Interview with Igor Ivitskiy, PhD, Founder, Doctor Ads

(Featured) - Ivitskiy explains why platform ROAS can diverge from profit, and why AI bidding needs signals tied to real customers.

Interview with Dr. Igor Ivitskiy PhD

Edited by Haley Spracale, Editor at Featured News · Oct 30, 2026

As a founder who works closely with paid-media and advertising-account audits, what do you help business owners understand about whether their advertising is genuinely profitable?

I face this all the time in audits. This is one of the main reasons clients come to me for audits. They come with roughly the following request: “Everything is perfect. My agency, my contractor, and my advertising department send perfect reports. Everything is just unbelievably great, but the money isn’t increasing and the business isn’t growing. Find the reason.”

In all these accounts, when you clean them up, the results take off. And the owner is in shock because they spend exactly the same amount on marketing and advertising but get more results.

What career experiences led you from working with e-commerce and lead-generation advertising to focusing on the gap between platform-reported results and the money that reaches the bank?

I had a small online store. Then I opened Google Ads. Of course, I chose general keywords like “microwave,” “electric kettle,” and “hair dryer.” I don’t think I even wrote any ads. I copied them from the catalog pages of my online store. Do you know what my first ads looked like? The headline was something like “All microwaves,” and the ad text said, “A microwave is a device designed for heating food.” They were terrible ads. Of course, I wasted money. I got a lot of clicks, but I didn’t know that you need to look at search queries and that relevance matters. I looked at the keyword “microwave”: a lot of money wasted, a lot of clicks, and not one sale. I decided that Google Ads didn’t work.

Previously, I worked in pure mathematical modeling. Thousands of scientists work in this field all over the planet. There, my approach wasn’t unique; I was one of thousands. Then I moved into marketing. I didn’t betray science; I changed laboratories. I do the same science in the laboratory of business, money, and advertising. I work a lot with small and medium-sized businesses.

When an ad platform reports a strong Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) but the business’s profit does not reflect it, where do you begin diagnosing the discrepancy?

At one conference, a guy was giving a talk, and he said, “Our ROAS, the return on the money put into advertising, was 19,000%.”

Honestly, I was shocked. I didn’t know what you would need to sell to achieve a 19,000% ROAS. I thought, “Maybe this is a sweet spot. Maybe I need to go into this field.”

Then he said roughly the following: “We set up advertising for a client, and someone whose click we paid $1 for bought goods. This means we were able to give the client a ROAS of 19,000%.”

The hall just exploded with applause, and after the conference, everyone came up to this guy and asked for his contact information and how to work with him.

I was laughing because how can you attribute a sale to one click? I’m sure that the ad campaign had not just one click, but thousands of clicks, maybe tens of thousands. Most likely, there were 2,000 clicks at $1 each, and you need to compare the profit not to $1, but to the $2,000 spent on the whole campaign. But nobody mentions this.

What is the most useful first audit a business owner can perform to check whether their ad account is optimizing toward real customers rather than misleading conversion activity?

One of my businesses is an online school. People register for a webinar, and after the webinar, they buy the course. I knew that 40% of registrants attended the webinar and that 6% of attendees bought the course.

Then I started testing additional advertising channels. I launched the updated Google inventory. I think Performance Max had just appeared; this was four or five years ago. It gave me conversions at eight times less than the usual cost, and I felt like I had hit the jackpot. Although I’m a mathematician, I have a major personal flaw: I like to count money I haven’t earned yet. In my mind, I was already buying myself a new car. Later, it turned out that the numbers were misleading.

I should have at least checked attendance. Fewer than 1% of these leads attended the webinar, compared with the usual 40%. I moved the entire budget there. It was only when my profit fell dramatically a month later that I realized something was wrong. I started looking at attendance by channel and saw that these were just dead leads. Then I started counting not just webinar registrations as conversions, but also webinar attendance, email confirmation, or a visit to Telegram or ManyChat after registration. And this worked well.

From your audits, what conversion-tracking mistake most often causes ad platforms to overstate performance, and how can a team correct it?

The company had advertising budgets of $5–6 million a month and was optimizing for conversions. On paper, everything looked good—too good. They had a separate person on staff whose job was to set up and track conversions. The absurd thing was that I went in and looked at his purchase conversions. There were roughly hundreds of thousands.

Then I overheard the owner say, “Tens of thousands of purchases a month.” I said, “Wait, hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands?” The owner said, “If we had hundreds of thousands, I would be the richest man on the planet.” He wasn’t looking at the absolute number of conversions; he mostly looked at relative numbers: the conversion rate and the cost per conversion. He liked everything.

It turned out that this person had set the conversion action to trigger not when a payment was made, but when someone clicked the payment button. There is a saying that there is nothing in the world more permanent than the temporary. He set it up temporarily, forgot about it, and everything kept running for months. When there is a chain of dependencies, someone waits for an answer from someone else and decides to do something temporarily while waiting. Then the answer doesn’t come, or it comes but goes unnoticed. And what was temporary becomes permanent. This is a common problem.

As Smart Bidding and Performance Max take more budget decisions out of human hands, what controls should founders keep in place to ensure the algorithm is pursuing profitable growth?

I had a client. I looked at the account, and he said, "Our margin is colossal. We pay $20 for a client in Google and get $1,000 of profit from a client." I said, "Why don't you increase your cost per conversion fivefold—your target cost per acquisition (Target CPA)? Right now, your Target CPA is $20, but you can afford $100." He said, "I can." I said, "What stops you from paying $100 for one lead instead of $20?" He said, "It is expensive." I said, "Expensive for whom? You have $980 of net profit. If you pay $100 to earn the same $1,000, your profit will fall from $980 to $900, so net profit falls by about 8%. And the number of clients will not be 100 but 1,000. Net profit will grow almost tenfold."

A few months later, we had a call with the client, and he said, "The best decision in my business was to just increase the budget and the cost per lead." He had some kind of mental ceiling, a mental wall, that made him think more than $20 was expensive. I just explained to him that if there is room, why not? He said, "We grew so much that now we are the biggest in the market."

What is one metric or reporting habit you would urge every business owner to adopt this quarter to regain a clearer view of advertising profitability?

Nobody segments by conversion. They look at the number and believe that number, but when you segment, right away there are a lot of questions.

I say, “Look, you have 20. 20 what? Conversions. Which ones?” It is the same as asking, “What is 5 pineapples?” How much is 5 pineapples plus 5 watermelons, plus 5 oranges, plus 5 apples? The person says, “It will be 20.” I say, “20 what?” He says, “Fruits.” I say, “OK. How much is 5 chairs plus 5 shirts, plus 5 cats, plus 5 kilograms of flour?” He says, “It will be 20.” I say, “20 what?” “Kilograms of animals.”

About the expert

Dr. Igor Ivitskiy PhDFounder at Doctor Ads

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

Why leaders should get more tactical, not less, as they move up

(Ben Williams) - By Ben Williams

Edited by Jenn Moon, Editor at Featured News · Oct 30, 2026

You hear leaders say it constantly: As you move up, you have to become more strategic and less tactical. I see the point, but at face value it’s misleading in a way that causes real problems. Yes, you have to become more strategic. That’s a given. But you absolutely do not have to become less tactical. I’d argue you should be getting more technical as your career advances.

It’s an easy trap to fall for. As you progress in your career, you find yourself in more meetings, making bigger decisions, with little to no expectation of being on the floor more than a few minutes a day. And when you’re in the trap, you will still be slammed with work, thus making you feel productive.

I fell into this trap as a senior operations manager running outbound for a 1.3-million-square-foot warehouse. I took the advice. More planning, less floor time. And then a tactical problem arrived: The move to one-day shipping dramatically changed how the ship docks had to operate, and nobody had a game plan. I had very technical area managers (AMs) and operations managers (OMs), but this was a new problem, and they weren’t cracking it.

The ship dock issues were impacting every other department, including my inbound counterparts. The team was looking for answers and getting frustrated by a feeling that their hard work was not leading to results.

Meanwhile I was nearly oblivious, buried in admin work, trying to be more “strategic.” What I actually had to do was sit on the ship dock for a month and learn the process intimately. How the hostlers operated the yard; how the sorter read the hundreds of scan locations; what time of day each specific zip code volume started to hit. Once I understood it, I could build the game plan.

It worked so well I was asked to spread it across the network, which led to promotions and a significant increase in authority.

I carried that for the rest of my career. No matter my position, I knew the floor work as well as or better than the hourly associates performing it. It was transformative. Yes, it was extra work. But I knew what my team was going through. I solved problems they couldn’t, or hadn’t thought of. And I knew when someone was pulling the wool over my eyes, which is a hidden but very important part of this.

So how do you balance the two? How do you stay tactical without micromanaging your team? The answer is to simply be knowledgeable. Understand how every system works. Be able to perform the full role of every position on the floor. Know what the data is telling you. When you have the knowledge of how things work, you know if your team is performing the job correctly or not. If they are, it’s easy to give them space. If they aren’t, it’s an easy conversation and doesn’t feel like micromanaging.

The take: When you’re a strategic leader facing a tactical problem — congratulations, you’re a tactical leader again. You do not get less tactical as you get more strategic. You do both.

About the author

Ben Williams

Ben Williams is the CEO & Principal Consultant at OpsStack Solutions, which helps small and midsize warehouse, fulfillment, and distribution operations find the constraints draining their margin. A Marine Corps veteran, he spent roughly 15 years leading large-scale operations, including teams of 800+ associates and initiatives spanning 80+ facilities.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

My sales calls showed that "I'll think about it" isn't necessarily a no

(Dr. Igor Ivitskiy PhD) - I matched my sales calls to purchases and found that some habits in the conversations went with more sales, though my data can't prove they caused them.

By Dr. Igor Ivitskiy PhD

Edited by Jenn Moon, Editor at Featured News · Oct 29, 2026

Why did I start to study sales myself? I have worked on the profitability of Google advertising since 2006. But every time I worked with large clients, I saw a repeating pattern: The advertising looked well set up, exact keywords, all the settings, careful targeting, target leads come at a good price, everything is great. And then the client says that everything is great, but they will cut the budget. I ask why. Because the profit stays in the same place.

Leads come, but the cash does not grow. And what usually comes to people's heads? This is really my experience, what came to me first. If sales are bad, then the managers are bad, and we need to replace the managers. We fire some, new ones come, and they repeat the same mistakes. Then comes the thought that the price is probably too high, so let's lower the price. As a result, the margin falls, the problem stays, and the profit is even smaller. Then, again my experience: A few years ago someone told me that my sales scripts were bad. We hired a sales script expert and paid a five-figure sum in dollars.

The first thing that always came to my head as a business owner: I will go and listen to the calls. I turned on the phone system and started to listen. I listen, and anger, of course, comes over me right away. I start to look into the customer relationship management (CRM) system. Anger again. This one did not fill in the card. This one forgot to move the deal to the next stage. This one put a plus sign in the CRM instead of a comment about the call.

To find where exactly the clients and the money are lost, you need to step outside a little, break the whole client path into atoms, count the conversion at each stage and compare what the managers tell you with what really happens. So in my online school, we started to count.

How we counted

We record our sales calls. From March 11 to July 25, 2026, our phone system logged 11,781 calls of 45 seconds or longer. Of them, 8,674 had a recording, and we transcribed 8,518, or 98% of the recorded calls. The other 3,107 calls had no recording file. They came from every manager and every month, and we found no single cause. The 906 people who had only such calls bought less often: 1.4%, against 3.1% for people with a recorded call. Because of this difference, our transcript results may not represent all callers. Our first count began with every call followed by a payment within 14 days, so it had too many buyers. This count uses every transcribed call.

We matched each call to purchases in our CRM by client. The calls covered 4,921 people, and 154 of them paid within 14 days after a call. That is 3.1%, our base rate. Every "times the base rate" below uses it. Each person counts once, even after several calls. For a buyer, we only count what was said before the payment.

We found phrases with keyword rules in Ukrainian and Russian. "I'll think about it" is our label for a group of similar remarks, not a quote. For it, two artificial intelligence (AI) models reread all 363 matches, and a third settled the 41 cases where they disagreed. A check of 50 random remarks found 48 labeled right. The rules for price and for split payments were right in 27 and 29 of 30 random checks.

These are links between words and sales, not proof that the words caused the sales.

"I'll think about it" isn't necessarily a no

I have taken several sales courses and several trainings, and there, work with objections is always like the cornerstone. But in my experience, people rarely state their real objections directly. They say something like: "No, it's expensive, it's complicated, I'll think about it." I can't count how many times I, as a client, said the first time that I would think about it, that it was not interesting. And then, if an experienced manager started to talk with me, we found that I was not interested because I did not trust them. Then they gave me more information, and often I agreed.

Our calls pointed the same way. From March to July 2026, 208 people put off the decision with "I'll think about it" or similar words. Of them, 29 later bought, or 13.9%. Most did not, but that is about four and a half times the base rate. The gap held in calls of two minutes and longer and for each of the five managers with enough people to compare (at least 20 with the phrase and 50 without).

But look at how some managers work. He sits at the phone, the CRM is in front of his eyes, and the person says that he will think about it. And he, click, puts the status "refusal" in the CRM. That's it, goodbye. But it's not necessarily a refusal; it may be worth one more contact. Maybe in a week this person is ready to buy, but you will not call, and a competitor may.

Once I, personally, as a client, left a company because a manager simply started to push me. The price was 5,500 euros. I was ready to buy 100%. I told the manager: "Yes, yes, I'll take it. I will pay on Monday." And he started to tell me that on Monday I would lose a 500-euro discount that worked only until that day. I said: "OK, I will pay 500 euros more." We hung up, and he started to bomb me with private messages. Why did this happen? Because he did not understand why I would pay later. The reason was my payment schedule.

Calls with a price sold more often

In the same calls, a concrete price came up with 1,040 people, about one in five. Of them, 98 bought, or 9.4%, about three times the base rate. When the longest call lasted two to five minutes, 7.9% of people who heard a price bought, against 1.0% of those who did not. When the manager named the price first, 43 of 344 people bought, or 12.5%. When the client asked first, 35 of 499 bought, or 7.0%. For the other 197 people, the client named a sum without asking, or we could not tell who spoke; 20 of them bought. Maybe calls that reach the price are simply warmer. The data can't rule that out.

Look what managers often do instead. Many start to argue. Or they tell the client that if it's expensive, then this is not for him. This also humiliates the client. Or some give a discount right away, 20% off. And you think: How much did they inflate the price if they give me 20% at once? In fact, first you need to understand what stands behind the objection.

The client says it's expensive, and the manager starts to add value. But sometimes, in my experience, the client believes in the value and just has no budget at that time. And here you needed not to add value, but to offer a contract with payment in 60 days, or monthly payments for half a year, to split the price. In our calls, managers offered to split the payment to only 258 people, about one in 20. Of them, 42 bought, or 16.3%, about five times the base rate. The gap held in calls of two minutes and longer. Maybe managers offered it only in warm calls.

A script is a frame

In my projects, I paid many specialists who built sales scripts for me. I know how a script should not look. I remember very well the first sales script I bought; I paid a lot of money. They gave me a special program: The manager sits in headphones, talks with the client and must go along a tree in this program. Ask the client this question. The client answered yes or no. The manager presses, for example, "yes," and the next question opens. I was delighted when I saw it, but in my experience, the program slowed managers down because they were focused on which button to press. A normal sales script is a frame, a few key points.

The first 15 minutes

Many business owners have this inner wish to describe the ideal sales process. The client leaves a request, the manager picks up the phone right away and calls him. The client answers and says that you have a great business and asks for a proposal. And in five minutes the accountant already pays you this million. But in reality, it is a bit different. In reality, some requests are processed after two or three days: They left it on Friday, and the manager called on Monday.

Our CRM data for July 2023 to July 2026 shows how call speed lines up with payments. In all, 1,014 people left a product request on our website. We left out 85 who paid before any call, 139 who never got a call attempt and 150 we could not match to orders with confidence. Of the other 640, 84 got a first call attempt within 15 minutes, and 23 of them, or 27.4%, paid within 30 days of the request. Of the 556 who received a later call attempt, 79, or 14.2%, paid. The fast group paid almost twice as often. This is a link too, not proof that a fast call caused the payment. Only about one person in eight got a call that fast. We measured the time from the request in our CRM to the first call attempt, answered or not, and counted a purchase as a paid order.

I will never forget one night when I had a toothache, a terrible one. At night, at 4 or 5 a.m., I sat down to search for a 24-hour dentist, and ads popped up. I click, I call, nobody picks up. I click, I call, nobody picks up. So I understand that their ads run around the clock, but they are either not open 24 hours or do not pick up the phone.

Where to start

Ask yourself how your sales process works. Then ask: What if the person did not pick up the first time? What if the person picked up and told you to go away? What if he asked you to write to his email? What if you wrote, and he did not answer for 3 days? What if there is a mistake in one digit of the number, but the person is real? And to get angry, try to ask these "what ifs" to your current managers. Very often the results are sad.

I always recommend finishing any ad setup with a test call to the manager, to hear how he will handle this request. In my view, half of success in business is great advertising. The other half is sales.

About the author

Dr. Igor Ivitskiy PhD

Igor Ivitskiy is a PhD in mathematical modeling and the founder of Doctor Ads. He has worked on the profitability of paid advertising since 2006 and runs an online school of Google advertising. He was ranked #6 in The PPC Survey's Top 50 Most Influential PPC Experts of 2026.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

What your website audit tool can't see

(Toni Kiss) - Audit tools measure what is easy to measure. Here is what they missed on two real websites and in our research on 100 software company homepages, and what to check by hand.

By Toni Kiss

Edited by Jenn Moon, Editor at Featured News · Oct 29, 2026

A slow page that was already "optimized"

The first example that comes to my mind is a community website for architects and interior designers. It's a platform similar to Pinterest, with interior design projects. Another team had already optimized it: They installed a cache and made a dozen changes, in order to make it quicker. Still, when we started to work on it in September 2026, the page with the projects took 6.1 seconds to answer from the server. The reason: The projects were shown in a new random order for every visitor, so the page was excluded from the cache and built from scratch on every visit.

We changed the order so it rotates once a day, not on every visit. Every project still gets its turn at the top, but now the page can be cached. We measured the same metric twice on Sept. 23, 2026: the server response time, meaning the time until the first byte of the page reaches the browser. Before the change, uncached: 6.1 seconds. After the change, served from the cache: 0.06 seconds. The cache did the speed-up; the change in the order is what let the page into the cache.

They had optimized it, but they hadn't looked at the real usage—the daily usage on phones, not only the lab test. What we did wasn't only optimizing, it was a change of perspective. No score tells you that a random order keeps your page out of the cache.

Our own website

On our own website, when we made our audit on Aug. 1, 2026, we had a really low mobile score of 67 in Google Lighthouse and a Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), the time until the main content shows up, of eight seconds, the average of four tests. Our results varied between 3.3 and 9.3 seconds. With the advertising pixels blocked, we had a score of 81 and an LCP of 3.7 seconds. The pixels weighed around 427 kilobytes.

In the lab, the scores were showing bad results, but in real daily usage the site was okay. In our experience, there is often a difference between the lab score and the real field, because Lighthouse simulates a phone on a slow connection, and many visitors have a faster one.

We ran more tests, and we found that the cookie plugin was active but wasn't blocking the pixels. Once we discovered that, we made the change, and after the fix the pixels waited for consent in 10 out of 10 test runs.

Why we tested 100 websites

In the speed audits we run for our clients, we felt there was a big difference between the lab score and the real-life experience. That's why we ran our own research, The Website Gap, published by Clan of Creators in October 2026, to confirm our hunch, or to learn from it.

We tested 100 business-to-business (B2B) software-as-a-service (SaaS) websites, 50 in the U.S. and 50 in the U.K. We took companies with roughly 50 to 1,000 employees from public growth lists, like the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and the Sunday Times Tech Track, wrote our criteria before we started, and picked at random among the companies that met them. None of them are our clients. We collected all the data on Oct. 10 and 11, 2026: the homepage tests, the network checks and the questions to the artificial intelligence (AI) assistants. We tested each homepage once in Lighthouse, on a simulated phone, and took the real-user data from Google's Chrome User Experience Report, which covers the 28 days before collection. The full method is in the report.

Speed: the lab and the visitor

One thing to know before the numbers: the lab test measures only the homepage, while the Chrome data from real users covers the whole domain, all the pages together. So the two are not directly comparable. They are two different views of the same website.

In our research, the median homepage took 12.2 seconds to show its main content in the lab. For real Chrome users on phones, the median was 2.2 seconds across the whole domain. In the lab, 88 of 99 homepages had a "poor" Largest Contentful Paint result, over four seconds. In the real-user data, 63 of 97 websites had a "good" Largest Contentful Paint result, under 2.5 seconds for three out of four visits. That is Google's rating for this one metric, not a verdict on the websites overall.

So for many of these websites, the lab score makes them look slower than they feel to real visitors. Loading time is only one part of the experience, though. A fast page can still confuse a visitor or lose them somewhere else.

At the end of the day, we need to find the balance between the lab score, which scans the scripts, the pictures and everything, and the real usage: how the website works for a normal user, not only in the lab.

Data before the banner

In our research, 39 of 100 homepages sent data to LinkedIn or Meta before anyone touched the cookie banner, and 31 of them had a consent platform installed.

We saw the same problem closer to home. On our own website, the banner was there, but the pixels didn't wait for it. On the community website above, there was no banner at all. On 31 of the 39 SaaS websites, the banner was there, but the pixel didn't wait for any approval or refusal. The pixel started right after you landed on the website.

The two-minute test: Open a private window, like an incognito window. Open the inspect tool in Chrome and go to the network tab. Don't touch the banner, and you can easily see what data is leaving the website you want to test.

We report what the browser sent, not whether it is lawful.

The first line

In our research, only 33 of 98 homepage headlines (the H1, the main heading of the page) name the product type, like "contract management software." The other 65 don't. The page title, the one in the browser tab, names the product type on 68 of 98 websites. The information exists, but it's missing from the H1. And 55 of 98 say in the first lines who the product is for.

In my experience, teams often choose a slogan for the headline to sound premium, instead of being practical and straight to the point. But we are living in a world where being practical and straight to the point saves time. We need a mind shift to understand that being practical is not bad. It can be good, because you are saving time for your users.

Artificial intelligence and the way you name what you do

In our research, when we asked AI assistants about each company's exact niche, at least one of them recommended 93 of the 100 companies. When we asked about the broad category, only 31. On the niche questions, ChatGPT mentioned 83 companies, Gemini 84 and Perplexity 63.

This covers our questions and these 100 companies, not every product or every way of asking. But the pattern was clear: The assistants found most of these companies when the question was specific, and missed most of them when it was broad. Companies need to think about their target, the people they want to reach, and the words those people use when they search.

Asked the same question twice, ChatGPT changed its answer for 30 of 100 companies. So is ChatGPT recommending you? One check is a sample, not a measurement. Ask twice before you draw a conclusion.

What the tools catch, and what they miss

Coming back to the community website: On Sept. 23, 2026, before we started, its homepage had a Lighthouse mobile score of 69, and the main content showed up after 13.6 seconds on a simulated phone. After our changes, measured the same way on the same day, the score went up to 98 and the main content showed up after 2.2 seconds.

But there is a catch. There is a part the tools don't really catch, or that is hard to find. In the season when they opened registrations for their yearly projects contest, a new version of PHP, the programming language the site runs on, broke the forms: contest registrations, project uploads and login returned errors. The audit tool didn't catch it. The audit tool isn't looking at the big picture. It only looks at the lab test and at what files are sent or loaded. It's not looking at the entire server.

That's why it's great to use Lighthouse to find the heavy scripts and so on, but these tools measure what's easy to measure. A person sees the real cost, how each thing is used, how to fix it and what needs to be fixed first, because it's also a perception thing.

One hour this month

If you have one hour this month, check these by hand on your own website:

• Test your lead forms once a month. Sometimes a version changes, a plugin comes in, an update, and so on.

• Open your website in incognito mode, open the inspect tool, go to the network tab and see what your site is really sending, and where.

• Check the speed in Search Console before the Lighthouse score (review the Core Web Vitals report).

• Read your H1 without context. Would a stranger know what you are selling, based only on the H1?

• Search for your niche with the words your buyers use to find software or tools like yours, and try it twice to see how the assistants really react.

• Look at the review websites in your category. In our research, 74% of Perplexity's recommendation answers linked to review and comparison websites like G2 and Capterra. That was an early, exploratory read, and it doesn't prove that a profile there gets you recommended. It only shows where the assistants were looking when they answered.

One thing to remember

Check not only with tools: Check the real experience, the human experience on the website. It's not all about tools. It's also about how it feels and how it lands on the end user's screen.

About the author

Toni Kiss

Toni Kiss is the co-founder and creative director of Clan of Creators, an independent creative agency that works on brand, web, video and campaigns for companies in Europe and the US. Toni leads the agency's creative direction and design work. Clan of Creators also publishes The Website Gap, a research series on how business websites perform for real visitors.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

The e-commerce sale doesn't end at checkout. So why do we stop measuring there?

(Aleks Sztemberg) - With $849.9 billion in U.S. merchandise returns projected for 2025, retailers may be overlooking one of their most valuable sources of customer insight: what happens after the purchase.

By Aleks Sztemberg

Edited by Jenn Moon, Editor at Featured News · Oct 26, 2026

As a co-founder of an analytics platform for e-commerce, I have noticed something interesting. When we speak to product teams, all they focus on are sales numbers. Improving the shopping experience, making sure the user finalizes the purchase.

But as I am writing this, somewhere around me, a good pair of jeans is heading back to the warehouse.

Don't get me wrong. Returns are hardly a new problem. Alongside shopping cart abandonment, they're one of the biggest headaches in e-commerce. At the NXT Commerce conference I attended last year, several major brands were talking about exactly this challenge.

And the numbers confirm this.

According to the National Retail Federation's 2025 Retail Returns Landscape report, U.S. retailers projected that customers would return approximately $849.9 billion worth of merchandise in 2025. The research included a survey of 358 e-commerce professionals at large U.S. retailers.

Of course, $849.9 billion in returned merchandise doesn't mean $849.9 billion in losses. Many products are resold. But add to this the costs of shipping, handling, inspection, repackaging, customer service and discounts on products that can no longer be sold at full price, and you start to wonder how much profit disappears along the way.

And more importantly, how much of this could be prevented without worsening the shopping experience or affecting sales numbers?

Teams we speak to spend most of their time and budgets on understanding what makes people buy.

It's already difficult, sure. But what really impacts revenue is knowing where they come from, which products they view, how long they spend comparing options and what finally convinces them to click that "BUY" button.

But what happens after that?

In many businesses, a return is treated as a separate transaction. Someone in logistics handles it, customer service processes the refund, and the product hopefully makes it back into inventory...or not.

Now, what's really interesting for me is what happened before the return.

Take fashion, for example. According to the European Environment Agency's 2024 report, around 20% of clothing and 30% of footwear purchased online in Europe get returned.

Perhaps shoppers regularly order three sizes, try them at home, and send two back, or maybe they added an extra item by accident. Or the photo is different online and in reality.

These are very different problems, and they require very different solutions.

Yet if all you're looking at is total sales and total returns, you'll probably never know the difference.

Here's a statistic I found particularly interesting.

In DHL's 2025 e-commerce shopper research, based on 24,000 online shoppers across 24 countries, 54% cited the wrong size as a reason for returning an item. And 55% cited poor quality or faulty products.

Meanwhile, in DHL's 2025 business survey, which surveyed 4,050 businesses across 19 countries, only 24% selected incorrect sizing among the main reasons for returns, and 26% selected poor quality or faulty products.

Sure, different groups are answering different questions, so these figures don't prove that retailers don't understand why customers return. But they suggest there may be a gap worth investigating.

We also need to remember that customers may give answers just to process the form, sometimes picking an option because it is the easiest. So to truly understand the reason why, we need to dig deeper into behaviors, segments and patterns.

What I also think is interesting is how we talk about the customers who return products as if they belong to one and the same group.

Imagine two customers.

One orders 20 products over six months and returns three, the other one orders four products and returns three.

Both have generated three returns. Are their cases really the same?

The first might be a loyal, profitable customer. The second may be considerably more expensive to serve.

Even knowing this, we'd need to look at the value of their purchases, margins and reasons for returning before drawing conclusions.

The NRF's 2025 consumer survey, which included 2,006 consumers who had returned at least one online purchase in the previous 12 months, found that 82% consider free returns important when shopping online, and 71% say they're less likely to purchase from a retailer again after a poor return experience.

And I can relate. I don't like to pay for delivery, even if I know that the cost might be hidden in the price. I want to feel that it was free, and returns as well. No questions asked. Otherwise, I won't buy.

That's quite a dilemma. Brands need to reduce the cost of returns, but customers increasingly expect returns to be easy and free in order to buy at all.

Let's imagine a hypothetical large retailer who generates €10 million in annual online sales, with a 20% return rate by sales value.

Those are pretty realistic numbers, by the way.

That's €2 million worth of merchandise coming back in our hypothetical example.

Let's say that company could reduce the return rate from 20% to 18% without any impact on sales or customer experience.

Maybe two percentage points don't sound like a lot, but that's €200,000 worth of additional merchandise retained, assuming sales remain unchanged.

Sure, it is not €200,000 in additional profit, but it's potentially meaningful savings in processing, shipping and other return-related costs. Better than firing people, for example, as an optimization strategy.

But where to look?

How I would do it is quite simple, actually.

Identify the products with the highest return rates, compare them with similar products, and examine whether particular customer groups, campaigns or purchasing behaviors stand out.

Then you can compare purchases after they've had enough time to be returned. A product sold yesterday hasn't had the same opportunity to come back as one sold three weeks ago.

Lastly, test one improvement at a time and measure what happens, not only to returns but also to conversion and customer satisfaction.

After all, reducing returns by discouraging people from buying is hardly a success.

And here's food for thought: What if the return is just another way of receiving customer feedback?

There's an environmental side to this conversation too.

The European Environment Agency estimated in its 2024 report that between 22% and 43% of returned clothing purchased online in Europe ends up being destroyed. Its definition includes recycling and other forms of disposal, not just incineration.

I'd like to clarify that we should make a distinction between the returns that would happen anyway, and those that can be prevented by changes in the interface, better user experience, improving the customer journey or better customer service.

But what I keep thinking about is that e-commerce has become incredibly sophisticated at understanding how to get customers to buy. We can measure practically every interaction leading up to checkout.

Yet we are sweeping under the carpet the fact that we often pay far less attention to understanding why some of those purchases don't work out.

Maybe it's time we started treating a return not just as a refund, but as valuable feedback about the shopping experience.

Because a successful sale isn't necessarily the one that happens at checkout.

It's the one the customer decides to keep.

About the author

Aleks Sztemberg

Aleks Sztemberg is the Co-Founder at Stormly. an AI-powered analytics platform for e-commerce businesses. She works with retailers and product teams to better understand customer behaviour, uncover opportunities to improve shopping experiences, and turn complex data into actionable insights, from improving conversions to reducing preventable returns.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

Stop chasing buy-in. Start building chemistry.

(Dr. Janice Perkins) - My research on executive coaching relationships suggests chemistry may be a better first step toward lasting buy-in.

By Dr. Janice Perkins

Edited by Jenn Moon, Editor at Featured News · Oct 26, 2026

Consider a common corporate challenge: An executive team needs its organization to carry out a major restructuring. Leaders spend weeks building their case to get everyone “aligned” before the initiative launches. The effort is exhausting, and people still aren’t on board. The alignment they were chasing never fully arrives, and the launch is shaky at best. Senior leaders end up frustrated with middle managers for not complying and getting on board.

I see versions of this scenario in my clients’ organizations regularly. It reflects a common assumption: that alignment must come before action, and that leaders can create it by “giving” people the direction and the reasons until they’re convinced.

My doctoral research on executive coaching relationships, combined with my experience coaching executive teams, has led me to question that sequence. In the coaching pairs I studied, chemistry often developed before explicit agreement and helped people move forward together. That doesn’t eliminate the need for alignment, but it has changed how I think about its role. In my view, chemistry may be a more important precondition for forward movement than securing buy-in up front.

The problem with buy-in

Buy-in is an appealing corporate phrase because it gives change a tidy sequence: Leaders create an idea, convince others, and the idea moves through the organization. As a result, leaders often oversell initiatives and push uncomfortably hard to persuade everyone to get on board. The approach is logical, but it doesn’t account for the emotional acceptance, trust and psychological safety people need before they shift.

Dictionary.com defines persuade as “to prevail on (a person) to do something.” But people generally resist feeling pressured, which is one reason they push back against change or increased speed. No one likes to be prevailed upon. In my experience, that is the resistance leaders feel from other levels of the organization when change is initiated. It often isn’t resistance to the idea or the change itself, but to the way it is introduced and carried out across the organization.

People recognize the difference between being persuaded to follow and genuinely wanting to move together. Buy-in is an outcome; the more important question is whether you’ve created conditions that encourage participation. Take a step back and ask what companies really want from buy-in: people moving in the chosen direction. Traditionally, leaders tell employees what they expect. Some also explain why and invite questions to gain support.

How I studied chemistry

As a former athletic coach and now an executive coach, I wanted to know whether the chemistry we rely on in athletic and executive coaching could be understood well enough to teach leaders how to build stronger teams and cultures.

For my 2026 doctoral dissertation at Kansas State University, Impacts of chemistry in executive coaching, I conducted a hermeneutic phenomenological study of six executive coach-client pairs in the fall of 2025. I analyzed recorded coaching sessions, session transcripts and video elicitation interviews, in which participants reviewed recordings of their sessions and reflected on key moments. I examined when chemistry emerged and intensified, instances of perceived alignment or shared orientation, and references to implicit and explicit values. I studied what happens when people move beyond simply communicating and begin thinking, responding and creating together.

My findings challenge a common assumption: Chemistry is not simply luck, charisma or personality fit, nor something that appears only after people have known and trusted one another for years. In the pairs I studied, chemistry offered a faster pathway to connection and trust, and it emerged through identifiable relational conditions that I believe can be replicated and strengthened.

Within those coaching relationships, chemistry was associated with increased agency and ownership, reduced relational friction, a stronger sense of identity and greater confidence. Based on those findings and my work with executive teams, I believe strong team chemistry can significantly reduce the need to persuade people to move in a particular direction, and that buy-in can become a natural result of chemistry rather than a separate campaign.

Mutual orientation: what buy-in gets wrong

One concept from my study helps explain how interactions became productive without requiring prior agreement.

Mutual orientation is the shared direction of attention and engagement within an interaction. It is not the same as a shared goal. In coaching, the coach’s goal is to help the client succeed. The client has specific goals for their professional development. The organization paying for the coaching has goals for the client’s career growth. Those three goals are different, but they point in the same direction. That is mutual orientation. It’s not agreement about outcomes; it’s alignment in the moment about what matters for improvement and growth. And it helps reveal what buy-in gets wrong.

Here’s a metaphor I often use with executives who are trying to implement change and are frustrated by a lack of buy-in despite all their effort communicating. Picture a couple of young adults being pulled on an inner tube behind a speedboat on a busy holiday lake. The riders are safe inside the boat’s wake. The riders and the driver haven’t explicitly discussed any of this; they’re simply facing the same direction while participating in the movement in very different ways.

Buy-in assumes sameness. But the two riders could be having completely different experiences. One is thrilled, and the other is nervous. Their experiences aren’t symmetrical, and they don’t need to be. They share orientation, not identical understanding. They’re facing forward, moving together in the same direction.

Buy-in also assumes commitment comes before movement. The riders haven’t committed to a particular kind of ride, but they committed to the ride itself when they got on the tube and into the water. The driver committed the minute they got behind the wheel. The moment the boat accelerates, the riders are already moving. In the coaching pairs I studied, change regularly came before conscious agreement. The only conscious agreement was showing up and being willing to be moved. Participants shifted, opened up and changed before they had explicitly committed to doing so. You don’t persuade someone through a relational gate; you create the conditions for them to walk through it on their own.

What throws people off the inner tube is the boat cutting hard left or right without warning or explanation. The shared orientation breaks down not because anyone stopped caring, but because the direction changed without enough time to adjust together. In my work with clients, the most common causes are decisions made at the top without considering all stakeholders, without connecting the change to the “why” or without acknowledging the loss people need to process. People don’t mind going fast if they are safely in the wake. They mind being thrown off or put in danger.

Buy-in treats persuasion as the fuel for changing direction. But you can’t talk people back into the safety of the wake. What brings them back is the steering: holding the orientation or slowing the turn. Sometimes changes have to be made suddenly, and the driver can signal the riders. Otherwise, it’s the driver’s actions, not words, that communicate with the riders. People won’t mind the speed if they can adjust to the turn in time, so ask them what they need to prepare for it. That question is often overlooked, and skipping it dumps people either into the lake or outside the wake. Time and again with clients, I’ve seen those as the two places where resistance shows up.

In practice, mutual orientation means communicating with stakeholders (anyone behind the boat) and, instead of only telling them where the boat is headed, asking what they need to keep holding on and prepare for a turn. Leaders need to make sure both the direction and the speed of the turn are mutual. The goal isn’t to slow down. It’s to steer the turns in a way that doesn’t toss people off or into unsafe places. Not because everyone has agreed, but because they’re all still in the water, facing forward, held by the same momentum.

What my research found

My research found that a relational container, in which both parties feel safe to contribute to the shared orientation, was paramount. Within the safety of that container, interpersonal chemistry emerged and powered mutual orientation. I identified six conditions that enabled chemistry to emerge and thrive, which I call the Six Gates of Chemistry: Legitimacy, Dignity, Containment, Agency, Attunement and Orientation.

Alignment emerged without being engineered. In session after session, participants found mutual orientation without explicitly discussing goals or values. The goals were understood simply by showing up to the sessions. Mutual orientation appeared as coordinated conversational rhythm, shared attention, and a distinct quality of conversation and inquiry.

Alignment amplified chemistry rather than initiating it. Chemistry often emerged before any explicit alignment took place. Attunement, dignity, legitimacy, agency and rhythm also affected how strong the chemistry became. Once established, chemistry was “sticky” enough to remain a positive force for forward momentum. Tension and challenge, consistency and humor also accelerated it.

What I believe this means for leaders

My study examined one-on-one coaching relationships, not organizations or restructurings, so it doesn’t establish that corporate change succeeds without buy-in. But seeing these gates in the research made me look back at the successful and unsuccessful leadership I’ve observed over decades in corporate leadership, athletic coaching and executive coaching. I’ve come to believe the same conditions apply to leaders and their teams. The recommendations below are my interpretation of the findings, grounded in that experience.

Start with the relational container. Can employees ask questions, give feedback and take the time they need to adjust to the loss that comes with each change? Are they allowed to be human beings who need to adjust emotionally, or are they expected to simply execute instructions? Do leaders know what each level of the organization is experiencing “behind the boat”?

Stop waiting for full alignment before acting. Don’t hold people hostage until they see what you see or believe what you believe. In my study, movement often preceded agreement, and I’ve seen the same with teams. That doesn’t give you permission to leave people behind; make sure they’re still “behind the boat” and feel safe enough to keep holding on. Leaders who wait for full consensus may be delaying unnecessarily. In my experience, creating the conditions for shared direction often matters more than securing explicit buy-in up front.

Listen for unspoken values and direction. In conversations with direct reports, peers and stakeholders, people signal what matters to them, and what concerns them, before they say it out loud. Leaders who develop sensitivity to those signals can respond to what’s actually motivating people, not just what’s being said. Resistance is often the first sign that people feel outside the wake. Listen to it, pause and reset mutual orientation.

Treat alignment as an ongoing practice, not a box to check before change begins. The pairs I studied didn’t achieve alignment once, like flipping a light switch. They moved in and out of it, and the coach maintained the relational container through dignity, legitimacy and attunement. In my experience, effective leaders do the same, just as a good boat driver does for the riders.

Use shared values as anchors during change and as a way to understand stakeholders’ experience. Values that are genuinely shared can hold teams together during change, but only when they are real, recognized, discussed and respected. They don’t anchor anything when they’re written on a wall or website but not lived out in everyday work.

A different picture of how change works

The conventional model of change leadership treats buy-in as a box to check. Based on my research and my work with leaders, I see buy-in as an ongoing relational practice that tends to how stakeholders, and the employees carrying out the change, actually feel. That practice focuses on building the chemistry that strengthens mutual orientation and helps change take hold.

Change begins in the quality of attunement, a willingness to inquire and the openness created when people sense they share something that matters. Once chemistry emerges, and the conditions that support it remain, change can accelerate.

For leaders exhausted from trying to secure buy-in and create engagement, my message is simple:

Stop asking, “How do I get them on board?”

Start asking, “How can I get my team to click?”

About the research

This article draws on my doctoral dissertation, Impacts of chemistry in executive coaching (Kansas State University, 2026), a hermeneutic phenomenological study of six executive coaching dyads. Data sources included recorded coaching sessions, transcripts and video elicitation interviews. The full dissertation is available through K-State Research Exchange and ProQuest.

About the author

Dr. Janice Perkins

Dr. Janice Perkins is an executive coach and leadership researcher who helps teams build chemistry that drives change. A member of 100 Coaches with Master-level status from the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches, she trains coaches through Coach Training EDU, competed on the inaugural season of Top Coach and contributed to the 2024 book The Intersection of Leadership and Coaching.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

On New Year's Day, Google Ads brought me many leads, and almost nobody bought

(Dr. Igor Ivitskiy PhD) - With my target cost per lead unchanged, Google appeared to find me many more leads. Almost none of them bought.

By Dr. Igor Ivitskiy PhD

Edited by Jenn Moon, Editor at Featured News · Oct 21, 2026

On Jan. 1, 2021, my ad campaigns were running with a target cost per action (CPA) — that is, a target price for one lead, not for a purchase. I think the target was about 50 hryvnias, a little under $2 at the time. For the whole year the cost stayed roughly the same, and the ads were finding me a small number of people, about 50 a day.

That day, I did not look at my phone. Then at one moment, I checked my phone and saw bank notifications, one after another, 500 hryvnias (about $18) each. A new charge every 20 minutes. I opened the laptop, and there were already messages on Instagram.

As I understood later, and this is only my guess, on Jan. 1 the other advertisers who target this audience switched off their ads. It was as if Google said: "Now I will show you everywhere." It started to run my ads at full power. My target cost per lead was unchanged, and the campaigns appeared to bring in many more leads.

I had about 10 to 15 campaigns with an average budget of about 1,000 to 2,000 hryvnias ($35 to $70) on each one. For a long time it was like this: one campaign spent 1,500 to 2,000, then it dropped to 200. They stayed under 2,000, and they never all used their budgets at the same time. But this time, they all spent it. Plus, Google has one more feature: Its rules say it can spend up to two times your daily budget. So, as I remember it, the larger campaigns spent about 4,000 hryvnias (about $140) each.

One man wrote to me that since the previous night, he had seen only my face everywhere: on his phone, on his tablet, on his TV. This had never happened before.

I got many leads, and almost none of them bought. I no longer have the account reports for that day, so I can't say exactly how many. These were really leads, not purchases. When I made it so that we pass purchases to Google, everything started to get better.

Google can spend twice your daily budget

In practice, for most campaigns, Google can spend up to two times your daily budget. Google has this property, and it is written in Google Ads Help (as of October 2026), with some exceptions. On a single day, it can spend two times your budget, but for the month you will not be charged more than 30.4 times your average daily budget. So if you set a budget of $100 a day and keep it all month, tomorrow Google can charge up to $200, but for the month you will not be charged more than $3,040.

This is normal. Business works in waves, and Google works in waves. In my experience, when you stop campaigns by hand, you choke a car that has picked up speed, and you usually make it worse for yourself.

The same sum and far fewer results

An advertiser once wrote to me that his campaign always ran on Maximize conversions and that in general everything was OK. I asked how long it had been running that way. He said about two months. Then I told him: Wait for any public holiday, and you may be shocked by what starts to happen.

When new players come in on Black Friday and during sales, Google can just start to drain your money. In the worst cases I have seen, the same sum brought far fewer results. It would be logical just to lower the budget at this time: "I don't need leads at all on these days."

Maximize conversions is risky in moments of sharp market changes when a new competitor comes in. For example, you have a budget of $1,000, and on average you pay $50 per conversion, so you get 20 conversions. Then some new competitor comes in and sets wild prices per click. All prices jump, and for the same $1,000 you may get not 20 conversions at $50, but only a few, or even one. If you had a target CPA of $50, Google would try to keep the average cost near $50. It can't promise this, and a single conversion can still cost more than $50, because the target is an average, not a ceiling.

That is why in the long term I always work with a clear target CPA.

What to check before the holidays

An offline conversion is a target action that happens not on your website, but, for example, in your store or when a person talks to your manager. With offline conversions, Google Ads can optimize not just for the people who leave a request, but for the people who pay you money. When you send data about offline conversions, you can also give a value to each conversion, for example, $5,000.

If on some holidays there is a lot of traffic but almost nobody buys, you should know there is a tool that lets you tell Google in advance how much and on which dates your conversion rate will change. It is called seasonality adjustments. To locate it, go to Tools, Budgets and bidding, then Adjustments, Seasonal. Google says to use it only if you expect major changes in conversion rates, ideally for short events of one to seven days, because Smart Bidding already manages seasonal events.

Should you pause Google Ads on holidays?

Whenever a question like this comes up, I ask: Do you want to do this because there are reasons to do it or because you just heard it somewhere? If you just heard somewhere that you need to pause Google Ads on holidays, that alone is not a reason.

In some of the businesses I launch where Google gets purchase data, Jan. 1 is one of the most effective days for ads. I think it is because many advertisers stop that day. In those businesses, I have sometimes set a double or triple budget on Jan. 1.

It is not like this everywhere. In my online school's Google Ads account, I compared each Jan. 1 with the average day of Dec. 20 to 30 before it. A registration on our website cost less on Jan. 1 in 2023 ($1.38 against $1.84) and in 2025 ($3.38 against $6.29), and about the same in 2024 ($5.22 against $5.28). In autumn 2025, we changed what we count. Since then, the conversion has been a lead that our team confirmed in our customer relationship management (CRM) system and uploaded back to Google Ads. On Jan. 1, 2026, clicks went up 58%, to 1,061 from an average of 670, but there were two leads instead of about 3.5, and each cost $126 instead of $60. In none of these years did the school spend twice its average December day on Jan. 1.

How I counted: I took every campaign that spent money in the account on those days on YouTube, Demand Gen, Search and Performance Max. For Jan. 1, I divided that day's spend by its conversions. For Dec. 20 to 30, I divided the total spend by the total conversions. For 2023 to 2025, I counted only website registrations, not email confirmations, webinar visits or purchases. For 2026, I counted only leads confirmed in the CRM. Because the conversion changed, I compare each Jan. 1 only with the December just before it, not one year with another.

If you have your own data that tells you personally that on past holidays a lot of money was spent with zero efficiency, that is different. Everyone has an individual situation. If efficiency was bad, analyze why it was bad and what the reasons were. But don't stop for the sake of stopping.

About the author

Dr. Igor Ivitskiy PhD

Igor Ivitskiy is a PhD in mathematical modeling and the founder of Doctor Ads. He has worked on the profitability of paid advertising since 2006 and has run more than 2,000 audits of advertising accounts. He was ranked #6 in The PPC Survey's Top 50 Most Influential PPC Experts of 2026. Doctor Ads is a Google Partner.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

Interview with Gabriel Shaoolian, CEO and Founder, Digital Silk

(Featured) - Shaoolian explains how consistent touchpoints, customer interviews, unaided recall and human judgment can make brands distinctive beyond short-term clicks.

Interview with Gabriel Shaoolian

Edited by Haley Spracale, Editor at Featured News · Oct 20, 2026

As a CEO and Founder in marketing and advertising, how would you describe your approach to building brands that remain memorable in a crowded digital marketplace?

I think the strategy and discovery phase at the start of each client project is the key to my approach. I take the time to understand your business, your customers, and what you want to achieve moving forward. Your branding and marketing are more connected than you think, because your core vision, mission, and values inform your unique take on marketing collateral.

It’s easy to create a few campaigns and get some clicks, likes, or shares. But what people want more than anything is to connect with brands that make them feel like they’re part of something greater.

That feeling usually comes from a company having a point of view people can share. A greater cause. A remarkable story. An odds-defying mission. It’s why your company exists and why your customers remember you.

What career experiences in brand development and digital marketing most shaped the way you think about creating memorable brands?

Growing my own company was a defining experience for me. You never truly experience the perils of building a brand and marketing your services until it’s your own.

In the early days, I had very little experience running a business or making sales, but I knew the company was becoming something exciting. Over time, I got things moving with no funding and grew a team of 17 people, which put immense pressure on me to get things right.

This taught me that a brand is everything a company does. It’s about handling your sales calls, assessing your deliverables, and communicating with your customers. All of these are marketing touchpoints.

I stopped thinking of branding and marketing as two separate things. I learned that marketing campaigns are only as memorable as the brand experiences that guide them, and that perspective guides my efforts at Digital Silk.

When a brand is competing with thousands of daily messages, how do you help clients identify the one idea they should be known for?

Your unique attribute should demonstrate the value you provide to your customers. You can easily say you’re this or that, but if your target audience doesn’t benefit from it, it’s practically useless.

As far as differentiation goes, the idea is to be the most relevant brand for a specific 'why' or 'when.' Look at competing alternatives and isolate the things you have that they lack. Tie it back to the value customers could get, and you’ve identified the one thing you should be known for.

From your work in web design and digital media, which online touchpoint has the greatest potential to make a brand memorable, and how can businesses improve it?

I think consistency across all touchpoints and distinctive brand assets across media are the most effective strategies for driving recognition.

With that said, I see the website as the most promising touchpoint in the sales funnel; it therefore has the greatest potential to convert or deter your leads. Your site is your main salesperson, so you should treat it as such.

As for how you can improve it, my advice is not to do it in isolation. I've seen brands with websites that look nothing like the persona they're trying to portray on other channels.

Slapping your logo or slogan on it is only the starting point; it's how you use your colors, messaging, typography, and imagery that makes it memorable and specific to your business.

You have emphasized clarity and consistency in branding; how can a growing company maintain both as it expands across SEO, paid media, social media, and its website?

The idea is to make those touchpoints easily identifiable as part of your brand. The more you treat them as separate channels, the easier it becomes for them to feel disconnected.

That's why your brand strategy matters: it's the core foundation you use to build the rest of your campaigns. Create your core assets, stick to them, and resist the urge to refresh them constantly.

Define what you want to be known for and the topical coverage you plan to target, then use that structure to plan your strategy across all your digital media. Use a shared content calendar that every specialist can access and contribute to, so it feels like you're all working toward a specific goal and sharing the same story.

How do you distinguish between a brand message that gets attention briefly and one that creates a lasting emotional connection with consumers?

You can argue that the relationships between brands and consumers are largely transactional. Growing your brand awareness comes from your company’s reach and distinctive assets, while it is also defined by people’s gut feelings about your product or service and the expectations or memories they associate with it.

As such, messaging that creates lasting emotional connections compounds over time; it’s not something that spikes and is gone soon after. Show both empathy and authority, and address all the different aspects of the customer’s problem. Describe what you offer in terms of how it helps them, and show that you understand their pain points.

If you’d still sound like a distinctive brand even when they can’t see your logo, your brand voice and messaging guidelines have already made their mark.

What role does frictionless website or e-commerce experience play in brand recall, based on the digital projects you have led?

I believe businesses are often preoccupied with why people should buy from them, rather than what puts them off. Remove as many barriers to purchase as possible so users can easily complete their transactions.

Even then, high customer satisfaction doesn’t automatically translate into lasting brand loyalty or recall. However, this strategy can reduce customer disloyalty and minimize the chances of customers leaving for a competitor.

We did this for a client whose site loaded in 6.23 seconds and had very low conversion and returning-visitor rates. We completely reorganized the information architecture and navigation and built a modular e-commerce experience, supported by a marketing and conversion roadmap. This helped the brand improve customer loyalty, brand recall, and long-term growth.

How do you use analytics to determine whether a brand is becoming genuinely memorable rather than simply generating impressions or clicks?

A high number of impressions doesn't necessarily equate to a long-lasting memory of your brand. In my opinion, brand memorability goes far deeper than the funnel metrics used by traditional trackers, which is why this connection can be surprisingly weak.

When it comes to branding, customer surveys, social listening, and unaided brand recall remain the best indicators of memorability. Marketing specialists can often misjudge the effectiveness of their own assets because they tend to confuse momentary popularity with genuine originality.

For a business with limited marketing resources, what is one practical change it can make this month to become more memorable to its ideal audience?

As unfortunate as it may be, customers often treat brands in the same category as near substitutes. As such, anyone who shops at smaller businesses usually also shops at big-chain ones. Therefore, differentiation on a limited budget can be tricky, since it requires your target audience’s mental availability.

The one thing I would do is interview a handful of your most loyal shoppers, since having a little data is better than having none. Skip customers you don’t want to attract more of, and focus on the ones you already have that are bringing the most bang for your buck marketing-wise.

You can then use those insights as your voice-of-customer language to get closer to your ideal audience segment. If you show that you understand their problems and can see things from their perspective, people would be more inclined to give your business a try as opposed to the other, more generic big-name brands.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

I can’t end this interview without noting the impact AI has on brand building and digital media as a whole. Yes, it’s a very useful technology, but it can also be a dangerous tool because it enables businesses to accept average work more easily.

With that said, AI doesn’t exempt marketers and strategists from putting in their two cents and building that initial trust with customers. The ceiling is still set by those who use their human judgment to define core differentiators, proprietary customer insights, and proximity to revenue.

AI only helps smart people get smarter; it doesn’t replace brand-building strategies or long-term customer retention campaigns. If you want to learn more about this, I sometimes post on the Digital Trends section of our website.

About the expert

Gabriel ShaoolianCEO and Founder at Digital Silk

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

Interview with Melissa Church, CEO, Digi-Buzz

(Featured) - Church discusses audience-led channel selection, content calendars and influencer checks that prioritize engagement and local relevance.

Interview with Melissa Church

Edited by Haley Spracale, Editor at Featured News · Oct 6, 2026

As a CEO in marketing and advertising with deep experience in social media marketing, influencer work, and content performance, what perspective do you bring to helping small businesses build a social presence?

I have worked on all sides of social media marketing.

I got my start running a popular science education blog called Bad Science Jokes.

I can test new features, trends, and more with a large audience before testing them on a client's page. I can help bridge the gap between selling and creating a community for a business because I've done it.

What career experiences led you from your background in performing, communication, and marketing into leading a marketing agency as CEO?

Early in my marketing career, I moved from one agency to another. Overall, I found I didn't like how they operated.

I didn't like that clients couldn't speak to someone after 5 p.m. I didn't like the cookie-cutter content style. I didn't feel comfortable working for agencies that took advantage of their clients. I started Digi-Buzz with the intention of doing the opposite of what some other companies were doing.

When you begin working with a small business in the Midwest, how do you identify the social media channels and content priorities most likely to fit its customers and resources?

I ask every new client two questions:

• "What is your ideal demographic?"

• "What is your current demographic?"

This helps me pin down who we want to reach and who we are currently reaching. If our ideal demographic is someone we aren't getting as customers, we can begin a strategy for a social media site that demographic frequents.

How have you helped a Midwest small business turn its local personality or community ties into a distinctive brand voice on social media?

Yes, more than once! It's one of my favorite things to do.

Brand voice is so important. When someone scrolls through social media, they hear a voice in their head as they read. We want people to think of your business as a friend, so we create a specific personality and ensure all content from your business is something that this character would say if they were a real person.

With your background in acting, improvisation, and public speaking, what is one practical way business owners can become more confident and natural on camera?

Practicing in front of a mirror is a great way to get started. Pretend you are speaking to an interviewer and watch how you speak.

Do you move your eyebrows a little too much when you speak? Being mindful of the little things can help you notice them before people start commenting about it online.

For a small Midwest business with limited time and budget, what content-planning habit has consistently made social media more manageable and effective?

For businesses that really need help, I suggest a very basic content calendar. For example, a pizza place that has high turnover of employees and cannot afford a dedicated social media person:

• Mondays: Always talk about your special of the month. One day, take as many photos of the special as possible and schedule them for the entire month in advance.
• Tuesdays: Talk about delivery or takeout. Schedule the whole month, again.
• And so on for the rest of the week—broad topics that are easy to generate content for, so someone can dedicate just a few hours and create a whole month of content.

Also, remind them that taking a day or two off during the week is important. They do not have to post every single day.

What have you learned about using local influencers or community partnerships that small businesses can apply before committing budget to a collaboration?

When working with micro-influencers, always start with a free product to pitch. I have seen many small businesses paying way too much because they do not understand the influencer economy. Someone with 5,000 followers may ask for hundreds of dollars — but what is their engagement rate? Where are these followers located? Sometimes it is far better to give a $50 gift card to a loyal customer with 500 friends and high engagement than to give it to someone with a lot of followers. Speaking from experience, I have had local businesses pitch me because they see I have over 700k followers on Instagram. I tell them there is no way I could be a good investment.

Find someone who frequents your store online. See if they post things publicly or if it's private. Ask if they will make a video or do a post in exchange for a gift card. Many times, you will find they say yes!

• Start by offering free product or a gift card to test interest.
• Check engagement rate and follower location before committing budget.
• Consider loyal customers with smaller but highly engaged networks.
• Confirm whether their posts are public or private and discuss deliverables (post, video, etc.).
• Use affiliate codes: give them a special code for their friends and reward the "influencer" with another gift card for every five sales generated.

Which social media metrics do you use to determine whether a small business’s efforts are contributing to meaningful business results, rather than simply generating attention?

The statistics I focus on are Page Visits and Engagement.

Page Visits tell us how many people are actively looking for something. They may be looking for:

• more information
• a phone number
• a website
• to follow
• to unfollow
• a specific post

This is an important metric to watch.

Engagement shows us if our content is resonating with people. If we keep engagement up, we will show up more frequently and stay front of mind.

What is one common social media risk you see small businesses overlook—such as copyright, brand consistency, or audience trust—and what should they do to avoid it?

I see so many businesses using trending audio when, most of the time, it is copyrighted. AI can scan your posts very easily. There are people actively searching for businesses that use copyrighted material and issuing copyright strikes and lawsuits faster than ever.

Just because "everybody" is posting it does not mean you automatically have the legal right to use the audio. Don't lose your entire marketing budget on something so simple. You can create content without using trending audio.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Social media is such an integral part of marketing your business. Make sure you get the most out of this investment. Utilizing social media to its fullest can give you an extremely high return on investment, but using it incorrectly can cost you your business. Don't lose your page by posting something illegal, such as copyrighted music.

Focus on consistent posting, being personable, and creating content that people want to see, and you will be helping your business.

About the expert

Melissa ChurchCEO at Digi-Buzz

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

My first lead as an independent consultant came from an AI citation

(Anthony Keal) - Ranking first on Google no longer guarantees you're seen, so here's how to track where AI cites your competitors instead of you, find out why and shape how it describes you.

By Anthony Keal

Edited by Adrian James, Editor at Featured News · Oct 8, 2026

Ranking number one organically in Google used to be pretty straightforward – get more links pointing at your website. It wasn’t complicated but it could be time consuming (depending on competition). But with the arrival of ChatGPT, and subsequently Google’s AI summary, can ranking number one really matter when there’s another answer at the top of the page?

My first lead organically after going independent has come from being cited by AI, so it clearly can be done. But how can you get started?

What are AI Citations?

When a searcher lands on Google (for example) and asks a question, more often than not, they’ll see an AI Overview, then the ads, before getting to see the number one organic result. Increasingly searchers will find their answer before getting to the number one organic result.

Those businesses featured in the AI Overview are cited by AI, and that has become pretty valuable real estate.

Not all searches will return an AI Citation but when they do they take prime real estate at the top of the page.

How do I track AI citations?

If you can, I’d recommend pulling a keyword report for the website in question, but I know that’s not always an option. If that’s the case, I’d suggest taking four or five questions a customer may have when in buying mode, and typing them into ChatGPT or Google and seeing who gets mentioned.

If you don’t see your business, then look at the websites linked at the bottom, click through and have a read. What information is on those competitor’s pages that could make AI summarize it in relation to the search term? Does it answer the questions more succinctly? Talk about things that aren’t discussed on your website?

There’s lots of options when it comes to AI tracking and they range widely in cost: Semrush, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, Otterly.AI, Peec AI, Profound to name a few.

I haven’t personally used any of them, so can’t comment on the quality of results, but as above, if the budget’s not there, I’d still recommend manually checking on a monthly basis.

How can I be cited by AI?

Honestly, there’s not a definitive answer yet. We should still avoid keyword stuffing, optimize everything to the nth degree and hope for the best. But I don’t think there’s any hacks or tricks we can play to try and fool the AI (at least in any sustainable way).

Some tactics are old hat: your positioning, whether you include pricing, etc will all still come into play. This is really just being summarized by AI, rather than people landing and reading your website.

So, if you competitors are all getting picked for price, can you pick a lane and shout about quality instead? If your business is actually good value, but doesn’t shout it from the rooftops like others, should you consider changing that?

Write for humans, not for Google

All the normal rules about clear, useful and readable content applies. Write a story that’s likely to answer questions searchers may have. Not a mishmash of text, but something that reads naturally.

About the author

Anthony Keal

Anthony Keal is a Melbourne-based independent digital consultant who started as a designer and spent more than ten years in agency and client-side digital roles. He helps Australian businesses deliver everything from simple websites to complex sites, portals and digital transformation projects, using automation to handle the routine work.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.