How Marketing gets Traction.
If your business is running on the Entrepreneurial Operating System, make sure Marketing can keep up.
Every holiday season, businesspeople get books. Management books. Leadership books. Creativity books.
And odds are, books about the Entrepreneurial Operating System.
Even if you haven’t heard of EOS, you might recognize it by the name of its flagship text. Traction is (as of this millisecond in Amazon’s book rankings) #1 in Entrepreneurship, #5 in Management and #14 in Leadership & Motivation. It’s sold more than a million copies. Spawned companion texts like Get a Grip and Rocket Fuel. And its methods are used by more than 80,000 companies.
Including us, here at estound.
So what is EOS?
According to the copy on the jacket, EOS is a “practical method for achieving the business success you’ve always envisioned” by strengthening the six key components of your company.
And it works. We know.
But there’s another reason we choose to practice it:
It’s the perfect partner to a different three-letter acronym that helps businesses succeed: UMS.
UMS stands for Unified Marketing System. It’s our own proprietary, unique, sustainable, scalable method for helping Marketing teams achieve real business goals. Where EOS has six dimensions, UMS has 13 steps. And each one is complementary to core EOS concepts like data scorecards, Meeting Pulses and 90-day Rocks.
It’s like the two systems were made for each other.
Maybe you’re a marketer running a department in an organization that’s suddenly buying into EOS. Or maybe you’re a founder who’s implementing the EOS and needs a deep dive into the role marketing plays.
Either way, this series of blog posts is for you.
We’ll explain why the UMS fits neatly into EOS, who is accountable for it, what the fastest ways are to get going, and how to ensure it all runs smoothly.
But first, let’s talk about when.
(Besides “right now,” that is.)
UMS isn’t just a system. It’s a Rock.
Arguably the best thing about EOS is its method for assigning and managing accountability. No one gets to set out an unrealistic mission statement and walk away. And no one gets to kick the can down the road. Leadership team members come together once every 90 days to establish what the organization’s priorities are and assign ownership for each of them.
These 90-day goals are called “Rocks.” And they must be specific and measurable. After 90 days, the owner of each Rock has to report that the Rock was completed, or explain what went wrong.
In many organizations, Marketing has a hard time defining what its Rocks are. Its goals are either too subjective. (“Increase brand consistency across all channels!”) Or too interwoven with factors beyond its control. (“Reduce customer dissatisfaction!”) But UMS, with its focus on metrics like Lifetime Value of a Customer (LTV) and Cost to Acquire a Customer (CAC), fits perfectly in this 90-day framework.
And one of your very first Rocks could be implementing the UMS system itself. (For a breakdown of how this can be done, check out the implementation page on the UMS website or this more detailed syllabus.) So when you walk out of your first 90-day leadership meeting, your list of priorities might include:
- Approve and Launch Social Video Campaign
- Cull list of potential marketing agencies to three
- Complete the 13 steps of the UMS
The 13th and last step of the UMS involves choosing concrete metrics that Marketing can be held accountable for. And if the rest of the leadership team is aligned with your choices, you can use them to establish a natural cadence of reporting.
At the second 90-day meeting you can share your baselines.
At the third, you can report on the improvements Marketing has made.
And so on.
UMS provides a path for measuring and achieving success within the overarching framework of EOS. So you’ll identify exactly who has LMA over Marketing and the important disciplines within .
Hold up, what’s LMA? (Besides another three-letter acronym.)
Business people love their org charts. And EOS is no different. But the way in which it uses the standard org chart is a little different. Instead of siloing people by tactical function and reporting structures, it uses the org chart to establish short-term accountability and show how accountability and leadership flow through an organization.
Within each core area of the business, EOS demands that we identify someone with “LMA,” which stands for Leading, Managing and Accountability.
It’s human nature to assume the person with LMA in Marketing is the CMO or VP of Marketing. But UMS can help you dive deeper – and assign accountability accurately. Your team might include:
- An executive lead with LMA for a team or project.
- An administrative lead with LMA for project schedules and delivery.
- A sales lead with LMA for SQLs and conversion.
- A creative lead with LMA over campaign launches and production.
- A financial lead with with LMA for key metrics like LTV and CAC.
Those are just a few examples. Different projects might require different roles. So it’s best to fill out a Marketing Dossier ahead of time. (You can download a template on our website!)
Getting on track with EOS, ASAP.
Placement pros will tell you that when you get a new job, you should look for a quick win, something that gets you noticed within the first 90 days.
Well, the same is true when your organization gets a new operating system.
Making UMS part of your 90-day Meeting Pulse is one win, for sure. But there are lots of other fast ways to improve your department’s performance and reputation within the guardrails of the EOS. And we’ll share three of them in our next post.
Until then, feel free to spend time with some of those unread business books on your shelf. You never know what you might find.
