A good marketing strategy is essential to the success of any great business. Without the in-depth, long-term planning that such a strategy requires, any company would find its successes challenged time and again by the volatile whims of their market.
According to contemporary wisdom, a good marketing strategy is built on narrative: it creates an emotional connection with the brand’s customers, whom it places at the center of its messages and its methods. Just as a good story links different events and characters, a good marketing strategy establishes meaningful connections between company and customer.
These stories are built on the same foundations as any other marketing strategy: a thorough understanding of the company, its products or services, its strongest propositions, and its position in the market. However, considering the strategy as story also encourages bringing in other elements, which are sometimes referred to as “culture” or “purpose.”
Whatever the exact terms—mission, vision, values—these elements in themselves are already a story that the company is telling. And in that regard, they can improve a company’s marketing strategy.
The Entrepreneurial Operating System®
Translating a company’s culture or purpose into concrete actions or policies is one of the concepts central to the Entrepreneurial Operating System. The EOS®, as it’s called, combines business principles with a set of simple, practical tools to help entrepreneurs direct their businesses toward better results.
The EOS Model® provides a framework for examining your business to gather and organize information essential for optimal management. Utilizing this information correctly, you can develop better strategies, as well as methods to see those strategies through in day-to-day, quarter-by-quarter operations.
The EOS Model
EOS has a number of tools to ensure this. They cover the various components in its model and are used across the various stages of business processes. Our own marketing efforts use several EOS tools, and we’ve highlighted some of the most useful ones below.
The Accountability Chart™
This is a matrix for identifying roles and responsibilities in a given process in order to prevent conflict among team members and to eliminate confusion over duties and accountability. For each task or deliverable on the matrix, it assigns one of four ratings to each person involved:
- Responsible: person who performs an activity or does the work
- Accountable: person who is ultimately accountable, can veto, and is responsible for creating results
- Consulted: person that needs to feedback and contribute to the activity
- Informed: person that needs to know of the decision or action
A sample Accountability Chart
When everyone is clear on what they have to do and what they are in charge of, implementing and coordinating business processes becomes that much easier. By streamlining day-to-day activities, you support success in long-term pursuits.
Rocks
Rocks are priorities made more concrete. The term comes from an analogy: if you had to fit an amount of rocks, sand, and water into a container with just enough space for them, which would go first? The rocks, of course; the sand would come after to fill the gaps in between, and the water would come last.
Similarly, your most important projects should come first. Everything else in your business fills the gaps they leave.
Rocks are generally chosen quarter-by-quarter. This keeps them reasonable in scope and ensures you can measure progress at regular intervals. Being able to determine success or failure within three months allows you more time to adapt than if Rocks were set year by year.
The short-term nature of identifying Rocks is ideal for hitting targets in sequence, with each success laying the groundwork for the next quarter’s Rocks. For example: spending one quarter “defining your buyer persona” will make it easier to set the following quarter’s rock as “establishing your content’s value;” in the following quarters, you could then focus on usability, and then lead conversion.
The key to developing Rocks in this way is having a vision to align them, one that has been clearly communicated throughout the organization. When the business has a clear vision, it’s easier to coordinate the different steps it will take along the way to get there.
The Vision/Traction Organizer® (V/TO)
The V/TO® is a tool to help you simplify the strategic planning process. It gets your vision out of your head and onto paper using eight questions to crystallize where your organization is going and how you will get there. It summarizes the vision of the business into focused points. These, in turn, direct towards traction or goal.
Having a clear vision will guide the entire marketing process because the vision defines the voice and the image of the company. The V/TO articulates this vision in concrete, concise terms. This allows for clearer steps in implementing it and also makes the complex process of strategic planning simpler.
It can be difficult to see the benefits in a clearly stated purpose until that purpose has actually been translated into concrete, implementable steps. And yet, if you look for them, they’re not difficult to spot. Some of the most recognizable names in the world right now—Alphabet, Apple, and SpaceX, to name a few—are set apart not just by their purpose, but by how that purpose is reflected clearly in the way they work.
Do you want to optimize your marketing tools for lasting business success? Click the button below to schedule a free, no-obligation consultation.
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