Marketing With Purpose Kit: Turning Marketing Into a Revenue Engine

**SPEAKER_1** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:17)
Welcome back to the Marketing With Purpose series of The Bliss Business Podcast, where we explore what it really takes for marketing leaders to create impact that goes beyond the numbers.
I'm Tullio, and in each episode, we sit down with a marketing expert to explore their leadership approach and strategies that drive performance and resonate with their audience. Together, we'll dive into what's working, what's not, and how purpose and empathy can transform the way brands connect with people. So let's get started. Today, I'm joined by Ben Cohen, who's the Chief Marketing Officer at French Florist.
Ben is a performance marketing leader with more than 20 years of experience building and scaling marketing organizations. After developing marketing strategy for Fortune 500 brands like Adidas, ExxonMobil, and Johnson & Johnson, he spent over a decade helping franchise brands grow, including scaling The Good Feet Store from 100 to 300 locations. Today, he leads French Florist National Expansion with a data-driven approach focused on customer acquisition, lifetime value, and measurable business growth. We're going to explore turning marketing into a revenue engine. I'm excited to dive in and see how marketing can become one of the most powerful drivers for sustainable growth. So let's get right into it. Ben, before we dive in, I'd love to hear why was turning marketing into a revenue engine, the topic you chose to explore with us today? And why do you think that's so important, especially right now?

**Ben Cohen** (1:56)
I think it's probably the most important question for marketing, and that is what is the ROI on what we are doing? So at the end of the day, marketing can produce things that are attractive, that are pretty. But it's ultimately about growing the business. If the work that you are doing is not moving the needle for the brand and the business, then there's going to be a problem eventually.
It is even more important within a franchise model, because you are partnering with and even supported by the investments of franchise owners. And so, I even consider myself almost a steward of their success, and it becomes even more important to me in that franchise model, because I want to ensure that these entrepreneurs who are investing in the brand and the business in their own communities and markets are as successful and as profitable as they can be.

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:00)
I love the word you've used, a steward, because one of the things that I've learned in speaking with many franchisers in the past couple of years, the best do see their roles as stewards of, I mean, some people are investing their life savings into these franchises, so I love it.
Now, let's face it, CMOs are often pulled between near-term campaign results and learn-term brand building. It's this dance that's constantly in place, right? I need to make things happen, but I also need to build for the future, because a year from now, there'll be the next quarter happening right there, right? So how do you ensure your marketing strategy stays aligned with the company's growth goals? And where do you find the biggest friction points in making that happen?

**Ben Cohen** (3:46)
Totally fair question, because understandably, just like I was saying, working with entrepreneurs in a franchise system, for example, we want the sales today. But the way that I would sort of couple that is we also want our customers, our clients to love our brand tomorrow.
We do want them to ultimately have a relationship with us and not just be a quick transaction. And so for that reason, I am constantly asking questions of myself, my team, is this on strategy? Is this on brand? So that we can find ways to ensure that our focus on that near-term success, the near-term sales is still done in a consistent way, where we're building a reliable, repeatable marketing engine that isn't just getting the quick sale today.

**Tullio Siragusa** (4:43)
See, I love that. I think a lot of people fail to see, not necessarily marketers, but some of the CEOs and boards sometimes who are just not as aligned or informed as they should be.
They fail to see that the long-term brand building impacts the near-term results a year from now.
There will be an order a year from now. That's the next quarter or the quarter where you need to do the next quarter. So it's so important to do that and it's like it's necessary to do both. And one thing I've also seen, especially in the franchise business, there's a lag between the investment and the outcome sometimes because you're building authority, you're building presence and you have to maintain that presence, especially with reviews and how you show up, right? Which establishes credibility and trust. So when you don't do enough of that long-term, then it impacts the short-term next quarter results a year from now sometimes, or three quarters from now. So it's a tough thing to balance. And then what makes it even more challenging is sometimes you get into high-stakes situation like a brand crisis or a market downturn or something that is out of your control, right? So how do you then maintain a sense of purpose and empathy while making quick strategic decisions? Purpose and empathy meaning you're the steward of those investments or those investors, but there's challenges happening, right? So how do you balance getting things done, but also being purposeful in doing it?