By: Gesche Haas, Founder & CEO of Dreamers & Doers
For founders, it’s easy to buy into the idea that marketing more may lead to greater success. More channels, more posting, more tactics… it can seem like it might all add up to stronger returns, right?
More can be more, but it isn’t always. A bigger unlock might actually come when leaders commit to building systems, prioritizing measurement, and focusing their marketing channels. Many founders don’t struggle with marketing because they lack creativity. Instead, they may encounter challenges due to a lack of systems.
These founders and leaders from the Dreamers & Doers community started their marketing strategies based on intuition, energy, or visibility, but learned along the way that structure and focus can play an important role in connecting with the right potential customers. Keep reading to learn more about the strategies they used to help elevate their marketing.
Build Systems Before You Scale Actively
Unfortunately, no amount of energy or inspiration can consistently sustain a company’s entire marketing engine. In fact, before those elements can fully support growth, basic systems often need to be in place.
“I shifted from custom, one-off execution to a repeatable onboarding and phased process designed to support the results clients were hiring us for,” says Natalie Nicole, CEO and founder of Impackedful Creative. “That change aligned expectations, improved the outcomes we delivered, and made both client success and internal execution more consistent and easier to scale over time.”
This strategic adjustment and renewed focus on systems helped the team align expectations and make results repeatable. Most importantly, they created a stronger foundation for future scaling.
Clara Ma took similar measures to systemize marketing at Ask a Chief of Staff. As founder and CEO, Ma once maintained plans and calendars in her head, with no way to track them or communicate.
“Once I owned that gap, we built a simple marketing operating rhythm: clear deadlines, tagged links for every channel, a metrics review, and a lightweight dashboard that I revisit every Monday,” Ma says. “Within a quarter, we doubled down on the channels that were clearly driving member applications and search leads. We also began to see growth with less effort.”
The new systems at Ask a Chief of Staff aren’t complicated. Founders don’t need to engineer something complex to improve their marketing. For Amanda Hofman, Chief Swag Officer of Go to Market, it was about moving from vibes to consistency.
The resulting data put Hofman and her team in a better position to scale because marketing becomes easier when decisions are guided less by intuition and more by structured processes. Still, systems alone aren’t enough. Without measurement, founders may not fully understand what’s working.
If You Don’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It
Establishing metrics as part of a marketing system turns the process from guessing into learning. It helps clarify what the audience wants, what they need, and how the business can more effectively meet them where they are with its value proposition.
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” says Leap_year founder and CEO Evan Sargent. “Putting tracking systems in place for our marketing kept us accountable to our goals and helped us better understand how our efforts connected to results.”
Even seasoned marketers accustomed to tracking data for clients can lose sight of the importance of measurement in their own businesses. Marketing strategist Julie Zhu knows that struggle well.
“I used to underestimate how much a simple tracking system would help my own marketing,” Zhu says. “I always set KPIs for clients, but for myself, I mostly relied on referrals and didn’t treat my marketing as a real priority. Once I picked a few focused marketing priorities and tracked a couple of metrics, it became clearer what was resonating, and I started working more efficiently.”
When goal setting and tracking become part of the daily rhythm, it can significantly influence marketing outcomes. Project management tools may help support this shift. Catharine Montgomery, founder and CEO of Better Together Agency, encourages leaders to embed goals and measurements into team spaces with tools like Asana and Notion.
Since doing so, “our team sees goals and metrics right in their workspace every day,” Montgomery says.
If you’re unsure where to start with data-driven marketing, begin by tracking just a few key signals consistently. Over time, you may identify which channels are worth your time and which may not be as effective.
Focus on the Channels That Actually Work for You
When founders stop copying everyone else, the results of their marketing efforts can improve. You don’t need to be everywhere for everyone. Instead, it can be more effective to focus energy and resources on the channels that tend to deliver stronger results for your business.
“I noticed I was looking sideways, trying to import marketing strategies that were working for my peers instead of trusting my own wiring,” says executive coach Katharine Campbell Hirst. “When I reset and doubled down on what’s natural to me and the ways I most naturally build depth and attract thoughtful, ambitious women into my orbit, the shift was noticeable. I saw warmer leads, faster trust, and clients who arrived already aligned.”
Founder and executive coach Gretchen Rickards had to learn a similar lesson after concentrating most of her marketing efforts online in her earlier years of entrepreneurship.
“Early in my business, I over-relied on online presence and social media, assuming visibility alone would generate growth,” she says. “What I underestimated was the value of in-person speaking and relationship-based networking. When I shifted my focus toward showing up consistently in the right rooms and investing in genuine connections, my revenue increased significantly.”
Doing everything that the competition is doing can also be unsustainable, making it potentially counterproductive for founders who try to keep up with every trend.
“For a while, I was able to keep up, but what I didn’t understand yet was that my energy moves in ebbs and flows,” says Emily Dick, brand strategist and director of Unbuttoned Brands. “I have high-capacity moments where ideas pour out of me and periods where I need a lot of rest. When I ignored my internal rhythm, I would burn out. The shift happened when I stopped asking, ‘What’s the most effective marketing strategy?’ and started asking, ‘What’s sustainable for me?’”
Dick stopped sending a weekly newsletter and switched to biweekly, designed a static nine-grid Instagram feed to reduce the pressure to constantly create, and leaned into long-form content. Dream clients began to follow over time.
The ideal marketing strategy doesn’t have to be the most aggressive one. When you align channels with both results and personal rhythm, marketing becomes something you can sustain for years, not just weeks.
All individuals featured in this article are members of Dreamers & Doers, a highly curated community and PR Hype Machine™ amplifying extraordinary women entrepreneurs and leaders through authentic connections, credibility-boosting visibility, and opportunities that support ambitious goals. (Learn more about membership here.)
