Repping SystemOne: A Bootstrapped & Profitable Winner In Their Niche

SystemOne is a leading artist booking and tour planning platform designed specifically for the live music and entertainment industry.

Their story begins with founders Martijn Kers and Bartho Valk, two childhood friends from the Netherlands who started out making electronic music on a Commodore Amiga computer when they were just 12 years old.

After producing 20+ successful EPs and getting burned by the business side of the music industry, Martijn and Bartho saw a big gap in the market. While visiting a booking agency, they noticed the booking agents were still using a paper calendar and a Rolodex to manage international tours.

Having completed their studies, they drew on their new skills to start building a bespoke digital system for artist booking agents to manage their contacts, contracts, and itineraries.

They quit their day jobs and began visiting agencies face-to-face, jotting down their detailed scenarios and pain points. In 2007, they officially launched SystemOne.

Martijn Kers

Founder @ SystemOne

“I sat down with Bartho like, 'Hey, you have that job, I have this job... why don't we try to see if we can make money selling subscriptions to this software that I already developed?' So yeah, we both quit our jobs... and then we were working at my kitchen table in Amsterdam. Bartho drove around the Netherlands in my beat-up old car, visiting customers face to face who were all very interested in getting this software because there was nothing for them.”

Today, the platform is an industry standard used by boutique agencies and massive tour booking companies alike. Built on 19+ years of continuous, high-quality development, SystemOne has outlasted well-funded competitors by focusing relentlessly on user feedback and product excellence.

Empact Challenge

SystemOne came to Empact Partners at a pivotal moment. They had built a world-class product, but they needed to modernize their marketing engine to match the quality of their software.

Their "Zero-Marketing" Success Story

SystemOne had grown almost entirely through word-of-mouth and grassroots networking within the tightly knit music industry. They also have an almost-complete CRM and segmented sales pipeline with new outreach campaigns running continuously.

Martijn Kers

Founder @ SystemOne

“Over all the years that we've been doing SystemOne... we've always really worked on the product and tried to make it better. Marketing has always been a lower priority.”

They started rebranding near the end of 2024, and were referred to Empact Partners to create website copy alongside the design team at Konpo.

Translating 19 Years Of Deep Industry Knowledge Into Web Copy

SystemOne was preparing for a major software rebrand and a brand-new website launch. The software is so robust that explaining what it does concisely was pretty challenging.

The founders needed a team to translate their deep industry knowledge into clear, benefit-driven website copy without overwhelming potential users with endless feature lists.

Bartho Valk

Co-Owner @ SystemOne

“Empact really helped us to translate many of the workflows and features that we offer, into easy-to-digest copy, that really addresses the needs and pain points of our diverse audience, showcasing the value of our platform.”

International Customer Base

As a winner in their category, SystemOne has a diverse customer base — many of whom Martijn and Bartho know personally and communicate with on a regular basis.

For Dutch and Belgian customers, the comms are in Dutch. For German customers, Kevin (one of their Dealmakers) handles German comms. French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese — all these international customers are treated with localized communications.

Localizing the website not only made sense from a business perspective, but also from an SEO perspective.

Empact Roadmap

To solve these challenges, Empact Partners integrated directly with the SystemOne team, acting as an extension of their business to overhaul their messaging, website structure, and customer outreach.

We joined their weekly standups, and created an internal weekly sync with their two founders.

Having direct communication with the founders meant quick and informed decision-making from the get-go, with weekly iterations on their Empact plan.

Deep-Dive Customer Research & Case Studies

You can’t market to the music industry without understanding its nuances. The Empact team spearheaded an extensive customer research initiative, conducting one-on-one interviews with some of SystemOne’s top customers — from one-man techno agencies in Germany to major jazz agencies in the US.

This resulted in a series of compelling customer case studies that highlighted exact use cases, proving SystemOne's value to different agency types.

Sharné McDonald

Senior SaaS GTM Consultant @ Empact Partners

“SystemOne’s customer stories created a baseline for our understanding of the product and niche. Most marketers build ICPs based on primary research, but nothing beats the empirical value of speaking to real customers.”

Structuring The Narrative & Feature Pages

Instead of listing every single capability on the website — which could overwhelm potential users — Empact worked with the SystemOne team to group features into logical, intent-driven umbrellas.

We helped them condense a massive list of technical capabilities into a dozen core product and solutions pages.

We realized what connects every role in the music industry is their passion for music. The more we could bring that passion across, the more valuable it would be. It was about translating two decades of industry savvy into clear and succinct website copy.

Sharné McDonald

Senior SaaS GTM Consultant @ Empact Partners

“As bootstrapped founders, Martijn and Bartho were personally invested in every aspect of our collaboration. This made it easy for us to glean information from them whenever we found a knowledge gap.”

Finding The Right Tone Of Voice

Empact developed a unique content style guide that captured the essence of SystemOne. Because the entertainment industry is super informal — where deals are often struck in dark clubs at 7:00 AM after a big event — Empact ensured the new website copy was professional yet relatable to industry insiders.

The SystemOne team were also recruited to add their expertise to the new website copy and blogs, bringing a recognizable flavor to all of their new content.

We also project-managed the entire localization process, making sure that none of the SystemOne flavor is lost in translation.

Building Rapport On Reviews Sites

Empact strategized a B2B user reviews campaign (leveraging platforms like Gartner/Capterra) to bolster the website’s authority and build public credibility alongside the new brand launch.

Martijn Kers

Founder @ SystemOne

"The way I imagined a collaboration with Empact is that a lot of time would go into helping them understand exactly what it is that we do. It’s very useful that we make all of this content... it also forces us to think differently about our business, and that’s also very interesting."

Reddit Marketing

Beyond having a new site and backlinks from external sources, SystemOne needed valuable UGC to grow their share of voice in online spaces. One of the most important rooms on the internet right now is Reddit.

Reddit UGC is cited extensively in AI engines and used to train Google’s LLMs. People were already asking questions that SystemOne could answer — but they just weren’t mentioned in those conversations. That’s where we stepped in and started gaining ground for SystemOne.

Vlad Shvets

Founder & CEO @ Empact Partners

"We started ideating and building our own GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) tools the moment we realized SEO tools like Ahrefs weren’t enough. At first, we built matrices in Google Sheets, but soon we learned how to design and iterate robust agentic software using AI. That’s part of how Qvery came to life."

Social Media Marketing

A small but important share of SystemOne’s Empact plan was to revive their LinkedIn page. As a growing, remote company with a diverse team, Martijn and Bartho knew they would need to hire soon. Even further into the future, they wanted a “proof of life” track record for future investors or buyers.

So, our work with social media marketing was cut out for us: showcase their work, their product, and their team culture — and serve it with that unmistakable SystemOne flavor.

Building Sales Agents

SystemOne’s biggest sales arm is ABM (account-based marketing). We tried different approaches and conducted micro-experiments to see how we could help them accelerate their sales pipeline.

Most recently, we built a bespoke prospecting agent for SystemOne, which runs in the background while we all go about our day-to-day.

SystemOne’s case is one of our favorite customer stories because:

• We’ve been collaborating with the founders since Day One.
• We’re completely integrated into their team.
• We could approach their GTM holistically rather than focusing on only one or two workstreams.
• They have a genuine winner in their SaaS market niche.
• There are still so many growth opportunities!

Does their story resonate with you and your product? Reach out to us to find out how we could partner up and launch your GTM strategy.