ReportWire

Tag: Marketing

  • Rechat now integrated with Canva – Houston Agent Magazine

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    Rechat now provides listing data to Canva, providing users with access to high-resolution listing photos, agent information and property descriptions directly in Canva’s design platform.

    Additionally, Canva designs can now be added directly to Rechat with one click, Rechat said in a press release, further consolidating agent workflow.

    “Real estate professionals need to move at the speed of the market without sacrificing quality,” said Chris Hadges, head of Canva for Real Estate. “By integrating with Rechat, we are empowering agents to turn live property data into polished, on-brand marketing materials in minutes.”

    Canva users can integrate Rechat by adding the Rechat app to their account, logging in and allowing listing access.

    “This is about removing friction from the creative process and meeting agents where they want to work,” said Rechat Founder and CEO Shayan Hamidi. “By allowing our users to send Rechat’s listing data directly into Canva, we’re giving them the ability to create high quality marketing assets instantly.”

    Rechat, a unified operating system for real estate agents, has existing partnerships with tech companies including SkySlope and Follow Up Boss.

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    Emily Marek

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  • Canva acquires startups working on animation and marketing | TechCrunch

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    On Monday, creative suite maker Canva announced the dual acquisition of startups Cavalry, which works on animation, and Mango AI, which works on improving ad performance.

    UK-based Cavalry works on 2D motion animation for different verticals such as advertising, marketing, gaming, and generative art. Canva said that Cavalry’s tooling will add to the existing capabilities of Affinity, Canva’s professional creative editing suite for photos, vectors, and layouts, which it acquired in 2024

    Canva revamped Affinity’s design last year and made it free for all users. The company said that since then, people have downloaded the software over five million times. Affinity has the capabilities of photos, vector, and layout editing. With this acquisition, Canva wants to add motion editing to its suite.

    “By bringing Cavalry alongside Affinity, we’re closing that [motion editing] gap and unlocking a complete professional suite spanning photo, vector, layout, and now motion editing,” the company said in a blog post. “Together, these tools form the foundation of a full-stack Creative OS for professional work, while preserving the depth and control professional creatives rely on,” it added.

    Besides Cavalry, Canva has also acquired stealth startup MangoAI, which was working on building reinforcement learning systems to improve video ad performance, according to its website. Canva said that the startup’s first product helped clients create and launch ads and observe outcomes to improve future campaigns.

    MangoAI was built by Nirmal Govind, former Vice President of Data Science & Engineering at Netflix, and Vinith Misra, a former data scientist at Netflix and Roblox. Canva said that Govind will become Canva’s first ” Chief Algorithms Officer” and Misra will work on improving Canva’s marketing products.

    In January 2025, Canva acquired marketing intelligence startup Magicbrief and later last year, it launched a growth tool called Canva Grow for asset creation and performance measurement.

    Techcrunch event

    Boston, MA
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    June 9, 2026

    MangoAI Co-Founders Nirmal Govind (left) and Vinith Misra (right) together with Canva Co-Founder and COO, Cliff Obrecht (centre).Image Credits: Canva

    During a sit-down at Web Summit Qatar earlier this month, Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht told TechCrunch that Canva Grow is doing “incredibly well,” especially when it comes to creating static content and publishing it to Meta platforms.

    “It is quite an early product, but we’ll soon be launching a lot more things around video creation, deploying across multi platform,” Obrecht had said. “So it’s very early, but it’s very much got a very loyal small user base, but a lot of big brands are spending money, and then we’re scaling up massively.”

    With the new acquisitions, the company wants to bolster its position as a marketing solution by potentially adding video creation and more granular measurement. Canva closed 2025 at $4 billion in annualized revenue with more than 265 million users and 31 million paid users.

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    Ivan Mehta

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  • Why Mastering Alignment in Marketing Is The Key to Scaling Smarter

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    This article was written by Jim Mitte, an Entrepreneurs’ Organization member in Detroit. Mitte is also the founder and CEO of Turtlehut, which provides internet marketing solutions that focus on empowering multiple location services businesses and franchise groups with growth, scalability, and consistency. Mitte shared why marketing infrastructure is the key to alignment and optimizing performance.

    Every private equity (PE) investment is made on the premise of future returns. In many cases, those investments pay off in spades. However, what if weaknesses in your marketing structures are quietly cutting into your future gains? Even when returns are good, could they be better?  

    Whether you’re a founder seeking investment before exiting or a PE firm looking to maximize profit, assessing the efficiency of your systems or those of your acquisition targets is critical to optimizing performance.  

    When done well, PE-funded service brand portfolios supercharge gains by injecting capital for expansion, while combining it with increased operational efficiencies that yield outsized growth. The model works well when organization-wide systems are in place to bring expertise and scale to enterprises that don’t have the means to achieve those gains on their own. With sellers looking to maximize their valuations and PE groups amping up for major returns, there is a lot at stake in those systems.  

    When not everything goes as planned: The breakdown in leads and scalability  

    One of the greatest challenges in scaling any multi-brand enterprise is dealing with the inefficiencies and disorder that creep in as staff and operations grow. A major culprit is the patchwork of marketing systems inherited from independent brands. Disparate tech stacks, disconnected data, and inconsistent brand execution make it nearly impossible to measure performance or replicate success.  

    The result? Lost gains, opaque data, slower scaling, and a decline in brand momentum once local owners step away. The good news is that these issues aren’t inevitable. They’re structural and fixable.  

    Here’s how private equity leaders can create a marketing infrastructure that scales as intelligently as their capital.  

    Go inside one interesting founder-led company each day to find out how its strategy works, and what risk factors it faces. Sign up for 1 Smart Business Story from Inc. on Beehiiv.

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    Entrepreneurs’ Organization

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  • How This Family Business Went Viral Using Old School Advertising

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    For more than a century, Red Wing Shoe Company has designed and manufactured work boots in the United States with leather sourced from its own tannery. The family-owned, privately held business, which was founded in 1905 in Red Wing, Minnesota, wanted to remind its customers of that commitment to craftsmanship, so the shoemaker decided to add some distinctive texture to its advertising.

    Over the past few weeks, Red Wing unveiled two unique billboards. One of the signs, which measures 18 by 40 feet and currently sits over downtown Minneapolis, is made entirely out of wood. The other one is constructed completely from leather. Both the signs have the same message, “Made the hard way” above the company’s name and logo.

    That’s more than a tagline for the shoe maker. It’s an all-encompassing strategy for how to operate a business. In that spirit, the company shared behind-the-scenes videos of the meticulous construction process that went into the billboards, showing teams of workers sawing, drilling, buffing, sanding, and nailing together the four words.

    The billboards, just like the brand’s American-made work boots, were “built the hard way by hand,” said Aaron Seymour, the company’s head of brand and creative, in a post on LinkedIn that has gone viral in the span of a week. To pull off this unusual approach, Seymour said that Red Wing partnered with Wieden + Kennedy, an independent creative agency based in Portland Oregon.

    Red Wing’s leather billboard. Photo: Courtesy Company

    This is not Red Wing’s first taste of virality. The shoemaker has a history of marketing work boots in creative ways. In 2023, the Minnesota company teamed up with Nintendo to design “a pixel-for-stitch recreation” of Mario’s rounded-heel, leather boots from The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

    At the time, Dave Schneider, the company’s chief marketing officer, said of the collaboration, “We’ve been supplying long-lasting, durable and comfortable footwear that protects trades workers on the job site for 118-years. We were excited to deliver that same ambition and energy to Mario’s Boots as one of the most famous plumbers in the world.”

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    Ali Donaldson

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  • 2026 Will Punish Lazy Email Marketing

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    With 93 percent of people checking their inboxes at least once a day, email is still one of the highest-ROI channels out there. But over the past few years, email marketing has become easier to do poorly. Artificial intelligence and automation have removed friction, but they’ve also made it easier to overlook the basics that mailbox providers now scrutinize more closely. Here are some of those basics, and the problems they bring.  

    Email marketing feels easier, but that can be a trap: Email marketing is far more accessible than it was even two years ago. That’s a good thing, but it’s also why many businesses have picked up habits that quietly hurt performance.

    Sending at scale takes minutes: Modern platforms make it easy to upload a list and automate campaigns, often without pausing to evaluate list quality or engagement metrics.

    Content creation no longer slows anyone down: Templates, drag-and-drop editors, and AI-generated copy mean emails look polished, even when the strategy behind them is thin.

    Automation creates a false sense of “set it and forget it”: Once workflows go live, many teams stop reviewing who they’re sending to, how those emails perform over time, and how they can be improved.

    Volume can feel like progress: More emails, more campaigns, more activity. But activity isn’t the same as effectiveness.

    The problem isn’t that these tools exist. It’s that they make it easy to confuse convenience with good email marketing, at a time when mailbox providers are doing the opposite and tightening standards.

    Avoid these pitfalls

    Here are some of the pitfalls to watch out for, and how to make the most of AI without losing the human judgment email marketing still depends on. 

    Dirty data: Sending emails to outdated contacts has never been a good idea, but today, it can hurt your campaigns even more. A bounce rate higher than 2 percent is an immediate red flag: It signals poor list quality, typical of spammers, so your emails may start going to spam.

    Keeping your bounces at a minimum is part of ongoing data maintenance, and it’s quite easy to do. Before you add a new contact to your list, check it for accuracy. Also, once every few months, verify your entire list to identify and remove disabled email addresses. 

    Automation without oversight: You can save hours by automating welcome emails or re-engagement campaigns. When your email platform makes it so convenient, it’s easy to adopt a “set it and forget it” mindset, but these setups can age badly. 

    Your customer base is always evolving, so your messaging can become irrelevant or repetitive. Also, automated volume can cause errors as you scale. So at least once a quarter, set a reminder to go through all your automated emails and check them for relevance. Sometimes, all you need is a few small tweaks to keep your campaigns current and high-performing. 

    Over-mailing can backfire: Emailing your customers regularly is a cornerstone of good email marketing, but more emails doesn’t always mean better results. Frequency without strategy can burn out your list and lead to low engagement, unsubscribes, and even spam reports. They all affect your ability to reach the inbox.

    Restraint is a competitive advantage, so in 2026, be more intentional about the emails you send. Scrutinize every message and only hit send on those emails that communicate something worthwhile. 

    Bonus tips to keep your email marketing effective in 2026

    In 2026, mailbox providers are less forgiving, and small mistakes add up faster. Save these extra tips to help your emails perform:

    • Monitor your metrics after every send. Opens and clicks are powerful trust signals, so you can’t afford to ignore engagement. If you notice a dip, be ready to quickly switch to a new approach.
    • Avoid replacing yourself with AI. Using AI to write your emails entirely is tempting, but never copy and paste bot-written copy into your templates. Even if your emails are imperfect, use your own words as much as you can to preserve authenticity.
    • Make review part of your routine. Regularly audit your campaigns and automated flows to make sure they still reflect how your business and your audience have evolved.

    In 2026, email rewards intention and discipline, so stick to these habits and you’ll continue to see steady, satisfying returns. 

    Go inside one interesting founder-led company each day to find out how its strategy works, and what risk factors it faces. Sign up for 1 Smart Business Story from Inc. on Beehiiv.

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    Liviu Tanase

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  • Avoid the After-Click Abyss

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    Marketers obsess over clicks. We A/B test headlines, refine creative, and squeeze every cent of ROI from media budgets. Yet, most performance collapses right after the click. That invisible drop-off.

    The after-click abyss is where customers vanish into a maze of embedded browsers, login walls, and broken attribution. You paid for the audience. But you lost the customer.

    The problem isn’t your ad copy or landing page speed. It’s the fragmentation of mobile itself. This challenge isn’t new. I previously explored how smart links became a way to restore continuity across splintered mobile experiences, work that now feels like an early warning for the scale of what marketers face today.

    Every major app, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and even email clients, now act as their own mini browsers. Each has isolated cookie storage and no referral data.

    To your analytics platform, that means one customer suddenly looks like five different people: one in Safari, one in Facebook, one in TikTok, one in Gmail. To your customer, it feels like starting over with every tap.

    When a shopper clicks an Instagram ad and lands inside Instagram’s in-app browser, that session doesn’t recognize her login or past purchases. She’s asked to sign in again. Friction wins, thus you lose.

    Or a text message link opens in the wrong browser (outside your brand’s app) where tracking breaks and attribution disappears. The conversion may still happen, but it’s logged as “organic.” Multiply that blind spot across millions of sessions, and your performance data becomes fiction.

    Where journeys quietly break

    Most “broken journeys” aren’t technical failures; they’re context failures.

    • A QR code leads to a generic country-selector page instead of a localized offer.
    • A paid social link opens in a sandboxed browser that can’t recognize prior behavior.
    • A remarketing ad drives a user into a duplicate session that analytics can’t connect.

    Each tiny misfire adds friction, erodes trust, and drains return on ad spend. According to Accenture’s 2025 Me, my brand, and AI report, 34 percent of consumers want to feel special, and would switch from a preferred brand to another that does this. Those who experience emotionally engaging interactions are 2.3 times more likely to recommend the brand and 1.7 times more willing to pay a premium. When post-click continuity breaks, so does that sense of connection, and with it, the loyalty that drives long-term value.

    The cost of invisible friction

    These quiet leaks rarely make headlines, yet they siphon billions in abandoned carts and lost conversions annually. They distort ROI calculations, mislead media allocation, and mask high-performing channels that never get credit.

    Worse, they erode digital trust. A customer who must log in twice or reconfirm preferences doesn’t feel “recognized;” they feel unknown. In an age when attention is currency, that’s an expensive first impression to waste.

    Most marketers never see it because analytics dashboards stop at the click. The data looks healthy, traffic steady, yet conversion rates are “average.” Beneath the surface, embedded app browsers and cookie silos prevent your measurement tools from seeing where people actually drop off.

    Close the abyss with intelligent linking

    The solution begins before the landing page, at the link itself.

    Smart, context-aware links detect device, browser, and app ownership in real time, then route each user to the most seamless destination:

    • Opening the right screen in your mobile app
    • Bypassing redundant logins
    • Localizing language and currency automatically

    These intelligent links capture metadata that traditional analytics miss, such as which app or embedded browser drove the click, which country or language was used, and whether the visitor opened a native app or web view.

    Suddenly, marketers regain the missing visibility. Campaigns can be optimized for the after-click experience, not just the pre-click audience.

    The bridge to better measurement

    In truth, post-click failures are measurement blackouts. When your data ends at the click, every downstream decision from budgeting and creative to attribution is built on partial truth.

    By instrumenting the link itself, brands can reconnect those fractured identities and rebuild continuity across channels. That continuity restores both the user experience and the analytics fidelity that modern marketing depends on.

    Smart linking doesn’t replace your stack, it strengthens it. It turns the humble hyperlink into a dynamic bridge—one that closes the gap between platforms, browsers, and customer intent.

    A ten-minute audit for marketers

    If you suspect an after-click abyss in your funnel, run this simple diagnostic:

    1. Tap your latest ad from Instagram or TikTok.
    2. Notice which browser opens and whether you’re recognized.
    3. Try the same link from SMS, email, or QR code.

    If any path feels disjointed, so does your attribution.

    Fixing the invisible breaks can outperform tweaks in creative or budget reallocation because you’re reclaiming value that already exists and visitors you’ve already paid to reach.

    The only signal that still connects it all

    In today’s splintered mobile landscape, the only consistent signal left is the link itself. It’s the thread that ties the ad impression to the conversion, the audience to the outcome.

    Marketers who master the after-click experience aren’t just improving UX, they’re reclaiming lost revenue, restoring measurement integrity, and rebuilding customer trust.

    Because in the end, performance marketing isn’t about getting the click. It’s about ensuring every click counts.

    Go inside one interesting founder-led company each day to find out how its strategy works, and what risk factors it faces. Sign up for 1 Smart Business Story from Inc. on Beehiiv.

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    Brian Klais

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  • The Real Reason No One Sees Your Marketing

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    You’re spending time and money crafting marketing messages, but if you’re like most business owners, a large portion of them never actually get through. Nearly 1 in 6 marketing emails is never seen, and even when they are, the average open rate across industries hovers around 20 percent.

    Add to that the rise of spam filters and call screening apps that block or silence unknown numbers (with only 13 percent of Americans even willing to often answer a call from an unknown number) and you have a serious reach problem.

    It’s frustrating, right? You know your business could be helping people, but it’s like shouting into the wind.

    At PostcardMania, we’ve worked with 127,785 small and independent businesses and have seen this challenge up close. The solution isn’t blasting more and more communication into already-crowded spaces. Instead, it’s building a smarter, balanced plan that meets people where they are, when they’re ready, so you can see what’s working and scale it.

    Let’s talk about three ways to make that happen.

    1.  The most reliable way to reach real people

    When your emails vanish into spam folders, direct mail still lands—literally—right in your prospect’s hands. It’s one of the few marketing tools left that almost guarantees your message gets seen.

    About 90 percent of direct mail gets opened, compared to just 20–30 percent of emails. That means nearly everyone who receives a postcard will at least glance at it—and that alone puts you miles ahead of digital-only marketing.

    Even more impressive: response rates for direct mail range from 4–9 percent, while social media delivers less than 1 percent in most categories, email averages 1 percent, and paid search is about 2 percent.

    Unlike a digital ad that disappears in seconds, a postcard lingers. It’s tangible. It gets pinned to a fridge, handed to a spouse, stacked on a desk—and that physical presence drives recall.

    Just ensure you’re mailing to the right people. Smart targeting lets you mail only to prospects who fit your ideal customer profile by geography, homeowner status, annual income, and more. And if you’re B2B, there are a multitude of targeting options as well.

    Take this a step further by utilizing automations to ensure your direct mail outreach is responsive to consumer behavior, adding relevance and timing to the mix. There are a few types of direct mail automations to choose from:

    • A CRM-driven automation will allow you to trigger mailers based on changes that happen within your CRM, like if someone becomes a new lead, goes a few weeks without responding, receives a quote, buys something, etc.
    • Direct mail retargeting is a type of automation that triggers mailers to website visitors based on various factors like how long they’re on your site, which pages they visit, if they convert, etc.
    • You can also set up location-based automations that automatically trigger mailers to people moving into a designated area, or people living near jobsites (popular with home service businesses).

    Direct mail automation allows you to combine precise targeting, timing, and tangibility—all of which increases results.

    The best part? Your competitors can’t outbid or out-algorithm you here. Just your message, delivered.

    Make it easy for leads to find you

    If direct mail is your outreach, inbound marketing like search engine optimization (SEO) is your magnet. It attracts leads who are already searching for what you offer, building credibility before you ever speak to them.

    More than 68 percent of all online experiences start with a search engine, and blogging is a top driver of ROI for B2B. A strong SEO strategy ensures that when prospects search for your product or service, they find you—not your competitors.

    Start by answering the real questions your audience asks. Use their language—not industry jargon—and focus on creating genuinely helpful content. When you consistently create content that answers real questions and uses the same language your customers do, you build trust before you ever talk to them. That trust turns into clicks, calls, and conversions.

    The secret to marketing that actually works

    Here’s where most businesses lose steam. They do the marketing but never measure what happens next. And that’s a huge mistake. Because when you track your results, you find out exactly what’s working and what’s wasting money.

    Plus, businesses that use tracking and analytics in their marketing have 2.8 times higher reporting of double-digit growth. That’s because they’re not guessing—they’re learning.

    Use call tracking numbers for every channel. Any call tracking service (or maybe even your CRM) can generate these numbers and track them for you, and walk you through setup. Once you have call tracking established for each channel, take it a step further and make sure that every campaign also has its own unique number. The goal is simple: If the phone rings, you know exactly what made it ring.

    Next, you’ll want to generate tracking URLs that tell you:

    • Which ad brought the person in
    • Which postcard they scanned
    • Which email they clicked
    • Which platform (Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) did the heavy lifting

    Google makes this incredibly easy. Use their Campaign URL Builder to generate UTM links, which are normal URLs with a few extra “tags” added to the end. These tags are magic—they tell you exactly where a visitor came from when they land on your website.

    That’s how you stop guessing and start improving—by spending smarter.

    Your audience is harder to reach than ever, but not impossible. You can’t control spam filters or call screening, but you can control how you reach your audience.

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    Joy Gendusa

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  • How Fast-Growth Startups Are Changing the Rules of Digital Marketing

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    Digital marketing is undergoing a period of rapid change—and it’s influencing everything from which platforms companies choose to market with to the specific tactics they use to win over skeptical customers.

    One noteworthy trend in our current digital marketing revolution? The fact that fast-growth startups are largely paving the way and bringing an emphasis on speed and agility. And this trend is often driven by strategic partnerships and AI.

    Here’s a closer look at how fast-growth startups are changing the digital marketing game and what it means for your business.

    1. Diving into data to deliver more personalized marketing

    It should come as no surprise that many of the fastest-growing and most successful startups are doing so thanks to a heavy emphasis on data. 

    As highlighted by the Harvard Division of Continuing Education, AI’s ability to analyze large quantities of consumer data, alongside predictive analytics and machine learning capabilities, gives marketers much deeper insights into who their customers are, what they want and where they spend their time.

    This level of insight allows marketers to deliver better personalized digital marketing, and with results that follow that level of personalization. Research from McKinsey shows that this type of personalization can increase revenue by 15 percent while simultaneously cutting the cost of customer acquisition in half. Most notably, the companies with the fastest growth rates get 40 percent more revenue from personalization than slower-growth competitors.

    Chances are, your business has a significant amount of customer data that it isn’t using. Even data that is collected specifically for market research often goes unused, resulting in duplicate research and customer insights that are never utilized. By investing in AI tools that help you dig deeper into your data and find actionable insights, you can deliver a level of personalization that will kickstart digital marketing growth.

    2. Leveraging strategic partnerships over traditional marketing spend

    One unique aspect I’ve seen with today’s fast-growth startups is that they often spend less on digital marketing than their peers, instead opting to use partnerships to reach customers in a more direct way—and at a lower cost.

    For example, fintech startup Neobanc achieved an 800 percent growth rate within just five months of its launch. As just one example of the startup’s growth, it was able to achieve 100 inbound applications in the week it launched a new mortgage payment cashback feature without any marketing spend whatsoever.

    The difference? Leveraging strategic partnerships through the founding team’s prior experiences at other startups. By joining the REACH program created by Second Century Ventures and backed by the National Association of Realtors, Neobanc is working to help over 1.5 million realtors create new revenue streams from rentals and leases.

    These and other partnerships have proven critical in bringing in customers and prospects while keeping direct marketing costs at a minimum and giving the company more budget to focus on expanding its service offerings.

    For other entrepreneurs, this highlights the importance of networking and building strong relationships with others in and out of your niche. Making sure your actions live up to your core values and maintaining contact with previous business partners, work associates and others can lead to surprisingly effective promotional strategies.

    Data analytics is far from the only area where fast-growth startups are using AI to rewrite the rules of digital marketing. The fastest-growing startups are looking for myriad ways to incorporate AI beyond data analytics, in large part because this enables them to scale their marketing efforts even when they have a smaller team and budget.

    For example, many startups use AI to dynamically adapt digital marketing content to achieve hyper-personalized targeting. As DesignRush reports, dynamic web content can increase visitor engagement by 40 percent, while predictive email campaigns powered by AI can double the engagement rate of a standard campaign.

    AI also helps streamline a wide range of digital marketing tasks, whether that be fine-tuning an image or video, adjusting content for voice search or building a strategic content calendar. Real-life marketers are still needed to enact these strategies and lead out on human-focused marketing activities, but AI can dramatically increase their productivity. 

    Regardless of the size of your marketing team, you should carefully consider which AI tools can prove most impactful for your digital marketing process, streamlining (and often automating) the minutiae while letting your team focus on the big picture. Don’t just adopt AI tools for the sake of adopting them. Consider which tools will contribute to your strategic goals.

    4. Turning the startup mindset into digital marketing dominance

    Today’s fast-growth startups are largely leveraging AI tools, combined with powerful partnerships, to reach their target audience in a more cost-effective and personalized manner. Regardless of your business’s size, niche or marketing budget, I believe these same principles can be applied to your own marketing strategy. 

    By focusing on tools and partnerships that are aligned with your brand identity and audience, you can deliver a more memorable marketing experience that puts you on track for rapid growth in your own niche.

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    The extended deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 19, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    John Hall

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  • Why Cold Outreach Isn’t the Problem—Bad Targeting Is

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    Everyone complains about spam messages. But outreach itself is not the enemy. Poor targeting is. As a CEO, I receive messages all the time that make no sense for me or my company. One day it might be an automated text about applying for an entry-level job, and the next it is a pitch for something unrelated to what we do. That is not cold outreach. That is noise. 

    Business owners actually welcome good outreach, though. That’s because entrepreneurs love solutions. They want tools, services, and ideas that solve real problems. When a message is relevant, clear, and personalized, it feels like an opportunity, not an intrusion. I take demo calls all the time when the targeting is accurate and the person reaching out can truly add value. The key is alignment between what you offer and what the recipient actually needs. 

    The difference between spam and value 

    Spam and value-driven outreach may look similar at first glance, but the intent and precision behind them are completely different. 
     
    Spam focuses on sending as many messages as possible, hoping that someone says yes. Value-driven outreach focuses on reaching the right person with the right message at the right time. 
     
    Here is what separates the two:

    • Wrong audience versus right audience 
    • Generic message versus personalized relevance 
    • Self-centered pitch versus problem-solving offer 
    • Volume-based versus precision-based 
    • Feels intrusive versus feels helpful 

    Spam is spraying. Value-driven outreach is serving. 

    Targeting is everything 

    Cold outreach works when you do your homework. The more specific you get about who you are contacting, the warmer your message becomes. When you know their industry, role, or current challenges, your outreach instantly feels different. Good targeting says, “I understand your world.” Bad targeting screams, “I do not know who you are.” Relevance turns high-quality cold outreach into a genuine conversation starter. 

    I built every business I have ever owned through cold calling. That is where I learned that consistent, value-driven communication always wins. The difference today is that data makes it easier to reach the right people faster. What has not changed is the human element. Authenticity and respect still separate great outreach from forgettable spam. If your message shows that you care about solving a real problem, people will listen. 

    The psychology of relevance 

    People do not hate cold outreach. They hate being misunderstood. When a message is irrelevant, it feels careless, and careless feels disrespectful. It tells the recipient that their time was not worth researching. But when someone takes the time to craft a message that is specific, thoughtful, and personalized, it communicates respect before a single dollar changes hands. 
     
    Relevance builds connection. It activates curiosity because the person feels seen. A well-crafted cold message does not need to be long or flashy. It simply needs to say, “I get what you are trying to accomplish, and I might be able to help.” 
     
    When you reach the right person with the right problem at the right time, you create alignment. And alignment is what every business relationship is built on. That is why targeting matters so much. It is not just about getting the sale. It is about showing that you understand the person on the other side. 

    The takeaway for entrepreneurs 

    Cold outreach is not dying. It is evolving. Business owners are not annoyed by someone offering a solution. They are annoyed by strangers who waste their time. If your outreach is thoughtful, targeted, and respectful, it becomes what it was always meant to be: a conversation starter, not a sales pitch. Relevance builds trust. And trust builds business. 

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    Bruno Nicoletti

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  • How to Start Marketing When You Don’t Know Where to Start

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    Let’s get one thing out of the way: Marketing can be overwhelming. Especially when you’re staring at a blank screen, five browser tabs deep into conflicting advice, and wondering whether you should hire an agency, start a TikTok, or run a Facebook ad.

    The truth? Most businesses don’t start with a strategy, they start with confusion. And that’s okay. What matters is that you start somewhere. But start smart.

    Don’t try to shoot threes if you can’t even dribble

    One of the biggest mistakes we see business owners make is jumping straight into advanced tactics, like Google Ads, AI content tools, or influencer partnerships—all before mastering the basics.

    It’s like trying to shoot three-pointers when you haven’t even learned how to dribble a basketball. You’re skipping the fundamentals. And when you skip the fundamentals, you end up frustrated, wasting money, and wondering why nothing’s working.

    If you don’t have a solid marketing foundation, no tactic—no matter how trendy or expensive—will stick.

    Think of marketing like a tripod

    Strong marketing stands on three legs. If even one is missing or weak, the whole thing wobbles. Here’s what the marketing tripod looks like:

    1. Your website (foundation)

    If your website is slow, outdated, or confusing, no amount of ads will save you. Your site should load quickly, work on mobile, and guide visitors toward taking action (buying, booking, contacting you—whatever matters most).

    2. SEO (visibility)

    If no one can find you, you don’t exist. SEO helps you show up when potential customers are actively searching for what you offer. It’s not magic, it’s making sure your site speaks the same language your audience is typing into Google.

    3. Paid advertising (growth engine)

    Once you have a solid site and some SEO traction, paid ads help you reel in new customers faster. Think of it like casting a net: Ads get you in front of people who didn’t even know to search for you yet.

    If you’re missing one of these? Fix it before moving on.

    So where do you start?

    Let’s keep it simple. If you’re lost, start here:

    Audit your website: Is it clear, fast, and mobile-friendly? Does it explain what you do in under 10 seconds? Does it make it easy for someone to take the next step? If not, fix this first.

    Claim and optimize your Google Business Profile: This is low-hanging fruit. It helps with local SEO and makes your business easier to find on Maps and in search results.

    Write down what you want from marketing: More leads? More online visibility? Better retention? You can’t pick a strategy if you don’t know your goal. Get clear before spending a dollar.

    Avoid shiny object syndrome: Don’t start five platforms at once. Choose one channel that makes sense for your audience (email, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.) and be consistent there. Master it before you move on.

    When to bring in the pros

    You can do a lot on your own in the beginning. But there’s a point where the DIY route starts to cost you more time (and lost revenue) than it’s worth. Here’s when it makes sense to bring in professionals:

    • When you need specific expertise

    Running complex paid ads or tackling technical SEO shouldn’t be guesswork.

    • When time is more valuable than trial and error

    If you have a clear growth goal, professionals help you get there faster—without spinning your wheels.

    • When you’re ready to think strategically

    Tactical execution is one thing. But if you want to build a marketing engine that scales, strategy is non-negotiable.

    • When your growth outpaces your time

    If marketing is taking time away from running your business, it’s time to delegate.

    You don’t need a perfect plan—you just need to start

    Marketing isn’t something you master in one game. It’s like building your shot over time—you start by showing up, running drills, and getting your fundamentals right.

    The same goes for your business. So before you start launching three-pointers, make sure that you’ve mastered dribbling and layups first.

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Justin Lynch

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  • In a World of AI Copy, Being Human Is Your Edge

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    We’ve all heard it 100 times by now: If we aren’t using AI in our businesses, we’re behind. 

    But in my industry—I’m a published novelist and memoirist who teaches people to write books—AI is very much viewed as a threat. Over the past year, my clients have repeatedly raised questions like:  

    • Am I allowed to use AI to help me write?  
    • Are books going to become obsolete?  

    And my favorite:  

    • Are writers going to become obsolete? 

    On the contrary, I think that the growth of AI-generated content is making human-written content more valuable than ever—not less.  

    AI is a game changer for clever marketing copy 

    We all know what marketing speak sounds like—it’s slick and clever and concise. It’s “finger lickin’ good” and “taste the rainbow” and “got milk?”  

    When it comes to generating this kind of copy very quickly, AI is a game changer. It’s 1,000 times faster than the wittiest marketing copywriter, and arguably as good. I’ve certainly used it for quippy witticisms to slap onto Meta ad graphics or email subject lines; it’s part of why I pay $20 a month for a Claude.ai premium plan.  

    But clever marketing copy has limited use in industries like mine where human connection is paramount.  

    When writers find me and my program, they don’t sign up because it’s packaged in puns and clever phrases. And they don’t sign up because AI has written grammatically impeccable marketing copy describing my services. Clients sign up because they connected with someone, a person: either with me, through my YouTube channel or podcast, or with one of my team members over the phone. I know this because they tell us in surveys. 

    Humans still want to read stuff written by humans 

    But you don’t need to be a professional writer to pick up on the difference between “person wrote this” and “machine wrote this.” If you are skeptical, just visit any Reddit forum; Reddit is full of human-authored content. It’s messy. It’s scattered. People go on tangents, they get sassy, and they write things they then regret and try to back pedal. The content you will find on Reddit is night-and-day different from content AI spits out, because AI doesn’t have bad days. It doesn’t have days at all!  

    There’s a reason Reddit reports 91 million active users every day. We want to hear from other humans; we especially want to hear from them if we’re buying a car or deciding where to eat on vacation, i.e. how to spend our money.  

    This is why AI-generated writing has made writing that feels genuinely human more special—because it is, literally. Purely human-authored content is becoming scarcer by the day. In a world of lab-grown gemstones, human writing is a natural emerald, and people pick up on that energy. It’s a vibe.  

    Whether you’re writing a company newsletter, ad copy, or a direct client solicitation, crafting the sentences yourself—like you would have in 2003 or 2023—doesn’t make you “behind the curve.” It makes you someone who understands that we are in a Gold Rush, and all that glitters is not gold. Just because something is faster and shinier doesn’t mean it gets results. If the end game is client acquisition, the way to get there isn’t to try to skip the part where you show up as a person with a beating heart.  

    Lean into your human writing skills 

    My advice: Lean into what makes human writing so very human. Be vulnerable and experimental. Say weird stuff that generative AI is unlikely to spit out. Because we’re all inundated right now with the same repurposed, algorithmic copy that feels soulless because it is.  

    That means hearing from a fellow flawed, less-than-clever Homo sapiens is—dare I say it—refreshing.  

    But couldn’t I just train AI to write more like a human? You could, but I wouldn’t go this route for two reasons.  

    • It’s more efficient just to write it yourself.  

    As a professional writer, I’ve done extensive experimentation to see if I can train the most capable, premium AI software to emulate my voice, and the closest I’ve gotten is probably 70 percent and that’s after dozens of hours trying to get it to sound like me.  

    • Readers pick up on the robotic vibe.  

    It sounds woo-woo, but people pick up on a vibe. As I teach the writers in my program, the energy you put into the work is the energy the reader picks up on; you’re charting a path for the reader, emotionally. The same is true of any writing used for marketing, which is inherently meant to persuade emotionally. Want people to pick up on a robotic vibe? Use a robot. 

    And as Jeb Blount and Anthony Iannarino write in their book The AI Edge, we still don’t trust robots.  

    Marketing is about cutting through the noise. The noise right now is bot-made. Be the loud one by refusing to fall for the idea that just because AI is glossy and popular, it’s superior.

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Mary Adkins

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  • 7 Common Marketing Mistakes and How to Fix Them

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    Multi‑unit brands, when an owner operates multiple locations, rarely stumble for lack of marketing dollars; they falter when execution is uniform, measurement is thin, and meaningful signals go unnoticed.

    Many leaders still can’t tie their spending decisions to the outcomes at their store locations—they can see the sales went up or traffic decreased, but they don’t know why. A measurement‑first discipline—geo‑experiments (trying a new offer in 10 stores versus 10 control stores), location‑level KPIs (developing specific metrics for each store), and a test‑and‑scale cadence—reveals what to scale and what to stop. It also forces the operational moves, such as hours, staffing, and customer experience, that will make the results stick.

    Why multi‑unit is different (and harder)

    Operating one location is hard; operating dozens or hundreds is exponentially more complex. Local markets vary dramatically—demographics, density, commuting patterns, media costs. Competition can even differ within the same Designated Market Area. A national advertising plan that treats every store the same tends to produce uneven outcomes and wastes ad impressions on people who are unlikely to respond.

    The solution is not bespoke campaigns for every address; it is a structured way to localize at scale. Start by grouping locations into practical archetypes—such as urban weekday, suburban family, commuter corridor, college‑adjacent, tourism/seasonal, and rural hub—so strategy, offers, channels, and frequency can flex without compromising brand consistency.

    Two forces drive results: demand signals (who lives and works nearby) and execution readiness (hours, staffing, inventory, and reviews). Any plan that ignores either will struggle, no matter the budget.

    How to fix common marketing mistakes

    Here are the seven common mistakes most multi-unit marketers make and how to fix them.

    1. Measuring activity instead of impact

    Too many dashboards track impressions, clicks, or redemptions without proving whether marketing spend changed outcomes at the store level. Activity is not impact. When leaders cannot separate signal from noise, underperforming tactics linger and high‑return ideas fail to scale.

    Fix: Adopt incrementality as the standard. Run short matched‑market tests (geo‑experiments) that compare test and control geographies with similar pre‑trends. Consider incremental return on ad spend— the extra revenue generated by an ad campaign—alongside visit lift, order lift, and average order value. Institutionalize a monthly win‑scale / lose‑learn cadence so teams know what continues, what pauses, and what changes.

    Dashboards are not strategy; decisions are.

    2. Even‑split budgeting

    Equal allocations for locations feel fair but rarely align with opportunity. A downtown store with dense demand and strong conversion should not be funded the same as a rural outpost with a smaller potential customer base and weaker readiness to attract customers.

    Fix: Adopt a performance‑weighted model. Provide a baseline marketing budget for every location, then distribute the remaining budget where lift potential is higher, using an index built from signals such as lead density, conversion rate, and recent marginal return. Revisit your spend quarterly. If a store is saturated—more ad spend would just repeat messsages to the same people—cap its budget and move extra dollars to the next best store.

    3. Treating all locations the same

    A single offer and calendar cannot fit every neighborhood. The same creative that resonates with weekday commuters will miss weekend‑driven family traffic just a few miles away.

    Fix: Group similar locations into categories and manage them based on their type. Localize offers, timing, and channel weights by cluster—weekday lunch near offices versus weekend bundles in suburbs—while keeping brand standards intact.

    4. Over‑relying on national media

    National advertising campaigns build consistency but can miss local intent and timing. Excess saturation without neighborhood relevance leads to waste and customer fatigue.

    Fix: Pair a national “spine” with local “muscle.” Use neighborhood‑level targeting, regional calendars, and frequency caps to reach the right households at the right moments. Guard against overlap so channels reinforce rather than cannibalize one another.

    5. Overlooking data you already own

    Many teams chase new data sources while underusing what they already have—point of sale, CRM, store comps, web and app engagement, and service history. You do not need big data to see meaningful patterns.

    Fix: Establish a simple loop: Collect data → Segment locations by category → Test strategy→ Learn what works and why → Implement what is successful. Start by identifying your best customers and building look‑alike audiences, then validate through focused, controlled pilots.

    6. Isolating channels

    Isolated tactics underperform. A household that sees one message once is unlikely to change behavior; a coordinated sequence across channels has a much better chance.

    Fix: Build connected campaigns. Reinforce an addressable mail offer with digital video and display timed to the same households—where privacy rules allow. Sequence touches over three to four weeks enabling creative and offers to compound, not collide.

    7. Launching or “fixing” stores without a readiness cycle

    Marketing cannot compensate for operational gaps. If hours, staffing, inventory, or the customer experience are not ready, the interest your ads generate will not translate into sales.

    Fix: Implement a 30–60–90-day plan.

    • Diagnose demand and audience opportunity (30 days).
    • Test two or three offers in targeted regions (60 days).
    • Scale the winners and shift budget toward proven tactics (90 days).

    Focus on metrics that matter

    The goal is to manage what you measure, not just monitor activity. Here are the metrics you should prioritize:

    • Incremental lift at the store level (sales or appointments versus matched controls).
    • Incremental return on ad spend from geo‑tests, read alongside visit and order lift.
    • Customer mix (new versus returning) and frequency or recency trends after exposure.
    • Match‑back and halo: Whether people who saw your marketing came in later — even if they didn’t redeem an offer or click anything.
    • Time‑to‑repeat and offer elasticity: How long does it takes customers to return after a visit and how sensitive are they to different types of offers.
    • Operational KPIs—hours, staffing, inventory, and reviews—to ensure the location can keep up with the demand your marketing creates.

    Closing thought

    Multi‑unit growth does not come from spending more everywhere. It comes from diagnosing demand, localizing with discipline, and proving impact before scaling. When a brand builds measurement, archetype‑level localization, and operational readiness into the way it works, it moves beyond dashboards of activity to a playbook of measurable, repeatable gains at the store level.

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Greg Mesaros

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  • How to Create a Viral Brand Collaboration

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    Cobranded collaborations are hot right now, and they are downright fun. Arguably the more surprising, outlandish, and shocking they are, the more viral they become. What brand doesn’t dream of becoming part of a pop culture movement?

    In 2021 Pepsi and Peeps created a marshmallow-flavored soda with just 3,000 units. Crocs created a KFC shoe that looked like fried chicken, and it sold out in 30 minutes.

    More recently, Dr. Squatch crashed its website with a limited edition soap bar that contained trace amounts of Sydney Sweeney’s bathwater. Erewhon made $20 smoothies mainstream with its Hailey Bieber collaboration.

    The benefits of cobranded collaboration

    There are many benefits of doing a cobranded collaboration. Here are four:

    1. When a lesser-known brand collaborates with a larger brand, well-perceived brand or an “it-brand,” the lesser-known brand is instantly legitimatized by association.
    2. The collaboration introduces your brand to a new audience through the other brand’s marketing, allowing you to reach a larger audience than you would reach on your own.
    3. Surprising collaborations give your audience something new to get excited about.
    4. Collaborations have the high potential to go viral, with the right (shocking or creative) product or partnership.

    Here’s how to execute a collaboration campaign

    Once you have found the right brand to partner with, here are three ways to execute a campaign:

    1. A collaboration can be as simple as a co-branded giveaway on social media, where you simply give away each company’s products. This is the easiest collaboration to land, as well as to organize and execute. Because so few resources are invested by both parties, there are arguably fewer ways it can go wrong. This type of collaboration has the shortest lifespan, reducing potential impact.
    1. If you own a company with physical products, you can send those products to brands or influencers that align with your brand and ask to be featured in their social media and other assets. Many influencers and celebrities require flat payments for placements, or an on-going affiliate commission structure, so this can be a more expensive collaboration.
    1. The ultimate partnership is co-branding a product together like Pepsi and Peeps did in 2021. This is a much more complicated relationship, starting typically with a pitch, then a contract, months to years of development and branding, and then execution. This can take extensive resources, which are split between brands as specified in the contract. Because of the time and resources put into these partnerships, they have the greater potential for a big impact, but they also have the potential for more things to go wrong.

    Collaboration pitfalls

    If you think only positive impacts can come from collaborations, think again. There are many potential pitfalls. Here are a few that come to mind.

    • Loss of trust. If you are operating in a niche market with a strong mission and brand standards, it is imperative that your partners share the same ethos. Releasing a product that does not meet your typical ingredient or brand standards for a collaboration can break consumer trust. Your audience will question whether you still care about your mission or if you just care about going viral.
    • Potential for high costs. There can be high fees or revenue sharing royalties for usage of the brand or influencer’s name and likeness. Can your company afford to pay those fees?
    • Possibility for scandal. You will have an association with the celebrity or brand and everything they stand for. What if they cause a scandal or outrage? Your brand will be associated with it, and everything they say and do, especially while your co-branded campaign is live.
    • Virality has a short window. These collaborations rarely stand the test of time, and popularity fades quickly.
    • Long lead times. Prepare for potential issues procuring ingredients and supplies from the other brand’s vendors and lengthy approval times for all creative assets.
    • Potential for failure. A collaboration that goes viral for being a failed marketing campaign can haunt your brand’s reputation for years. The two most cited failed collaboration attempts are Neiman Marcus and Target, and Lego and Shell. Ask yourself, is all press good press for you and your company?

    Make your collaboration successful

    At Fontana Candle Company we have leaned heavily into co-branded partnerships, both with influencers in our niche as well as other brands to help propel our growth. These key partnerships have legitimized our position as one of the top candle companies in the wellness industry.

    Here are my four tips for successful brand collaborations:

    1. Have a contract outlining all costs, ownership, and deliverables.
    2. Use scarcity tactics to drive urgency and sales.
    3. If the collaboration is successful, can it come back the following year with a different iteration? Tease it early and often. Don’t just launch it and run.
    4. Let your creativity shine. The campaign doesn’t have to be wild to be wildly successful.

    Our most successful collaboration to-date has been our Honey Lemonade candle with best-selling wellness author and influencer Shawna Holman. We introduced it in 2024 as a one-time, limited-edition candle. With Shawna’s enthusiastic following and our excited customers the first batch sold out in hours.

    We brought the candle back this year and it’s our second best-selling scent year to date. It will be back in 2026 for its third year.

    Why does this collaboration work for us? Because it is authentic and in line with our mission and audience, making it a genuine collaboration.

    Our worst collaboration was when we leaned into a “shock factor” collaboration and launched a sourdough-scented candle. We partnered with a well-known sourdough recipe creator but the scent did not land with her audience. We learned quickly that shock factor collaborations are not what the wellness community wants. We forecasted too strongly and had to discount it heavily to get rid of our stock of this candle.

    Collaborations are fun and games—if it’s what your audience wants. If a collaboration lands right, it can go massively viral and put your brand in the center of a pop culture moment. This is the dream of all marketers, right? But if a collaboration goes wrong, it can damage your brand and make your customers question who you really are.

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Katie Roering

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  • 3 Smart Ways to Get Ahead of Your Competitors Now

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    Remember the 1998 rom-com You’ve Got Mail? It’s a love story wrapped around a brutal business rivalry between two Manhattan bookstores—Tom Hanks’ “big bad chain” and Meg Ryan’s cozy, family-owned shop.

    Hanks does what any ambitious business owner might do (albeit sneakily): He scopes out his competition, even pretending to be a customer. Ultimately, despite the charm of Ryan’s smaller bookstore, Hanks wins the war, forcing his competitor to close.

    The movie may be a rom-com, but its core message is timeless: Competition is fierce and strategy wins.

    At my business, PostcardMania, we’re all about helping small businesses thrive—not just survive—in that same competitive landscape. So far, we’ve helped 127,179 clients with their marketing, and have permission to share 1,152 successful case studies, helping shape our understanding (and blueprint) for marketing success.

    So, as the New Year races toward us, here are three smart ways to outplan, outmarket, and outperform your competition.

    1. Do a competitive analysis and build your plan to win

    If prospects aren’t choosing you, they’re choosing someone else—so find out who.

    Research your competitors deeply: Read reviews, follow them on social media, sign up for their emails, and study their marketing. What are they doing well? Where are they weak? I also suggest creating a Google Alert for each competitor, sending any new company mentions right to your inbox.

    Once you know your competitors inside and out, figure out how to position your business as the better option by identifying your unique selling proposition (USP)—what makes your business the choice.

    At PostcardMania, our USP addresses a common complaint among business owners: They do not feel their marketing investment will provide guaranteed results. They’re afraid of throwing money away on marketing that doesn’t work. We address that fear head on by giving them proven blueprints for success in their industry.

    We’ve worked hard to show that direct mail marketing works by being transparent and sharing details of our marketing campaigns and results on our website. We even have an entire division dedicated to this task; it’s resulted in those 1,152 case studies mentioned earlier, and thousands more cataloged for use.

    Here’s the point: Your USP has to go beyond “we’re the best”—because everyone says that. Therefore your USP might not fall into your lap. You might have to create it out of nothing, like we did. But I can tell you it’s well worth it.

    Once you know your USP, highlight it everywhere—on your website, ads, mailers, emails, maybe even your logo. If a competitor offers a free guide, maybe you can do better than that and host a free monthly educational event.

    Go bigger. Be better. As Tom Hanks says, “Go to the mattresses,” which is a phrase from the movie The Godfather that means “go to war.”

    2. Double down on marketing channels that deliver

    Winning the competition game isn’t just about being clever—it’s also about being cost-effective. Figure out which marketing channels bring the highest ROI.

    Analyze where your top results come from: Instagram ads? Email newsletters? Postcards? Your website? Then funnel more of your budget into that.

    One of our clients in North Carolina did exactly that. After seeing incredible ROI from direct mail, he reinvested those profits back into his marketing. Dr. Klooster started out mailing 7,500 postcards a month for six months. When he started seeing an increase in new patients, he increased his mailings.

    He purchased postcards in bulk to save on printing costs and started mailing up to 13,000 postcards a month. He also adjusted his mailing lists over time by narrowing the mailing radius around his office. Then he upped his consistency to reach the same people every other month. This sweet spot—bigger mailings, more focused audiences, more repetition to the same list—paid off massively.

    In just two years, he tripled his new patient numbers, started generating over $2 million in production, and even opened a second location.

    That’s what happens when you bet big on what works.

    3. Get feedback, fix gaps, and keep improving

    Reviews aren’t just nice words—they’re business gold. Studies show that 74 percent of people check at least two review sites before making purchase decisions. Research also indicates that products with at least five reviews have a 270 percent greater likelihood of purchase than products with no reviews.

    Encourage reviews through Google, surveys, and follow-ups. Automate requests via email, SMS, or even postcards with QR codes linking directly to your review page. The key is to ask clients the moment you know they’re happy with your business, to give you a review, rather than sitting back and hoping good reviews appear.

    I’ve seen firsthand how actively working on generating good reviews can massively impact your Google Business Listing. Once we started proactively asking happy clients for reviews, our five-star Google review count jumped 960 percent, from 247 to 2,619.

    And don’t underestimate the power of personally asking them for one over the phone or face-to-face. About 70 percent of consumers will leave a review just because you asked. That extra touch goes a long way toward building loyalty and lasting relationships.

    Not only do reviews help increase sales, but they also give you loads of feedback to improve your business overall. Anytime you see a negative review, look at it as an opportunity to fix the issues. As you correct any holes in operations or customer service, you’ll be an even bigger threat to competitors.

    Bottom line: Next year will be here before you know it, so channel your inner You’ve Got Mail business owner—but with a little more heart. Research your competitors, fine-tune your marketing, and never stop improving. The future belongs to the businesses that plan for it now.

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Joy Gendusa

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  • The Gray Area of Innovation Tests

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    Walk into any big-box store on a Saturday afternoon and you’ll see what no virtual shelf test can simulate: Busy aisles, carts weaving, tons of promotional shelf noise, out of stock items, and shoppers making split-second choices.

    This chaotic environment is the reality of consumer packaged goods (CPG)—and it’s also where innovation meets its proving ground.

    At Mission Field, we’ve tested innovations using both sides of the spectrum, from virtual shelves and AI-driven simulations to actual “retail labs” in places like Walmart, Kroger, and Alberton’s.

    What have we learned?

    That conceptual shelf testing is good because it’s quick and affordable, but there’s a tradeoff because it often produces incorrect results. Our 425+ tests of in-store innovation have proven that.

    The rise of virtual testing

    There’s no denying that advanced virtual shelf testing platforms have reshaped early-stage innovation. They let you test language like “protein-rich” versus “high-protein” in hours to days. You can A/B test communications hierarchy, colors, or callouts before investing a dollar in the nuts and bolts of manufacturing.

    For large CPGs with access to an embarrassment of riches using multiple viable design approaches, that ability to quickly narrow down options matters. It keeps iteration lean, empowers brand teams to “fail faster,” and lets data drive creative decisions.

    But when you’re planning a brick-and-mortar launch, that virtual efficiency can only take you so far. Eventually you need to make it real.

    What the aisle teaches you that a screen can’t

    Nothing compares to putting your product on shelves in actual stores complete with competing SKUs, actual store lighting, and busy shopper traffic. We’ve learned things no digital heatmap could tell us: which claims disappeared under glare, which colors got lost in a crowded set, and which strategies literally stopped people in their tracks.

    We don’t see virtual and physical testing as competing approaches. They’re complementary.

    Go virtual when:

    • You need to narrow big swings in design, messaging, or claims.
    • You need to identify your top-performing options among many choices.
    • You’re early in development and still defining your brand language.

    Go physical when:

    • You need validation to mitigate the risk of a large organizational bet.
    • You require behavioral knowledge because past insight efforts didn’t deliver success.   
    • You seek to optimize the opportunity prior to a launch to maximize its potential.
    • You want one comprehensive model that can bundle seven studies into one.

    Even a DIY mockup—printed and taped or stickered onto a package—can reveal insights that save you time and money later. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be real.

    Myth busting: What big brands are rethinking

    Let’s bust some testing myths.

    Myth 1: Physical testing is too expensive.

    Not anymore. You can get mockups made or just go to your local print shop and create labels with the right finish. Adhere them onto bottles/cartons and run rapid A/B tests in a retail set for a fraction of what a production round used to cost.

    Myth 2: It takes too long.

    The truth: Testing in the real world can accelerate learning. Instead of waiting weeks to create the virtual shelf for simulated feedback, you can see how shoppers react in stores within days. Teams come away with conviction—and that speeds up internal approvals.

    Myth 3: You need experts for every step.

    Expert partners help, of course. But you can do a lot more than you think on your own. Train your gut. Every time you walk the aisle, you sharpen your intuition about how products perform under pressure. That experience compounds.

    Virtual shelf testing is a gift to modern CPG teams. It’s fast, affordable, and incredibly useful, when used in the right stage of development. But innovation still lives and dies in the physical aisle.

    The best strategies use both: digital speed and real-world empathy.

    In the end, your main goal is to earn a shopper’s attention, and their trust.

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Jonathan Tofel

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  • This 26-year-old was laid off from his ‘dream job’ at PwC building AI agents. He’s worried the tech he built has led to more job cuts | Fortune

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    Titans of industry like Salesforce, Microsoft, and Intel have all been slashing staff, and employees are hand-wringing about being next on the chopping block. Donald King, a 26-year-old who built AI agents for PwC, never thought he’d be the next one out the door—but he soon realized why consultants are called “hatchet-men.”

    After graduating with a degree in finance from the University of Texas at Austin in 2021, King landed a job at one of the “Big Four” consulting giants: PwC. He packed his bags and moved to New York to start his role as an associate in technology consulting, working with major clients, including Oracle, during his first year. But everything changed when PwC announced a $1 billion investment in AI; King was already intrigued by the tech, so he pitched himself to join the company’s AI factory team. Working 60 to 80 hours a week, he immersed himself in the tech, even throwing knowledge-sharing AI agent block parties within the firm that drew up to 250 participants. King logged a ton of hours—sometimes at the expense of his weekends—but was confident he was excelling in his role as a product manager and data scientist.

    “I was coding and managing a team onshore and offshore. It was crazy, it’s like, ‘Give this 24-year-old millions of dollars of salary spent per month to build AI agents for Fortune 500 [companies],’” King tells Fortune. “[It was] my dream job…I won first place in this OpenAI hackathon across the entire firm.”

    Although King was proving himself as a key AI talent for PwC, he did begin to question the impact of his work. The AI agents King was building for major corporations could undoubtedly automate swaths of human roles—perhaps even entire job departments. One Microsoft Teams agent his group created mimicked an actual person, and King was a little spooked. 

    “We had a late night call with all the boys that are building this thing, like, ‘What the hell are we building right now?’” King says. “Just saying ‘Treat them like humans’ is probably not the best way to think about it.”

    Behind the scenes, a layoff was brewing—but this time, for King. In October 2024, just eight months into his final role at PwC, the Gen Zer presented his winning project from the OpenAI hackathon: a fleet of AI agents that automated manual tasks. King was proud and felt confident in his place at the firm, but two hours later, PwC called King to inform him he was being laid off. The 26-year-old recorded the meeting and posted it on TikTok, raking up more than 75,000 likes and 2.1 million views. Commenters under his videos expressed shock that King would be let go after winning the hackathon.

    “I thought I was safe, especially after I won first place,” King says. “I just got a little blindsided.”

    King clarifies he doesn’t think there were any “nefarious” intentions behind his layoff, reasoning he was likely a random staffer dismissed after the firm had overhired in previous years. However, he does connect the dots between the AI agents he built for PwC customers and the layoffs that soon ensued at those client companies. 

    Fortune reached out to PwC for comment. 

    King believes his AI agents may have been connected to layoffs 

    While King doesn’t believe his former role at PwC was automated, he recognizes that the AI agents he built likely had an impact on others. The year after his layoff, King observed that some of the Fortune 500 clients he served were implementing staffing cuts. Those AI agents he helped create may have had a hand in the layoffs. 

    “It’s 100% connected,” King says. “I knew that consulting was a hatchet-man type job, I knew you’re going in to potentially lay people off, but I didn’t think it was going to be like this.”

    While King believes AI agents are akin to the reasoning power of a five-year-old, they still know “all the corpus of information in the world” and can automate mundane tasks. Oftentimes, that means entry-level jobs are most at risk of being disrupted. 

    “It’s automating tasks, 100%, those are gone,” King says. “If your job is doing those menial types of things, if you’re just emailing a spreadsheet back and forth, you can kiss your job goodbye.”

    Pivoting to his new life purpose: founding a marketing agency 

    While being on PwC’s AI team may have once been his dream job, the layoff didn’t crush his spirit. 

    “I’m grateful for it happening…It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but then it turned into the best thing,” King says. “Overall, [I’m] very grateful that I got laid off.”

    In the aftermath of being let go, King says he was inundated with job offers from major tech companies to join their AI operations. However, the scrappy young entrepreneur sidelined the idea of returning to a nine-to-five gig; instead, King started his own marketing agency, AMDK. The business officially launched in December last year, less than two months after being laid off from PwC. 

    So far, King says AMDK has roped in clients ranging from small companies to billion-dollar enterprises, many of whom are looking for AI agents of their own. His end goal is to build a swarm of agents that help companies with their back ends—but after his experience on PwC’s AI team, he says he’s being cautious about the ramifications of his creations. He’s still learning the ropes of entrepreneurship, but wouldn’t trade the highs and lows for a salaried corporate job.

    “This is my purpose in life, versus this is someone else’s purpose,” King says. “[I’m] way happier.”

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    Emma Burleigh

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  • Swiss Watch Exports Continue on Downward Trend in U.S. Tariff Fallout

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    Exports of Swiss watches remained on a declining trend in October, driven by a sharp decrease in the U.S. as tariffs continue to take a toll.

    Total exports of Swiss timepieces dropped 4.4% in October compared with the same period last year to 2.24 billion Swiss francs ($2.78 billion), according to data published Thursday by the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, or FH.

    Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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    Andrea Figueras

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  • How to Build B2B Trust in the Age of AI

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    91% of buyers don’t trust marketing today*.

    AI hasn’t just changed how we create content — it has completely reshaped how people judge credibility, authenticity, and intent.

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    LIBN Staff

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  • 10 AI Tools Marketers Are Using Right Now

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    Who doesn’t want to be more efficient? That’s why millions of Americans are turning to AI at the office. Over the past year, the share of U.S. workers using AI tools as part of their job doubled to 40 percent, according to a Gallup poll published in June.

    That number gets even higher for the marketing industry. By one measure, 61 percent of creative and marketing professionals use AI for their work, including analytics, content creation, strategy, and planning. Another poll found that 76 percent of marketers employ AI tools.

    For those marketers searching for the most effective AI tools to incorporate into their daily work flow, Inc. surveyed marketing-focused founders and their chief marketing officers. Here are the models and platforms they cannot live without.

    1. ChatGPT

    Unsurprisingly, one of the most frequently cited tools was ChatGPT. Founders and chief marketing officers rely on the LLM for daily tasks, including brainstorming, market research, data analysis, strategy development, and content creation. One chief marketing officer trained a custom GPT to become their chief of staff. Another says they use ChatGPT to formulate step-by-step guides when learning how to use other AI tools. 

    With a team of less than 10 people, Sophie Mann, chief marketing officer of Furnished Finder, an online marketplace for furnished rental properties, uses ChatGPT as both her executive assistant and copywriter. Mann taps the LLM to help her draft board updates, structure meeting agendas, write performance reviews, and negotiate partner contracts. Without a full-time copywriter on staff, Mann also built a custom GPT, which is trained on Furnished Finder’s brand voice and customer personas, to write content.

    “It’s now the starting point for nearly every marketing asset. From email campaigns, social captions, blog posts, and paid ads, to event collateral and even voice-over scripts for our phone lines. You name it. We’re likely starting our drafts in Chat,” says Mann. “ These tools help us scale our output without adding headcount. Reading through 1,000+ customer survey responses, for example, used to take hours. Now, I can have AI summarize key themes and insights in under a minute.” 

    2. Descript

    For creators and founders building in public through video, whether it’s TikTok or podcasts, Descript has become a go-to tool to make editing easier and faster. The AI-powered video editing platform, which landed on Fast Company’s list of Most Innovative Companies this year, creates transcripts from raw video and lets users edit through a text document by deleting words, phrases, or entire chunks. Last year, Descript added new AI capabilities, which automatically remove filler words, repeated words, bad takes, and background noise. 

    Overall, the company claims their tool enables users to make “130 percent more videos in 27 percent less time” and “first-time users were 25 percent more likely to complete their project,” Fast Company reported earlier this year. 

    3. OpusClip

    Many of the founders who use Descript also use OpusClip, an AI-powered video editing software that helps users cut down longer videos, such as hour-long podcast interviews, into a series of shorter clips for social media. Within two years of launching, the company has scaled to more than 12 million users and become a favorite of social media managers. 

    Shana Ayabe, founder of the marketing company Grace Digital Media and co-host of the podcast “The Exit Interview,” calls the tool a game changer. Opus Clip “allows us to quickly edit, reformat from landscape to vertical, and add dynamic captions while maintaining high production quality,” says Ayabe, who uses the paid version so her team can collaborate in real-time on the platform, “hearting” and commenting on different clips. “The built-in virality scoring system helps us understand why a clip is likely to perform well, so we can strategically schedule posts around traffic patterns and trends.”

    4. Perplexity

    ChatGPT is not the only LLM that marketers use. In fact, most of the founders and CMOs that spoke with Inc. use multiple different models, depending on the task. Perplexity was the tool of choice when it came to research, including analyzing documents and data sets.

    Denise Aguilar, a global marketing strategist and founder of her eponymous Seattle-based company, Denise Aguilar Consulting, used the paid version of Perplexity and says the LLM has streamlined her workflow, allowing her to take on more ambitious projects for her clients. 

    “The upgraded features, such as advanced file handling, faster processing, and priority support, have enabled me to work with large sets of PDFs and rapidly search, organize, and synthesize information,” says Aguilar, who has worked with companies, including Microsoft, Amazon, General Motors, and Vogue. “Investing in the Pro version has definitely raised my efficiency, especially when refining communications strategies, building personas, and editing across multiple marketing campaigns.”

    5. Midjourney

    Midjourney, an AI-powered image generation tool, is being sued by a collection of visual artists and the major Hollywood studio Warner Bros for copyright infringement, but marketers, especially those who work in the creative side of advertising, still say the tool is helpful for developing concept art and mock ups. To avoid any legal issues, be careful to restrict any images to internal and exploratory use only.

    6. Lovable

    Marketers have joined the vibe coding trend and started developing their own software by telling AI tools what they want to create, rather than writing code themselves. Many founders and CMOs prefer to use Lovable. The platform has become so popular that it became a unicorn within eight months of launching and has attracted nearly 8 million users. Inc. AI reporter Ben Sherry used the free version to create an entire website in an hour. Marketers tend to opt for the paid version and say the tool is especially helpful for creating prototypes of client websites and apps.

    Maria Pergolino, chief marketing officer of SPS Commerce, a Minneapolis-based software company that helps retail partners optimize supply chain operations, says Lovable has been “transformative” for her work flow. 

    “No longer do you need to awkwardly describe your vision for an app, ad, slide or campaign. Instead you can describe your vision to an LLM and pop the directions into Lovable to bring your ideas to life,” says Pergolino. “This saves me hours every week.”

    7. Claude

    If Perplexity has become the researcher and ChatGPT has become the catch-all for marketers, Claude has become the go-to LLM for writing. Founders and CMOs say the model excels as a place for brainstorming, storytelling, and testing out ideas or phrases. 

    Patrick Finan, the co-founder and CEO of Block Club, a branding, strategy, and content agency for B2B technology companies based in Brooklyn, says Claude is the main LLM that he and his team use. “It’s fully integrated into Slack, Gmail, Google Workspace, Google Calendar,” he says.  

    8. Gamma

    For help making presentations, marketers have turned to Gamma as the PowerPoint of the AI era. The AI-powered platform takes text, such as documents or outlines, and transforms them into a slide presentation with one prompt. Using this same method, Gamma also lets users create polished-looking PDF documents, social media assets, and websites. 

    Within two years of launching the San Francisco-based startup has attracted 50 million users, Fast Company reported earlier this year. Founders who spoke with Inc. recommended the paid version.

    9. AirOps

    “Marketers are losing their minds” trying to optimize their existing SEO strategy for the new era of AI search, Andy Crestodina, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Orbit Media Studios, a Chicago-based digital agency that focuses on web development and website optimization, told Inc. recently. AirOps has helped streamline that process, founders and CMOs say.

    The company, which secured a $40 million Series B fundraising round earlier this month, calls itself the first content engineering platform for AI search. Marketers say the platform makes their AI optimization strategy more efficient. 

    Leah Taylor, who runs communications for the AI sales platform Apollo, says Apollo has embedded the AirOps AI infrastructure into its core marketing operations to automate performance reporting and identify new revenue opportunities. “AirOps ingests our first-party data across notes, OKRs, experiment logs, and Slack, then uses enterprise LLMs to analyze and publish insights,” says Taylor.

    Since WebFlow, a no-code website experience platform, started using AirOps, the company increased its visibility on AI search with more than 330 new citations and a 24 percent uptick in SEO impressions, says chief marketing officer Dave Steer. AirOps has also increased revenue, turbocharging AI-attributed signups jumping from the low single digits to nearly 10 percent.

    10. Gemini 

    Marketers that are incorporating LLMs into their daily workflow also name-checked Gemini. 

    While Doug Straton, chief marketing officer at Bazaarvoice, an Austin-based software platform that helps brands harness user-generated content, ratings, and reviews, calls ChatGPT the “easiest and most fun” LLM to use, he usually turns to Gemini instead for its repeatability and reliability.  

    “I find Gemini, while harder to brief, creates more uniform, consistent results. It’s my company’s default,” says Straton, who uses the paid version. “It seems less eager to please you with a result you want to see, versus what you need to see.”

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    Ali Donaldson

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