Why Most EOS® Marketing Strategies Miss the Mark—and How to Align Yours for Real Traction

One of the most overlooked but transformative tools in the EOS Toolbox™ is the Marketing Strategy section of your Vision/Traction Organizer® (V/TO). In my work with leadership teams, this component often starts off unclear, scattered, or riddled with marketing jargon. But when we get it right, it becomes a focused, aligned, and deeply resonant engine for growth — a way to magnetically attract your ideal clients.

Here’s how to build a marketing strategy that’s both practical and powerful by dialing in your Target Market, 3 Uniques, Proven Process and Guarantee.

Focus on Your Target Market

Your Target Market is not just “anyone who needs what we sell.” It’s a specific, clearly defined group of people or organizations that are a perfect fit for your product or service. It’s who you love working with and who loves working with you.

In the EOS world, this clarity drives every marketing and sales decision. Instead of chasing everyone, we focus on attracting the right ones. That’s how you build something scalable, sustainable, and profitable.

When I coach sessions, I push teams to get 3 things right; Geographic, Demographic, and Psychographics or behavioral. It’s not a limiting view, it's an acceleration to their sweet spot. I’m often reminding them, just because you can it doesn’t mean you should. Your Target Market becomes a Focus Filter™ for decisions around right fit clients. 

How Narrow is Your Target Market

Determining your Target Market isn’t about narrowing your opportunities — it’s about eliminating the noise. The goal is simple: identify the types of clients who are the right fit for your business so you can stop trying to be everything to everyone.

When we walk through this in a session, I ask teams to reflect on two key questions:

1. Who do we love working with?
2. Who loves working with us — and pays us what we’re worth?

From there, we look at patterns. Start by analyzing your top 10 clients. What do they have in common? Consider:

• Geography or time zone
• Industry or vertical
• Company size or stage
• Pain points they consistently face
• Mindset (e.g., growth-oriented, values-aligned, tech-forward)

The clearer you get, the more focus your team will have. Marketing becomes more effective, sales cycles get shorter, and operational delivery improves, all because everything is tailored for the right audience.

This Target Market definition becomes part of your Vision/Traction Organizer® (V/TO®). We’re not looking for clever personas or buzzwords. Instead we’re building a shared understanding across the organization of who we are trying to attract. When that’s Shared by All, alignment follows naturally.

The 3 Uniques that Set Your Business Apart

Once you know who you're talking to, the next step is to define why they should choose you. EOS teaches the concept of the 3 Uniques — three simple, authentic reasons your business is different and better than the competition. To choose your 3 Uniques, start by asking what consistently sets you apart in the eyes of your best-fit clients. These aren’t marketing slogans — they’re the real, lived reasons people choose to work with you and stay with you. Look at your team, your culture, your approach, your service model. Then test each Unique against three filters: Is it true? Is it consistently delivered? And does it matter to your Target Market? When you land on the right three, you’ve got a simple, memorable way to position your company with confidence and clarity. It’s not one Unique that is the differentiation, it's the three coming together.

The magic happens when these 3 Uniques are clearly understood by your team, baked into your marketing, and used as the foundation for sales conversations. When you communicate the 3 Uniques effectively, they combine to form a unique value proposition no one else can replicate. That alignment creates traction — because everyone is selling the same story.

Pro Tip - When organizing your Uniques start with the head nodder that gets your listener buying in. The second Unique is the bridge and often truly starts their curiosity. And the third and final Unique is the “mic drop” which results in “Tell me more.” I like to record this section as often when we are doing this work someone will have a brilliant riff and then we are excited and ask them to say that again but we missed it. 

Proven Process is your Client Journey

Your Proven Process is a simple visual representation of the client journey. Think of it as your step-by-step roadmap that shows prospects exactly how you’ll deliver value. It builds confidence because it proves you’ve done this before. It also aligns expectations and reduces friction for both the buyer and your internal teams.

Every time I see a company finally put their Proven Process into play — whether in a pitch deck, on their website, or on a single page  — it creates a shift. Clients buy with more confidence. Teams sell with more clarity. Leaders feel more control.

The Guarantee or Promise

Only about 50% of the time, companies running on EOS utilize a guarantee. And often the companies that create guarantees only use them as a last resort to save a client. My experience has been that a great guarantee does two things: it challenges your business to be better and simultaneously challenges the market to respond. When it works, it removes sales barriers and helps with client retention. Often companies think a guarantee has to be “or your money back.” Often that isn’t what your clients are looking for. They are just looking for you as a provider/partner to have “skin in the game.” 

Putting It All Together: The EOS Marketing Strategy

When the Target Market, 3 Uniques, Proven Process and Guarantee live on your V/TO, your business can stop guessing. Instead, you align your message, your methods, and your people around a core strategy that works, because it’s rooted in who you are and who you serve best.

I like to remind teams: marketing isn’t magic. It’s alignment. In a world of noise, your EOS Marketing Strategy helps you stand out with clarity. If your leadership team can articulate these three components confidently, you’ve already built the foundation for sustainable growth. The rest is just execution — and that’s where Ninety can help.

Ninety gives your team one place to define and align on your Marketing Strategy by embedding your Target Market, 3 Uniques, and Proven Process directly into the Vision/Traction Organizer® (V/TO®). With everything documented, shared, and visible across the organization, your marketing becomes focused, consistent, and built for traction. Log into Ninety to start documenting your Marketing Strategy now!

Let’s go build great organizations.