How IOI Ventures turned a fun beer-matching quiz into a lead-generation tool for Baxter Brewing Co.

What happens when you combine a great brand, a little creativity, and some smart technology? You create an experience that customers actually want to engage with — and one that drives real business results.

At IOI Ventures, we’re always looking for ways to challenge traditional marketing. Not everything needs to be a massive campaign, a complicated funnel, or a big advertising budget. Sometimes, the best ideas are the simplest ones.
Our latest project with Baxter Brewing Co. is a perfect example.

Meet Baxter Buds: Find Your Perfect Beer Match
We recently launched Baxter Buds, an interactive beer-matching experience built directly into Baxter Brewing’s website.
The concept is simple, fun, and a little addictive.

Answer six quick questions about your mood, taste preferences, and personality, and Baxter Buds matches you with your top three beers from Baxter’s catalog. It takes about 60 seconds. No complicated forms. No endless scrolling through beer descriptions. Just a personalized experience that helps customers discover something new.

And here’s where it gets even better.

Complete the quiz, and you can earn a FREE appetizer at the Baxter Pub. It’s a win for everyone. Customers discover beers they’ll love, get rewarded for participating, and have another reason to visit the pub. Baxter gets something equally valuable: engagement, customer insights, and new leads.

The Results? 20 Leads in One Week. Zero Paid Media. We launched Baxter Buds quietly. No paid advertising. No major promotional campaign. No big marketing push. We simply placed the experience on the website and let customers discover it organically.

Seven days later:
20 new leads generated. $0 in paid media
6 questions creating a personalized customer experience
1 new way to connect digital engagement with an in-person visit
Is 20 leads going to change the world? No.

But generating 20 leads in the first week from a simple website experience, without spending a dollar on promotion, tells us something important. People will engage with brands when you give them something worth engaging with. And we’re just getting started.
Stop Asking Customers to Fill Out Forms. Give Them an Experience. Here’s something we’ve been thinking about a lot at IOI. Traditional lead generation often starts with asking customers for something.

Give us your email. Fill out this form. Subscribe to our newsletter. But what if we flipped that approach?
What if we gave customers something entertaining, useful, or personalized first? That’s exactly what Baxter Buds does.

It takes the idea of a traditional lead-generation form and turns it into a branded experience. The customer gets personalized beer recommendations and a reward. The business creates an opportunity to build a relationship.
And because the experience is built around Baxter’s actual products, it also introduces customers to beers they may never have considered trying.
It’s not just lead generation. It’s product discovery, customer engagement, brand storytelling, and an incentive to visit — all wrapped into one simple experience. Built in the IOI Ventures Lab. This is the kind of work that gets us excited.

At IOI Ventures, we’re constantly exploring how creativity, technology, automation, and smart marketing can work together to solve real business challenges.

We’re not interested in building technology just because we can.
We’re interested in building things that people actually use — and that help businesses grow.
Baxter Buds is a small example of a much bigger opportunity.

Imagine what brands can do when their websites become interactive experiences instead of digital brochures. When product discovery becomes entertaining. When customer preferences help inform smarter marketing. And when the distance between online engagement and an actual purchase gets a little shorter. That’s where we see things going. More Ideas Are Brewing.

We’re grateful to the team at Baxter Brewing Co. for embracing a creative idea and giving us the opportunity to bring it to life.
The first week is encouraging, but we’re far more excited about what comes next.

More engagement. More personalization. More ways to connect customers with brands they love. And yes, we’ve got a few more fresh ideas cooking over at the IOI Ventures Lab. Because sometimes, great marketing doesn’t need to feel like marketing. It just needs to be fun, useful, and a little different.

Built with creativity. Powered by technology. Focused on results. IOI Ventures — Turning ideas into experiences that grow businesses.