOS and collect viewing data through several separate services, which means you’ll need to disable more than one setting to fully opt out.

First, go to Settings, General (or System, depending on your model) and select Live Plus, then turn it off. This disables LG’s Automated Content Recognition (ACR), which identifies what you’re watching across apps and external devices.

Next, return to Settings, General, Advertisements and enable Do Not Sell My Personal Information or Limit Ad Tracking. This limits how LG uses your data for targeted advertising.

Finally, open Settings, User Agreements and review each option carefully. Opt out of Viewing Information, Interest-Based Advertising, Voice Information, and Live Plus Automatic Content Recognition wherever those toggles appear.

3. Amazon Fire TVs

Amazon Fire TV devices, including Fire TV Edition TVs from brands like Toshiba and Insignia, collect viewing and usage data through Amazon’s platform.

Go to Settings, Preferences, and Privacy Settings. This menu contains Amazon’s main privacy controls. First, select Device Usage Data and turn it off. This limits how Amazon collects information about how you use the device and its features.

Next, select Collect App and Over-the-Air Usage and disable it. This reduces tracking of which apps you use and what live or broadcast TV content you watch. Finally, select Interest-Based Ads and turn it off. This stops Amazon from using your activity to personalize ads, though you’ll still see advertising.

4. Roku TVs

Roku TVs (initially made by TCL, Hisense, and sold under Roku’s own brand) and Roku streaming devices collect viewing data through the Roku platform.

First, go to Settings, then Privacy. This menu contains all privacy-related options. Select Smart TV Experience and disable “Use Info from TV Inputs.” This turns off ACR tracking for content from external devices like cable boxes.

To adjust ad tracking settings and limit personalized advertising, select Advertising. Select Microphone to control settings for Channel Microphone Access and Channel Permissions if your Roku remote has voice features.

5. Android and Google TVs

TVs running Android TV or Google TV — including models from Sony, TCL, Hisense, and others, collect viewing and usage data primarily through Google’s advertising and account services. Some models also include third-party Automated Content Recognition (ACR), such as Samba TV.

To limit Google’s ad tracking, go to Settings, Privacy, and Ads. Then turn off Ad Personalization to prevent Google from using your activity on the TV to personalize ads. On some models, this may instead appear under Settings, Accounts, Google, and Ads.

If you’re signed into a Google account on your TV, you can also manage ad settings at the account level by selecting your Google account and reviewing privacy and ad preferences.

On Sony TVs, there is an additional ACR system to disable. Go to Settings, System or Settings, Privacy and turn off Samba Interactive TV. This stops Samba TV from identifying what you’re watching across apps and external inputs.

6. Vizio TVs

Vizio SmartCast TVs collect detailed viewing data through an ACR system built directly into the platform. This makes disabling these settings especially important if privacy is a concern.

Go to Settings and Admin & Privacy. This is where Vizio groups its privacy controls. Select Viewing Data and turn it off. This disables Vizio’s ACR system, preventing the TV from identifying what you’re watching across apps and connected devices.

Next, select Advertising and disable it to limit ad personalization and tracking tied to your viewing behaviour.

Feature image credit: Samsung

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Sourced from tom’s guide

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