Build your first marketing system

You can't scale your business without it

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Hey there - it's Brian šŸ‘‹

I have a confessionā€¦

Iā€™m a bit of a control freak.

Iā€™m obsessed with making sure everyone who works with me has a 10x better experience than anyone else theyā€™ve worked with.

But quality is hard to scale!

So how do you scale?

Everyone tells you to delegate.

But I think thatā€™s missing the point.

See, no one knows your business as well as you do. Itā€™s your baby.

So Iā€™d rather talk about ā€œsystems.ā€

Systems are just delegating AND the processes + tech that keep delegating at a high quality.

So today weā€™ll cover:

  • How I got over my fear of delegation to build my first system

  • A peek behind the scenes at one of my marketing systems (with processes I used at Deloitte)

  • How to build your first marketing systems (so your growth can scale without needing more of your time)

Letā€™s make your business an outlier: šŸ‘‡

How I got over my fear of delegation (& built systems)

So back to me being a control freak.

I take pride in incredible customer experience. So I worried that as I scale it would be harder to keep high quality.

But if I wanted to make my growth lessons accessible to 1M business owners I need to scale.

So when I was at Deloitte I built systems for Fortune 500s with growing pains. We called them ā€œOperating Models.ā€

They sound complex, but itā€™s just a map of the steps a company needs to do to hit their goals.

Iā€™ll give you a real example:
This SaaS company grew to over $1B in revenue, but their systems were terrible.

So bad that every monthā€¦ they asked customers for the wrong amount of money!

Customers left.

I built them this system so they can keep their customers as they scale.

And the process I used to build their system is the same process I use to make my own marketing systems (and systems for clients).

So the control freak in me can actually keep quality while we scale.

So what is a system?

A system is just a list of steps you need to do to make your goal a reality.

Itā€™s getting your business to operate like a conveyor belt.

Sure you can hand-make things.

But when you have more customers, you start to make mistakes and you canā€™t grow quickly.

So we need to know 3 things for each step in your conveyor belt:

1) Whatā€™s the action?
2) Who does it?
3) How?

Iā€™m a visual person so I love to see things in a process flow.

Example of a basic system in FigJam

In our case, what steps do you need to do to get customers on the internet?

šŸ§”šŸ»ā€ā™‚ļø Brianā€™s nerdy side rant:

I like to save ā€œby whenā€ for the details later on.

These systems get complex FAST.

But I wonā€™t judge if you repeatable deadlines in there too.

Example: ā€œevery Mondayā€¦ā€

How do you actually build marketing systems?

Systems can get complex fast.

So for marketing - always start with just one channel.

Get that channel to work. Then add on other parts later.

So for Marketing systems specifically thereā€™s 3 stages:

1) How do strangers on the internet find out about you?
Choose one channel to get strangers to find out about you:
ā€¢ LinkedIn/Twitter/Instagram
ā€¢ Ads
ā€¢ SEO

Vote at the end if you want an issue on choosing your channel.

But quick summary - 2 questions: Where are your customers? How long does it take to get the channel going?

2) How do you build their trust?
They wonā€™t buy if they donā€™t trust you.

ā€¢ So do you send them content?
ā€¢ Send them to a landing page with testimonials?
ā€¢ Send them to a video sales letter?

3) How do you get them to buy?
Now you ask them to send you money for your business.

ā€¢ Do it in your welcome sequence when they sign up for email?
ā€¢ Send them an offer in private message?
ā€¢ Get on the phone to give them an offer?

So list out the steps that you need to do to get customers through one channel.

Letā€™s do a simple system together: LinkedIn warm outreach.

To do LinkedIn warm outreach you need a few steps:
1) Find ideas
2) Draft post
3) Post to linkedin
4) Reach out to target customers who engage
5) Send an offer

I used FigJam below to visualize the process.

If youā€™re struggling to come up with these steps, ask ChatGPT to give you a first pass.

The 5 step process for LinkedIn warm outreach

So how do you build these systems yourself? Letā€™s get into it:

šŸ§”šŸ»ā€ā™‚ļø Brianā€™s nerdy side rant:
When strangers hear about you on different channels, they have different baseline levels of trust.

Extreme example:

TikTok: Lowest trust
YouTube: Highest trust

So depending on HOW people find out about you, youā€™ll need to add in more (or less) trust builders into your system.

So how do I do these systems for myself?

A lot of what I do as a CMO is build marketing systems for business owners.

Once they cross $3M in revenue businesses struggle to grow without proper marketing systems.

And they can get pretty complicated.

So Iā€™ll show you my own internal systems.

Iā€™ll show you my own funnel as an example:

My own marketing funnel

So how do I maintain quality?

Each step in the process I have a procedure in Notion (Iā€™ll use my content system as an example):

Hereā€™s the detailed how-tos so my team can run the content systems

Then each part of the system has a detailed step-by-step guide. Includes a video explanation and steps.

Iā€™ll use the LinkedIn review as an example.

This is an example of one specific how-to for my content system

Then whenever I catch a problem with quality, I update the procedure to fix it, then send a message to my team to train them on the update.

That way, I can still be a control freak. While we scale with quality.

Want your systems to look like mine?

I help business owners build their marketing systems to scale their business.

If youā€™d like to scale your digital marketing, letā€™s chat. Iā€™ll guide you through your first steps (for free).

If you liked this post, and donā€™t want to miss future issues, sign up for free:

If you found this helpful, please forward this email to 1 friend or colleague. They'll appreciate you and you'll help grow the community.

See you next Thursday šŸ‘‹

P.S. Whenever youā€™re ready, thereā€™s 3 ways I can help you:

1) Over $3M in revenue and want your own marketing plan (for free)?
At $3M+ you need marketing systems. All your marketing needs to come together or it eats too much of your time (and doesnā€™t scale).

Iā€™ll give you actionable feedback on your SEO, ads, socials, & landing pages.

Then, Iā€™ll explain your new marketing plan to actually get customers online.

2) Want 1:1 coaching to learn strategy & marketing?
Are you a product founder/business owner and need to understand growth?

Iā€™ll teach you: positioning, business strategy, and digital marketing.

3) Want your Google ads run for you?
If youā€™re not getting the results you want from Google Ads or want to explore ads to grow your business, get your ads done for you.

This team has managed $85M+ in ad spend for over 200 customers.

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