The Eight-Step Roadmap to Making Your Message Stick (Beyond the Six-Step Process)

You figured out your differentiation strategy. Great. Now comes the hard part.

Most companies do the work to find their message, then watch it die on the vine. They create three or four remarkables, get excited, roll them out, and then... nothing. They move on to the next thing. Back to business as usual.

That's why most differentiation efforts fail. Not because the strategy was wrong. But because nobody executed.

Here's the truth: creating your message is maybe 20% of the work. The other 80% is making it stick throughout your entire organization and keeping it alive quarter after quarter.

This is where EOS companies have an advantage. You know how to execute. You have your scorecard, your rocks, your L10 meetings. You know process matters.

So here's your eight-step roadmap to make sure your differentiation strategy actually works.

Step 1: Burn the Boats

Partial commitment produces partial results.

Entrepreneurs are doers. When we have an idea, we want to take action immediately. We're the poster children for "Ready, Fire, Aim." That approach works for a lot of things.

Not this.

Figure out your differentiation strategy. Then commit to it completely. No hedging. No "let's try this and see what happens." This is what you're doing. This is your new direction. This is where you're headed.

Think about Hernando Cortez (okay, it's probably not a true story, but stay with me). When he landed on the shores of the Aztec Empire, he burned the ships. His message to his men was crystal clear: there's no going back. It's either victory or nothing.

That's the level of commitment you need. You can't straddle the line with one foot in your old story and one foot in your new one. Your prospects will smell the uncertainty. Your team will treat it like another passing fad.

Do it or do not. There is no try.

Step 2: Get Everybody on the Bus

Marketing isn't something your marketing person does. It's something your entire company lives.

When you Alchemyze your business, you're changing how everyone talks about what you do. Sales needs to be on board. Customer service needs to be on board. Operations needs to be on board. Even accounting needs to know the story.

If your people aren't on board with where you're headed, they need to find another bus.

But here's the thing. Don't expect this to happen overnight. You can't just announce your new differentiation strategy in one meeting and expect everyone to get it. It takes time to turn the Titanic around.

You'll need multiple meetings. You'll need to continually reinforce the message. And you're not looking for compliance. You need real buy-in.

Most entrepreneurs constantly roll out new initiatives. Your team has seen this before. They know if they ignore it long enough, the new fad will go away and everything will return to normal.

That's why burning the boats matters. You must believe and live out the reality that this is the new normal. This is how you do things from now on.

Lead by example. Use the language. Tell the stories. Live the differentiation.

Step 3: Take It for a Test Drive

Before you roll out your message to the world, test it with real people.

Try it out with your best clients. Get feedback from select new prospects. Have your sales team use it in a few pitches and report back on what resonated and what fell flat.

Run some limited ads. Do a few rounds of A/B testing with your website header. Change one word and see if it makes a difference. The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

Sometimes tweaking one word changes everything. You think people kinda get it. Then you adjust something small and suddenly they really get it.

Get that immediate, raw feedback from the people you're trying to connect with. Then adjust before you go all in.

Step 4: Create Collateral

You have the battle plan. Now you need to equip your people to do battle.

This is where most companies drop the ball. They create the strategy, then expect everyone to just figure out how to use it. That doesn't work.

Create the tools your people need. Talking points for customer service reps. New scripts. White papers for downloads. Images for social media posts. Videos for email campaigns. Infographics for prospects. Landing pages. Brochures. More videos. Customer testimonials.

Each remarkable you create can be rolled out across multiple media over a 90-day campaign cycle. White paper. Video. Infographic. Webinar. Email sequence. One-pager. Social posts. You drive it home using multiple tools.

Do the work. Make the stuff. Give your team what they need to spread your story far and wide.

Step 5: Pour Gas on the Fire

Once you know your message works, invest in it.

Notice I said invest, not spend. There's a difference.

Make sure you've tested everything first. You know the right words, the right messages, the right mediums. You've validated that it connects with your prospects. Your close rate is climbing.

Now, at that point, throw gasoline on the fire.

Don't skimp on the graphic designer. Don't cheap out on sales brochures. Open up the ad spending faucet. Invest real money in your differentiation strategy.

But only after you know it works. Too many companies pour money into marketing before they've figured out their message. That's just burning cash. Get the strategy right first. Then amplify it.

Step 6: Track It

Make sure the numbers justify the investment.

You're not throwing marketing dollars into a dark hole and praying something happens. You have data to prove you're doing it right and it's working.

Track your marketing KPIs weekly. Not monthly. Weekly. The faster you can see whether numbers are going up or down, the sooner you can respond. The quicker your response, the faster you'll grow.

What are you tracking? Close rate. Average deal size. Time to close. Referral rate. Cost per lead. Website engagement. Email open rates. Whatever matters for your business.

Let the data point you to how to do it even better. If something's not working, you'll know fast. If something's crushing it, you'll know that too. Then you can double down on what works.

Step 7: 1% Better

Never stop improving.

There's a concept from the book Atomic Habits: if you get just 1% better every day, by the end of a year, you'll be 38 times better than you are today. Those little improvements add up.

Always be finding ways to improve. Tweak your emails. Try a different opener in your sales scripts. Test a new headline. Adjust the wording on your landing page.

No matter how good your marketing efforts are, they can always be better.

Don't rest on your laurels. Don't ever feel like you've arrived and can put marketing on autopilot. Keep adjusting. Keep improving. Keep testing. Week after week after week.

Step 8: The Red Queen's Race

Roll out a new remarkable every 90 days.

Remember Alice in Wonderland? In the sequel, Alice runs alongside the Red Queen. They run as fast as they can, but when they stop, they're in the exact same place they started.

Alice is confused. The Queen explains: "Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that."

That's competition. You have to run as fast as you can just to keep up with the other guys. You have to run twice that fast to get ahead.

You can't give more than 100% effort. So to really pull ahead, to put yourself in another league altogether, you need to roll out new remarkables multiple times a year. Every 90 days.

Too many companies create three or four remarkables, then stop. They rest on their laurels. They think they can keep doing the same thing and continue to scale.

But here's what happens. Your competitors see your success. They start copying your ideas. That auto parts distributor who printed his catalog on neon pink paper? Soon, three other distributors were using neon paper too.

You can't stop rolling out new remarkables. You have to run as fast as you can just to keep your position in the pack.

Look at Amazon. Look at Apple. Look at Coca-Cola. These companies didn't reach success and stop. They kept finding ways to raise the bar.

You don't need to be Amazon or Apple. But you can be the Amazon or Apple in your market. Keep raising the bar. Keep being remarkable.

Roll out a new remarkable every quarter. If you do that, you'll soon be so far ahead of the pack that they can never hope to close the gap.

The Execution Gap Is Where Companies Die

Vision without execution is just hallucination.

You can have the best differentiation strategy in the world. You can identify your perfect client, solve their core problems in remarkable ways, and craft a compelling story. But if you don't execute, none of it matters.

This is where running on EOS gives you an edge. You already have a system for execution. You have accountability. You have rocks. You have weekly meetings where you track metrics and solve issues.

Use that system to execute your differentiation strategy. Put it in your scorecard. Make it a rock. Track it in your L10s.

Companies that differentiate and then execute on that differentiation consistently? They dominate their markets. Everyone else wonders how they got so lucky.

It's not luck. It's commitment. It's execution. It's doing the work week after week, quarter after quarter.

So don't just create your differentiation strategy and hope for the best. Follow these eight steps. Burn the boats. Get everyone on board. Test it. Build the collateral. Invest in it. Track it. Improve it. And keep rolling out new remarkables every 90 days.

That's how you make your message stick. That's how you become the obvious choice in your market.

Now go execute.