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Managing Marketing in the Early Days

Managing Marketing in the Early Days

Here's what it takes

John Wilson
January 21, 2026

At the “~$1.5M–$3M” stage, marketing stops being something you “do when you have time” and becomes a leadership bottleneck. The biggest winners in 2025 had a sound plan and a dedicated team that executed with precision.

Think about it this way: if you don’t delegate the coordination and execution of marketing early enough, it eats the owner alive and caps growth.

Today’s newsletter is all about shifting your mindset so you don’t fall prey to this common setback.

Check out these resources before we get started…

Are people growing tired of Google’s AI answers?
The last thing you want to do is burn cash on sales hires that don’t work out
Marketing leaders talk about their biggest priorities for 2026 (AI not included)
Here’s an alternate (and better) solution to generic outsourcing

Scale Marketing Past Yourself

Most owners don’t struggle because marketing “doesn’t work.” They struggle because marketing becomes another hat they can’t take off.

And once marketing depends on your time, your growth depends on your time too.

This week’s newsletter is about how to manage marketing when you’re still small, how to avoid becoming the bottleneck, and what it actually looks like to scale marketing past yourself without losing performance.

The Hidden Leak in Your Marketing Funnel

If you’re doing $10M+ and running ServiceTitan, you already have demand.

The problem is capture.

Missed calls. Slow follow-up. Weekend coverage gaps. Hold times. Every one of those issues turns paid leads into wasted spend.

Avoca fixes that.

Avoca is an AI + human call handling platform built for home service that manages the full booking workflow across inbound calls, web leads, outbound follow-up, SMS, dispatch, and CSR coaching.

And it performs.

One example: HL Bowman cut CSR headcount from 36 to 9, 4x’d web conversion, and dropped cost per conversion from $350 to $215 without increasing marketing spend or sacrificing CSAT.

If you want one AI partner (not 6 tools duct-taped together), start here.

Why This Remains a Problem

Marketing stays a problem in the early days because it doesn’t fail loudly. It fails quietly.

You still get some calls. You still get some jobs. The calendar looks “fine.” So you keep handling marketing the same way: whenever you have time.

That’s where most owners get stuck.

Marketing has two layers.

The first layer is strategy: what channels you run, what you spend, and what you want the market to believe about you.

The second layer is execution: budgets, tracking, reviews, creative updates, landing pages, follow-ups, attribution, vendor management, and constant tweaks.

Most owners can handle the strategy.

It’s the execution that breaks them.

Because marketing is never finished. It requires weekly attention. And if it only moves forward when you touch it, your growth becomes capped by your availability.

When Trouble Comes Into Play

Marketing becomes a constraint at a very specific stage of business growth.

It usually isn’t because ads “stop working.” It’s because the marketing workload expands faster than the owner’s capacity.

Here are the signals that show up again and again:

Most owners hit their first real ceiling around 3 technicians + 1 office person
By the time you reach 4 technicians, you’re typically sitting around $1.5M–$2M
As you push toward $3M–$5M, marketing stops being a weekly task and becomes a daily operating function

That’s where things break.

Because marketing has two jobs:

Create demand
Manage demand

Once you’re at this stage, you’re not just “running ads.”

You’re adjusting budgets, monitoring lead flow, managing reviews, tracking performance, tweaking offers, coordinating vendors, and making sure leads don’t die in the cracks.

One of the clearest signals is time.

At this stage, marketing starts consuming the majority of an owner’s time, even when results are strong. And if the owner owns marketing execution, the business can only grow as fast as the owner can keep up.

How to Overcome

If you’re still the person “running marketing,” you have an owner capacity problem.

The way out is not hiring a magical marketer or throwing more money at ads. The way out is building a marketing system that still performs when you’re not touching it every day.

Here’s the strategy that works in the early days.

1. Split Marketing Into Two Jobs: Strategy vs. Execution

Most owners keep these blended, which is why marketing eats their life.

Strategy is high-leverage: positioning, channels, budget ceilings, offers, creative direction
Execution is constant: budget changes, reviews, reporting, vendor follow-ups, posting, tracking, lead QA

Your goal is simple:

You keep strategy. You delegate execution.

Even 5 hours a week off your plate changes everything.

2. Create a “Marketing Operating System” Before You Hire a Marketer

You don’t need a marketing director first. You need marketing to be runnable by someone else.

Build a one-page system with four parts:

Inputs: what work happens weekly (reviews, posts, budget checks, lead quality)
Cadence: what happens daily vs. weekly vs. monthly
Scoreboard: what numbers matter most
Escalation rules: when something is “broken” and needs you

This prevents the classic failure:

You hire help. Results drop. You jump back in. You stay trapped.

3. Assign an “Owner of Execution”

Early on, the best hire is rarely a senior marketer.

It’s someone who can coordinate and keep things moving.

This person’s job is not brilliance. It’s consistency.

They manage:

Review generation and responses
Google Business Profile posting
Keeping ads and vendors accountable
Keeping your website updates moving
Catching problems before you find them in the bank account

Think of it like this:

Your first marketing hire is a project manager, not a genius.

4. Run Marketing Like a Production Line

The fastest way to stop marketing chaos is to standardize outputs.

Pick 3 weekly deliverables and never miss them:

3 Google Business Profile posts
20 review requests sent
1 offer or creative test launched
1 weekly reporting update

Marketing momentum compounds when it becomes routine.

Not when it becomes emotional.

5. Use Only Two Metrics to Manage Marketing at This Stage

Most owners get lost because they track too much.

Early on, you need two numbers:

Cost per booked call
Booked calls per week

That’s it.

Everything else is downstream.

If cost per booked call is stable and volume is rising, you’re winning.

If booked calls are falling, you have a lead flow issue.

If cost per booked call is rising, you have a conversion or targeting issue.

Simple metrics protect your time.

6. Add a Layer Before You Add Complexity

The mistake is trying to scale marketing with more channels.

Instead, scale with a layer. Scale with operational leverage in mind.

Before you add TikTok, SEO, LinkedIn, YouTube, and email, do this:

assign an execution owner
lock in cadence
lock in reporting
lock in accountability

Then you can add channels without adding chaos.

7. The “Promotion Path” That Makes Marketing Scale Past You

If you want marketing to fully leave your seat, this is the sequence:

Coordinator: keeps marketing moving, tracks tasks, updates GBP, manages reviews
Channel Owner (part-time contractor or agency): manages ads or SEO
Marketing Lead: owns the whole system and team

Most businesses fail because they skip step 1.

They hire a vendor, but no one internally owns execution.

So marketing becomes a messy inbox instead of a machine.

The goal isn’t to do more marketing. The goal is to make marketing easier to operate without you.

Keep Your Eyes Open

These are the mistakes that keep marketing stuck in the owner seat instead of turning into a scalable system:

Ignoring lead quality until the close rate drops
Adding more channels before the current ones are stable
Running ads without a weekly cadence, so performance drifts
Letting agencies “run things” with no internal owner of execution
Tracking too many metrics and missing the only ones that matter
Treating marketing like a side task instead of an operating function
Failing to define roles (strategy vs. execution vs. channel management)

Remember this: if marketing only works when you touch it, it’s not scaleable. Not now, not ever.

Get Booked Solid. Stay Booked Solid.

If you want a marketing plan you can actually run week to week, Booked Solid is for you.

Service Scalers is hosting a 2-day marketing workshop at Wilson’s HQ in Akron, OH (March 3–5, 2026) covering paid, organic, traditional, KPIs, lead handling, and your 90-day plan.

Only 30 seats. Grab yours now and use coupon code BOOKEDEARLYBIRD to save $500.

Pick one marketing task that currently lives in your head and turn it into a weekly system that someone else can run. Start with reviews and Google Business Profile activity because they compound fast and they’re easy to delegate. Write a simple checklist, assign an owner, and hold a 15-minute weekly review where you only look at two numbers: booked calls and cost per booked call.

If you do nothing else, do this. It’s real progress.

Apple | Spotify | YouTube

What do you think about today's "Clicks to Calls" newsletter?

👊 John

Disclosure: Some of the content and links in this newsletter are sponsored or affiliate links, which means we may receive payment or earn a commission if you click through or purchase. However, all opinions expressed are entirely my own.