How to operationalize your marketing with business systems like EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System?)

The focus of my career has been to help clients and organizations efficiently execute their creative strategy with the goal of creating tangible business value. There is always one thing, if missing, that stifles company success. That one thing is an operational approach to marketing. I tell every client that without an operational approach, a company can’t act strategically, track results, or create sales and marketing alignment. Creating a clear-cut operational approach lays the foundation for your marketing effort’s success.

EOS as a process for aligning marketing with business results

Digital marketing upended the classic strategy for marketing, which caused a shift away from traditional methods of advertising, but still often provide unknown results. I've spent countless hours trying to reconcile the time it takes to produce excellent design and marketing content with the weekly progress of efficiently gaining qualified sales leads that actually contribute to business results, specifically revenue. I’ve seen frameworks like Google’s OKRs help creative teams go from being unsure of their priorities to driving business outcomes. While OKRs work great for venture-backed or hyper-growth companies chasing a massive total addressable market, it can be challenging to implement for small to medium-size businesses. The book Traction by Gino Wickman outlines a great alternative to help focus the finite resources of smaller companies. Traction details "The Entrepreneurial Operating System?," which was created by Wickman, and is a method that will help you realize your organization’s vision. 

Applying a system like EOS gives marketing teams the tools they need to uncover and focus on their highest impact activities, including where to most efficiently allocate their marketing dollars. Frustration happens within a marketing team when those tasked with the creative aspect of a project are unaware of the costs and results produced. Switching to weekly reporting meetings provides transparency into business-focused marketing metrics that matter. The mindset switches from a sense of unease related to a long-tail marketing campaign that your team hopes will work to having the confidence and knowledge on whether your marketing leads to customers, sales and long-term revenue.

Important Insights

Once I decided to start Forage, I took some time to reflect on insights gained from Traction and EOS as well as previous experience directing marketing initiatives. What I realized is:

1. Your business goals reign. Marketing’s role is to drive business outcomes forward, not win awards (unless you’re actually in the business of winning awards)! When looking for designers and content producers to partner with, final candidates must understand everything they produce must align with your business goals. Prioritize investing your resources on reusable marketing assets that support the narrative you feel will guide prospects to become customers. Additionally, the content they create must interface with your marketing technology and existing business processes.
2. Creativity CAN be operationalized, but it depends on the systems in place that guide the creative process. A few of these include clear guidelines to stay on budget, understood and agreed upon deliverables and disciplined timeliness. Working with a budget forces a disciplined approach to the assets being created. Deliverables provide the creative team with clearly defined instructions to create business-driving solutions, and deadlines force immediate attention to the project.

So, how do you get started?

Begin by visualizing your current sales pipeline. Revisit what turned former prospects into existing customers. Knowing your existing customers will lead to insights into who your future customers will be. Then with your revenue goals in mind, calculate the number of leads needed to reach that goal.

The number of leads needed will be the basis for all company marketing activities. Marketing activity has two categories. Inbound marketing is published materials and available resources that are not directly targeted to specific individuals. Outbound marketing is targeting specific individuals and proactively moving them through your sales process. A simple back of the envelope way to divide resource allocation is 30% inbound and 70% outbound, which is more likely to lead to a greater likelihood of lead conversion.

Look at internal company resources to see if there are gaps in personnel needed to execute your budgeted marketing activities. If differences exist, partner with a creative team that fits into your current value chain. The creative team you partner with must be able to track with your reporting cadence and contribute to predictable and defined requirements. 

Key takeaways to remember:

• An operational approach allows companies to act strategically, track results, and create alignment.
• Putting a business system in place like EOS elements vanity metrics and replaces them with business metrics.
• Your business goals are your North Star to guide your every decision.
• Creativity CAN be operationalized.
• Your value chain and marketing should be optimized to procedure efficiency and maximize profitability.

Field Notes:

• Video: Michael Porter’s Value Chain Explained
• Book: Traction by Traction by Gino Wickman