In one of Aesop’s fables, the author tells the story of a heron in a stream, standing there waiting for the right catch to come along. A school of small swimmers? Next. A medium-sized fish? Not good enough. This bird knows what he wants, and he lets these opportunities swim by in pursuit of that perfect catch.
But the problem is that in all this waiting, the heron let plenty of good meals swim right between his feet; in fact, they all did. By the end of the day, he had nothing left to snack on but a tiny snail.
A moral of Aesop’s story that you can apply to your business is to take the opportunities that are already in front of you. After all, having an effective marketing strategy isn’t just about directing your budget toward generating new leads; it’s also about nurturing the client relationships you already have. If you let what’s in front of you escape, then you may be left with nothing but snails.
Thankfully, there’s a framework that can help you stay on top of these connections, maintain them, and ensure that they keep coming back (and even refer you to their loved ones). It’s called FIT marketing, and its three goals—frequency, impact, and trust—are about focusing on your current sphere of influence. If you follow these tenets, your organization will always have plenty of fish to feast on.
Frequency
You have to stay top of mind with your clients, being the first name they think of when they need the kind of product or service your industry segment offers. To do so, aim to make at least twenty-six quality touchpoints a year across multiple channels, including emails, phone calls, and postcards.
Impact
Don’t just contact your clients with empty, forgettable messaging. Each time you reach out, make your communication meaningful, make it relevant, and bring some kind of value to them. This will ensure that your existing base remembers what you’ve offered them in prior sales—and how you’ve made them feel.
Trust
Impart your knowledge for major impact. Clients should see you as the go-to expert in your field, someone who not only knows their stuff but also knows it better than anyone else in town (even those larger competitors that may promise lower prices). Building a credible and confident reputation with your audience will keep them coming back for more.
Whether you lead a group of eager salespeople or are making your own client connections, these are some of my best tips for applying the FIT framework in your workplace.
Hit ’em from all angles
Use a mix of communication channels to remain in touch with your base. Send them direct mail like magazines and postcards, and enroll them in targeted email and text-message campaigns, segmenting them by need. (A first-time homebuyer needs different info than a seasoned real estate investor, for example.) Further, ask your sales team to make follow-up phone calls to gauge product satisfaction and to reach out with new promotions to keep clients engaged. Invite them to events too; plan creative opportunities for face-to-face interactions like a food truck festival or cocktail hour at a popular local spot. The goal is to make sure that your marketing is always accessible and your brand remains memorable.
Plan ahead
To make regular, ongoing contact in this way, you need a calendar. Sit down with your team to map out your year and fill in all kinds of multichannel touchpoints, aiming for at least two types per contact. Try shaping them around holidays, major market updates, and company changes like product launch days. Then add this plan to your CRM so your team members know who to contact when. That way, no one falls through the cracks. As you maintain this database, continually track what works, double down in these areas, and seek constant improvement.
Create content that connects
Don’t just make content for its own sake. Your outreach has to have value for it to be effective. To make this happen, try one of my favorite tricks of using the three Es.
Just remember that marketing isn’t just about gaining new eyes on your business. It’s about becoming a valued and trusted member of your community, like that classic mom-and-pop store the whole town loves to visit and would hate to lose. FIT marketing helps you achieve such a result. Nail the three core elements of sending frequent, impactful, and trust-building communication, and you might just see exceptional results fall right into place.
TAKE ACTION:
Reflecting on the tenets of FIT marketing, think of three new marketing strategies you could kick off today.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Luke Acree is an authority on leadership, a lead-generation specialist, and a referral expert who has helped more than 30,000 entrepreneurs and small businesses grow their companies. He hosts Stay Paid, a sales and marketing podcast, and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Foundr.com.
Kerry Addis, co-owner and chief operating officer of WS Game Company, discusses the organization’s history and unique approach to designing new versions of classic board games.
Tell us about yourself and your company:
I grew up in the board game business, learning the craft from my father, Dana Silva, who cofounded WS Game Company with Mike Doyle in 2000. They were both Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley employees until their office closed due to restructuring. They decided that instead of moving their families, they would use their forty years of combined experience to work as consultants for Hasbro Games to create premium games for their key national accounts.
The business earned a Hasbro licensee contract in 2009 and has collaborated with partners globally to bring board games into consumers’ homes as functional decor ever since. Today, I’m co-owner and COO and run the company with my brother, Jonathan Silva. I help oversee the creative process from start to finish for our growing product portfolio.
What sets WS Game Company’s products apart?
As kids, we always had the latest and greatest board games at our fingertips, but the sheer number of them in our house got to be a bit unwieldy. They wound up living on huge shelves in our basement—out of sight and often out of mind. But at WS Game Company, our goal is to keep games at the forefront of your mind, and that’s easiest when you see them every day.
Our Vintage Bookshelf collection is a perfect example of how games can live in your home as part of your decor. We have twenty-two in this line, including Risk, Boggle, and Trouble, that are packaged to look like fabric-wrapped, hardback books, blending nostalgic design with an upscale feel. They look amazing on a bookcase or shelf, and you can easily grab one to play anytime you want.
For all our games, we include storage for the parts so you can display the product without worrying about losing any pieces. The material choices and finishes are very important as well, and we offer products in a range of options—including wood, glass, metal, fabric, and vegan leather—so everyone can find something that matches their aesthetic. Many of our customers are looking to upgrade their gaming experience, so we thoughtfully design each one with these more premium materials while maintaining much of the original graphics from the games we all know and love.
Was there ever a turning point for your business?
The pandemic. During times of economic uncertainty, people tend to scale back on expenses on things like travel, eating out, and other luxuries, but our games can provide hours of entertainment and a lifetime of memories after a single purchase. So when the global economy was at a standstill and most people were staying close to home, we were fortunate to have a lot of inventory available domestically. Game sales increased dramatically, and we were able to support that higher demand. It also opened up some additional retail partnerships that we’ve been able to maintain, and those opportunities continue to grow.
What’s your most popular item?
Anything from the Vintage Bookshelf collection, really. Board games as decor are very popular right now, so those editions are flying off the shelves. The wide selection in this line has sparked viral treasure hunts among collectors looking to complete their sets. Social media is also filled with videos of people styling their games in various ways throughout their homes. It’s amazing to see how it’s getting more people to play games with their family and friends!
Would you walk us through the process of creating a new edition?
Each new project follows a slightly different path since it depends on whether we’re developing for our general trade line or collaborating with a retail partner. For our line, we start by taking a wider look at our overall offerings to determine what’s missing—whether it’s a certain aesthetic, functionality, or price point. Our design team then explores color trends, materials, and printing techniques while always keeping gameplay and storage in mind. Based on all those details, we create samples and refine the design until we feel we’ve developed the best product for people to enjoy.
As a Hasbro licensee, collaboration is a key part of the development process for nearly every game we produce. When we have a new concept, we present it to the Hasbro team, which gives them a chance to provide feedback before we get too far along. We also stay in touch throughout development to ensure that we incorporate all their latest brand guidelines and they’re able to approve every design component.
What about your retail collaborations?
Our collaborations with specialty retailers work a bit differently. We typically meet with the buyer, who gives us an idea of what products and price ranges they are considering. Many times, they’ll share color palettes or patterns that will be used throughout their store during an upcoming season, and we’ll work with them to incorporate some of those elements into our products. There can be a lot of back and forth until we land on the final design, but when we get to that point, we know that their customers will be thrilled with the result: a custom board game and home decor piece created with them in mind.
Do you have a favorite product?
It’s a hard choice because we’ve developed so many incredible products, but I think the Monopoly x Nike LeBron James Edition stands out above the rest. We partnered with the Nike team to tell the story of LeBron’s life and career, weaving personal elements into every single component of the game. The cabinet features a debossed vegan-leather rolling area, six oversized custom tokens, and a three-dimensional title deed holder shaped like a basketball court. It’s truly stunning, and I’m very proud of my team for bringing this product to life.
What challenges come with adapting classic games into high-end formats?
The most difficult thing is adding value without adding a lot of extra parts. The game of Sorry!, for example, only requires a board, a deck of cards, and sixteen movers, but we also included a card box so the cards can be neatly stored when not in play and swapped out the standard plastic movers for painted wood ones. In addition, we generally use more premium card stock and printing techniques, improving the overall quality. These subtle changes can make a major difference in your tactile experience of a game and how likely you are to play it again.
How do you balance maintaining the nostalgia of an original game while elevating the design?
The original versions of the games bring a sense of nostalgia and so many memories for people, and we think it’s important to maintain that connection when possible. Fortunately, the early editions of many Hasbro games are simple and elegant, so it’s not too difficult to incorporate their vintage looks into our premium designs. By switching up the materials, refining the color palette, and playing with scale, we can make something old feel modern but still classic.
For more info, visit wsgamecompany.com
“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
That’s a quote widely attributed to Ken Olsen, the founder, president, and chairman of Digital Equipment Corporation, from back in 1977. Equally stunning, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were reportedly rejected several times when pitching their idea for the Apple I computer, including the latter being rejected by his own employer, HP, five times.
These are just two examples of an unfortunate reality: game-changing innovation has not always been readily understood or embraced by the corporate world. Today, we’re in the midst of another revolution, artificial intelligence, which is transforming businesses at breakneck speed. Ride this tech wave, and yours can become a superefficient machine that maximizes its full potential.
You may have such a mindset; however, in reality, you’re probably familiar with it, even if you don’t realize it. For instance, if you ask your phone or another device for help (via Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, etc.), you’re using artificial intelligence. Getting a medical diagnosis or test? AI is likely to be involved. You, your team, and most other Americans are already benefitting from its efficiency; you just need to apply it to your own business.
If you haven’t, you may already be behind your competition. According to a 2024 McKinsey & Company survey, 78 percent of organizations said they were already using artificial intelligence in some form. The AI bug has hit consumers as well: another company, AltIndex.com, estimated that 378 million people would use AI tools in 2025.
So perhaps you are now excited about the possibilities this revolutionary tool can bring to your company and are ready to apply it to your processes. However, your enthusiasm may be dashed by another hurdle: actually executing this goal. Per the business software company Vention, over three-quarters of business leaders find it difficult to do so.
But it actually may be easier than you think, says Jason Pantana, a coach, trainer, and speaker who cofounded AI Marketing Academy with legendary real estate coach Tom Ferry, which provides cutting-edge AI training courses. “Reluctance is the biggest problem,” he admits. “But AI is a tool to be leveraged. [Marketing pioneer] Seth Godin goes as far as to say that ‘AI is the biggest change since electricity—bigger than the internet.’ I’d suggest recognizing it for what it is: an incredible opportunity that’s going to help your team do more, do it faster, and do it better. AI will enhance your company, solving customer problems in the most optimized, efficient way. Every business owner should incorporate it into their marketing strategies.”
The first step is to get familiar with the various AI programs available, which Pantana says is no different than “the tool section of Home Depot having different types of screwdrivers.” He suggests the following to help fill your AI marketing toolbox:
Just as important, he says, is familiarizing yourself with the six primary AI platforms people use to find businesses: ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, Claude, and Copilot. While noting that each has its own strengths, Pantana says that optimizing your business for ChatGPT should be your initial choice due to its vast superiority in current usership—with an important caveat. “Focusing on ChatGPT increases your odds of success since it has the biggest market by far. But keep an eye on Gemini; once Google has perfected it, it will be even bigger,” he predicts.
In addition to knowing your customers’ resources, how can AI improve your marketing? Think of it from this perspective: Pantana says that AI products create outputs—words, images, sounds, and video—based on your input, so it’s simply an amplified result of your requests and goals. For example, a real estate agent can put MLS data or spreadsheets for a specific area into Claude or ChatGPT and then give it a detailed written instruction for what to do with the information (the prompt), such as creating a comprehensive email newsletter, and the tool will use code to deliver it within seconds.
Likewise, you can prompt Claude to build a website within days. Just think of how that stacks up compared to traditional methods, freeing your team to accomplish even more.
No matter the format or function, however, Pantana stresses that you need to be very specific about your prompts. Doing so creates playbooks that AI can use to learn not only your efficiency and scaling objectives but also how to sound like your company’s voice in its output.
Perhaps most important of all is a key customer-facing change that Pantana says is on the horizon. “More and more consumers are taking their searches to AI instead of traditional platforms like Google,” he reveals. “The key action word nowadays is becoming ‘Ask’ versus ‘Search.’ As a result, you’re going to see a paradigm shift where the message bar will replace the search bar, consumers will ask their questions and find their answers in AI chats, and answer engine optimization will be more vital than search engine optimization.” Much like you strive to do with SEO, you’ll soon need to discover how you can scale so that you get your business to be the result in AEO. “Everything will be retrofitted for an AI world,” he puts plainly.
To help business owners get a grasp of their current status, the AI guru notes that innovation adoption is often broken down into four phases: innovators, early adopters, late adopters, and laggers. Ask yourself: By name only, which category do you think you fall into? If it’s one of the latter, it’s not too late. However, time is of the essence. “This tech isn’t the threat. It’s your competition using the tech to scale and leave you in the dust,” Pantana concludes. “However, as soon as you get accustomed to AI and master prompting it, your imagination will know no bounds. Any efficiency or tech ceiling you thought your business had will be in the past.”
TAKE ACTION:
Determine at least two ways you can incorporate AI into your organization’s strategies to improve your business’s efficiency.
For more info, visit academy.jasonpantana.com
Jamie Seward, owner of Repeat Roses, discusses the rewards and challenges of reviving the flower-repurposing company three years after its original owner closed it during COVID-19.
Did you come into this venture with a business background?
I don’t have a business degree, but my professional background provided me with a strong foundation for reinvigorating Repeat Roses. My experience as an attorney, an officer in the Navy JAG Corps, and in development and alumni relations at Johns Hopkins University (where I currently work) has equipped me with valuable skills in everything from operations and logistics to event planning to marketing to networking. Most importantly, I’ve learned a lot about working with and managing people.
Did you have any prior experience with flower arrangements?
Great question. No, I didn’t. That’s something I often share with people who sign up with us to create arrangements to be donated, emphasizing that you can’t make mistakes playing with flowers, which are in and of themselves beautiful.
What made you want to restore Repeat Roses?
I knew [original owner] Jennifer Grove through mutual friends when she lived here in Baltimore. So I had heard about her company and its goal: providing a second life to expensive flowers being discarded after an event by giving them to nonprofits such as shelters and treatment centers. One day, I found myself in the exact same situation of throwing away flowers after an event, which immediately brought Jennifer’s idea to mind. So, I reached out to her about reviving the business, and I ultimately acquired it.
Did you ever consider using a different business name? What advantages were there in keeping the original one?
I did consider creating a new name but ultimately decided to carry on the Repeat Roses legacy. The main business advantage was the existing brand recognition, however dormant it might have been. The name still resonated with some people who remembered the original concept, which provided a starting point for re-establishing connections and credibility. It also clearly communicates what we do, which is a plus.
What were some of your biggest hurdles in the beginning?
Restarting the business three years after it closed and relocating it from New York to Baltimore certainly presented significant challenges. We had to re-create awareness nationally, for example, focusing on “replanting” Repeat Roses’ roots. This is an ongoing process in addition to rebuilding relationships with old clients and forming new ones—in short, getting the word out that we are back.
We work all over the country, so forging partnerships with nonprofits that not only receive the flower donations but also align with our mission is also crucial to our operations. Overall, society being even more focused on sustainability now than before the pandemic works in our favor since we’re an excellent solution to preventing floral waste.
Have you tweaked any parts of the business?
Yes. We are intentionally focused on two primary revenue streams: repurposing flowers and holding our Blossom Bar workshops, which are a significant addition. These interactive events provide individuals and groups with materials, flowers, vases, and supplies to create their own arrangements, which they can either keep or donate to nonprofits. They’ve been incredibly well received as unique team-building and social events with a clear purpose.
Overall, what are the most challenging aspects of this unique business model?
Logistics and scaling. Coordinating pickups from various event venues, rearranging flowers efficiently, and then delivering them to multiple nonprofits, all within a narrow time frame, requires meticulous planning and execution. We’re committed to slow growth and finding the right partners to ensure that the business thrives and never closes again. Ideally, we’d also love to partner with supermarket chains and big-box retailers who discard unsellable flowers, which would present another layer of logistical and partnership development challenges that we’d enjoy taking on.
How does Repeat Roses impact everyone involved?
We call it a triple win. For example, those donating the flowers, our clients, receive a receipt for their in-kind donation, which provides a tangible benefit. Above all, they get the satisfaction of knowing that their beautiful event flowers, which might otherwise be discarded, are bringing joy to others and contributing to a sustainable solution for floral waste—a wonderful way for them to add another layer of purpose to their event.
For those receiving the flowers, the impact is often immeasurable. These fresh, vibrant arrangements can brighten sterile environments like homeless shelters, nursing homes, and hospitals, providing a sense of warmth, beauty, and unexpected cheer to people who are often going through challenging times. It is a powerful reminder that someone cares and is truly the most rewarding part of what we do.
As a mom, daughter, sister, and friend, my goal is to leave this world a little better than I found it, and through this business, I genuinely believe that I can make a tangible difference. It’s about spreading joy, promoting sustainability, and transforming what would be waste into moments of beauty and connection. That mission means everything to me.
For more info, visit repeatroses.com
