KEY TAKEAWAYS
Scale a system only when it is producing real results, the model has been proven, and you have resources to maintain quality at higher volume. The three ways to scale are adding channels, adding segments, or repurposing content. Do not scale a broken system, because you will just get more brokenness. Watch for warning signs like lead volume rising while conversion drops, and pause to fix what is broken before pushing more volume through.
A webinar client I worked with had something that looked like a success story from the outside. They were putting on webinars as thought leadership, getting decision-makers from Fortune 500 companies in front of the speakers. Email list growing by thousands monthly. Attendance numbers strong. Open rates healthy. The recorded versions pulling thousands of views each. On paper, the whole program looked like it was working.
The problem was that none of it was closing business.
What had happened was that they had built half a funnel. The webinars themselves were excellent: compelling content that positioned the company as expert. But everything past that point was missing. After a webinar ended, they would cold-call every attendee, which annoyed people who signed up for education and had not asked to be sold to. When they did not cold-call, they sent generic mass newsletters to the whole list with no personalization for role, industry, or where someone was in the buying process. There was no qualification, no nurturing, no attempt to meet anyone where they were. A funnel built that way cannot convert the interest it is generating at the top.
They had scaled the top of the funnel beautifully while the rest of the machine was still missing. They were generating leads and doing nothing with them.
When Not to Scale
This is the most important section in this article because most companies get this wrong.
Do not scale a broken system. You will just get a bigger version of what was already failing. If your current system has low conversion rates and you add more traffic, you will have more traffic at the same low conversion rate, at greater expense. If response time is slow and you generate more leads, you will have more leads waiting in the queue. If quality is declining, more volume will make it decline faster.
The conditions that tell you a system is not ready to scale tend to be consistent. The current version is not producing results. The underlying model has not been proven. You do not have the resources to maintain quality if volume goes up by an order of magnitude. All three of those suggest you have more work to do before you push the pedal down.
What most companies mistake for a need to scale is really a need to fix something. The webinar client thought they needed more webinars. What they needed was a complete follow-up system downstream of the webinars. Scaling the webinars would have been the wrong move. Completing the funnel was the right one.
When to Scale and How to Know You Are Ready
Three conditions need to be met before a system is truly ready to scale. The current version is producing real results. The underlying model has been proven: you know why it works and could explain it to someone else. And you have the resources to maintain quality if the volume increases ten times over.
If all three are true, scaling will produce compounding returns. If any of them is missing, scaling will produce compounding problems.
The best time to build your next system is before you need it. One company had built their entire lead generation strategy around in-person events: industry conferences, trade shows, networking dinners. That was the entire pipeline. Then 2020 happened and for two and a half years they could not do any of it. The businesses that had built digital presence alongside their events made it through. The ones that had not lost ground.
The lesson applies broadly. When a system is working, that is when to think about what comes next. Not in panic mode when the current thing is breaking. In calm mode when you have the space to think strategically.
The Three Moves That Drive Scaling
When a system is truly ready to scale, three moves do most of the heavy lifting.
Add new channels. Once one channel is working reliably, add another that complements it. A LinkedIn program often expands into email. An email program often adds paid ads to amplify what is already landing. A webinar program often extends into podcasts or long-form newsletters to reach people who would not sit through a live event. The key is choosing the new channel based on whether it reaches more of the audience or reinforces what is already working.
Add new segments. Once you have nailed one buyer persona, the next move is targeting an adjacent one. The product is the same. The message has to change to fit the new audience. The campaign that worked for VPs of Operations may need different hooks for IT Directors at the same companies, even though both end up buying the same thing. Segmentation can run by role, by industry, by company size, or by position in the buying journey. The more relevant the segmentation gets, the better the performance tends to be.
Repurpose content. Most of the work in producing content sits in the original creation. Once that work is done, the same piece of content can usually become many forms. A single hour-long webinar becomes a written summary, a series of social clips, a multi-email sequence, a podcast episode, and a downloadable lead magnet. Building once and distributing in many places is one of the few true economies of scale available to a content program.
Ready to evolve your system?
This article covers scaling. The book covers building the first system and maintaining it over time as your business and market change.
Download the free book →What Breaks When You Scale Wrong
A handful of patterns usually signal that a system has outgrown itself or is starting to break under the weight of what you have put on it.
Lead volume going up while conversion rates stay flat or decline means something in the middle or bottom of the funnel has stopped working at the new scale. The sales team is overwhelmed. The response time is too slow. The nurture sequence is not designed for the volume. Response rates dropping steadily over time means the messaging has gone stale or the audience has been over-emailed. The team being unable to keep up with what the system is generating means processes that worked at lower volume have become bottlenecks at the new one.
Quality declining as you push for higher volume is the most common sign of trouble. Customer complaints rising is the lagging indicator that confirms it. When you see these signs, pause and audit. Whatever is breaking needs to be fixed before any further scaling, because scaling a broken thing only produces more breakage faster.
Make it a habit to step back and evaluate the system as a whole once a quarter rather than only looking at individual campaigns. The questions are always the same. What is working that you should be doing more of? What is not working that you should fix or stop? What has changed in your audience, your market, or your competition that the system is not yet accounting for? Where is the biggest current bottleneck? What is one thing you could add or improve in the next ninety days?
You do not need to overhaul everything every quarter. You do need to pay attention at the system level, because systems decay, markets shift, and what worked beautifully last year may not work next year without telling you.
