Last updated on March 4th, 2025 at 07:00 am
Just being able to create a great product isn’t enough to grow a thriving business.
This is especially true if you’re in an industry with heavy competition, the potential to reach a large audience, and more questions than answers about how to finally break into the market.
And, in this guide, we’re going to break down 4 of the best, time-proven, cost-effective marketing strategies even beginners can use to crack into some of the most competitive markets online.
By the time you’re done reading, you’ll understand exactly how to implement the right marketing strategy to help get the word out about your offer — and drive more customers to your business.
Before we get into that, though…
What is a Marketing Strategy? (And What Isn’t?)
At the core of what we’re talking about with each of the ideas we’ll give you in this guide is a plan that helps you reach prospective consumers so you get an opportunity to convert them into customers.
This plan contains your brand’s value proposition, your messaging, information on your one perfect prospect or target customer, their demographics, and other key high-level components.
As a general rule, the plan covers the “4 P’s” of marketing:
- Product
- Price
- Place
- Promotion
The ultimate end goal for your marketing strategy should revolve around helping you communicate with your audience and sustain a competitive edge over rival businesses.
With that, though, comes a few common misconceptions.
First, a marketing strategy is NOT a one-time, rigid plan or unethical approach. It requires ongoing assessment, refinement, and optimization to be as effective as possible.
Second, a marketing strategy is NOT just a one-time promotional campaign or tactic. For instance, putting up a billboard or posting one Tweet isn’t a strategy.
Third, a marketing strategy is NOT a one-size-fits-all methodology. It’s impossible to apply a universal solution that works for every business and industry. This means your marketing strategy needs to be tailored to the specific needs, goals, and context of your business.
Once you understand what a good marketing strategy is — and what it isn’t — implementing each of the ideas below will help you lay the foundations for sustainable business growth, even if you’re brand new.
Strategy #1- Email Marketing
Email is one of the most powerful marketing channels you can use in your business.
It’s a type of direct marketing that utilizes email to stay in contact with your subscribers and customers.
Unlike marketing on social media platforms, email gives you full control over the content and delivery of your message while making it easier to keep people engaged with your brand.
It’s also one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies available.
Since email marketing gives you a one-to-one platform with your audience, it helps you cultivate a personal relationship with your leads.
And there’s a right way & a wrong way to implement it.
If you want to ensure you’re not just sending email after email, wondering why you aren’t getting results, it’s key that you plan out your strategy before you start implementing it.
To help you accomplish that, here’s a 3-month map you can focus on to increase the results you get from your email marketing efforts.
Month 1: Setup, Research, and Initial Engagement
The key to success with any marketing strategy you implement in your business revolves around the planning — and then execution — of the ideas you put together.
To start preparing your plan, there’s a handful of things you’ll want to do:
| Task | Objective | Actionable Steps and Description |
|---|---|---|
| Identify Target Audience | Define Your Audience | Research and identify core customer personas. |
| Set Goals | Align Marketing Efforts | Establish clear and measurable objectives. |
| Prepare Lead Magnets | Attract Subscribers | Create incentives like ebooks or webinars, challenges. |
| Choose Tools & Landing Pages | Capture Leads | Select ClickFunnels, design landing pages. |
| Setup Welcome Emails | Build Initial Connection | Develop a welcome email series for new subscribers. |
The goal here is to make sure you understand who it is you want to target with your marketing campaign before you begin rolling it out.
Then, you’ll want to create a set of goals that you intend to hit with the campaign to ensure that each action you take is moving you closer to hitting those goals.
You’ll want to prepare your lead magnets ahead of time so you’re able to attract subscribers with incentives that would entice them to join your email list.
These can be anything from challenges and webinars to eBooks, or other free resources.
You’ll also need to choose the tools or software you’re going to use to capture leads.
Finally, you want to have your welcome emails and messages ready to go before you begin rolling the campaign out to your market.
To help get your creative wheels spinning and make it easier to put together the lead magnets you’ll use to attract subscribers to your list, here are a few examples from different businesses:
In the example above, from the 5 Day Lead Challenge, you can see how we’re challenging people into action and giving away the content for free.
To make it even easier for them to say yes, we’re also offering them two new list building software products that they’ll receive just for participating.
In the example below, we’re using a free copy of our Traffic Secrets book to help visitors to the page learn how to drive more hungry buyers to their websites and funnels.
Now, if you have something like a SaaS business, simply offering a free trial is more than enough.
By grabbing their free trial, users are given a 14-day opportunity to fully test the software and determine whether or not it will work to help them hit their goals.
Which, for email marketing, lets them quickly jump in and start building email campaigns using the intuitive drag-and-drop editor.
Then, they’re able to use one of dozens of professionally designed, high-converting landing pages so more of the traffic they drive through their marketing campaigns will convert into new subscribers.
All without having to be a designer or developer.
And if you’re in the tools and software planning stage of the first month in your email marketing campaign, you can save a ton of time and energy by grabbing your own free trial of ClickFunnels.
Once you’ve prepared your lead magnets, building your landing pages, written your welcome messages, and have clear, measurable goals, you’re ready to launch.
Try ClickFunnels NOW For Free!
Month 2: Segmentation, and Content Development
As you’re entering into the second phase of your email marketing campaign, your focus will shift from planning and implementing into segmentation and content development.
In this phase, your goal shifts from attracting attention to dialing in your messaging, making each email more targeted to your audience & what you’ve learned about them, and making creating content easier.
| Task | Objective | Actionable Steps and Description |
|---|---|---|
| Segment Email List | Target Messaging | Divide subscribers based on interests or behaviors. |
| Create Content Calendar | Streamline Content Creation | Plan and schedule upcoming content for 1-2 months. |
Based on the feedback you’ve gotten from your first month into the campaign, you’ll be able to more effectively determine what your audience wants to see from you.
Then, you’ll be able to plan, create, and schedule your content for the next 1-2 months while knowing that each piece of content you create is more targeted to your audience — which increases conversions.
Month 3: Engagement, Promotion, and Analytics
In the 3rd month of your email marketing campaign rollout, you’re again going to shift focus into driving sales, improving the efficiency of your campaigns, and refining your strategy for future rollouts.
| Task | Objective | Actionable Steps and Description |
|---|---|---|
| Launch Promotional Campaign | Drive Sales | Offer special deals, use A/B testing for conversion. |
| Implement Automation Sequences | Improve Efficiency | Use ClickFunnels to automate follow-up emails. |
| Analyze Metrics | Refine Strategy | Review metrics, make necessary adjustments. |
Your focus during this phase should be to examine how well your campaign has performed up to this point, identify areas where you can increase your sales, and how to make future campaigns perform even better than your initial campaign.
To do this, you can offer special deals while using A/B split testing to see which performs better.
You can also begin to automate your entire follow up sequence (using a tool like ClickFunnels) so that new subscribers are experiencing the same campaign — and you experience the same results.
Finally, you’ll need to consistently review key metrics like optin rates, open rates, clickthrough rates, and unsubscribe rates to ensure that you’re able to effectively optimize each of those key areas.
When you take this month-to-month approach to your email marketing strategy, you can lay a foundation that scales with you as you begin to drive more traffic.
Strategy #2- Referral Programs
With all of the active marketing you’ll be doing up to this point, you want to ensure that you’re making it possible for your satisfied customers to refer other new customers to you, too.
Since people trust recommendations that come from friends and family, getting referrals is one of the most powerful ways to establish brand credibility.
There are also no extra costs involved.
And, when someone receives a referral, it tends to be more personalized since their family and friends know them, know what they’re looking for, and can custom-tailor the referral to specifically what that person may be looking for in a product or service.
You have multiple different options available for implementing a referral program, too.
Like incentivizing existing customers to refer their friends and family:
By offering a discount on their next purchase, people are more inclined to refer ClassPass to people they know may benefit from the offer, as well.
Likewise, you can give gifts for passing each ‘level’ of referral:
Or, you can offer affiliate referral programs so your customers get paid when they refer someone new to your business:
By partnering with individuals or other businesses, like Magic Spoon does in the example above, you can drive more sales while offering a commission to anyone who refers those sales to you.
Partnering with complementary businesses is another way to drive referrals.
For instance, if you own a local gym, you can partner with a local health food store for cross-promotion.
Take a look at the example below to see how Amy Porterfield and Laura Belgray use this strategy:
The key here is getting creative with how you ask for referrals while making sure there’s something in it for the person who is going to be referring another customer to your business.
Strategy #3- Content Marketing
In 2023, content marketing generates more than 3 times as many leads as other outbound marketing strategies and costs around 62% less.
The content you use for this marketing strategy can be anything from a blog post, a video breakdown of your offer, product documentation — whatever you have that may help you attract, nurture, and retain new customers.
By creating great content and then distributing it across the internet, you’ll drive fresh traffic into your funnel, generating new email subscribers and potential customers.
For example, if someone is searching for how to build a webinar funnel, they may find us:
And, after clicking on our page in the Google search results, they’ll find the blog post below that breaks down how they can create their webinar funnel — and how to use our software to do it.
This gives us the opportunity to showcase how we can help them and have a chance to convert them into a new customer for our business.
To help get your creative wheels spinning, here’s another search for budget planning tips:
Then, when clicking on the first link that promises to show you how to budget your money, you’re driven to the article below on Nerdwallet:
Since the article provided great advice, I was curious to figure out more about the brand behind it so I clicked through their website and found out about the various services they provide.
Now, the next time I need something related to these services, I’ll be more inclined to go back to their website to see how they can help me solve other problems I may be facing.
To help you understand the content marketing strategy even more, take a step back and think about how many different businesses you’ve discovered because they created helpful content online.
Then, think about the “3 C’s” of content marketing: content type, content format, and content angle.
The content type can fall into any category, from blog posts to videos, landing pages, etc. but you’ll want it to match what your audience is expecting to see.
As an example, if you want to bring in customers for your online fitness training programs, you’ll want to create videos that are focused on workout routines they can use:
Or, if your audience is expecting to read something like a review, you can create text-based content like blog posts or listicles to deliver the format they want to see:
Next in the “3 C’s” of content marketing is the content angle.
The angle is defined by how you’re approaching the topic, the stance you’re taking, which part of the subject is being emphasized, and the idea you’re trying to convey.
It provides a specific lens through which the content is developed and presented, helping it stand out from other similar content.
For example, if you search for breakfast recipes for students, the angle is ‘easy’:
Since students tend to be strapped for time, giving them an ‘easy’ way to make breakfast is an angle that’s more likely to grab their attention and get them to click through to keep reading.
Whereas if you searched for how to brew coffee, you won’t necessarily find ‘easy’ ways to do it, but instead you’ll be given a variety of ways to do it — and the benefits of each.
To make your content marketing as effective as possible, spend a bit of time planning out the 3 C’s, then check up on what your competitors are doing so you can match (or beat) what they’ve created.
Strategy #4- Use Social Media
Then, once you’ve created the content you’ll use to capture more attention, it’s time to distribute it.
Social media marketing is one of the most effective ways to increase your reach and distribute all of the content you’re creating.
It’s also one of the best ways to increase brand awareness.
Since social media platforms have hundreds of millions of active daily users you can quickly tap into a massive audience of people.
You also have a chance to get people to share your content with their followers, massively extending your brand’s reach.
If you’re looking for healthy breakfast cereals, and perform the search on TikTok, you’ll quickly discover 2 brands that are establishing a solid footprint using social media:
Then, if you’re curious to learn more about the products, you can click on the link in each video’s description that will take you directly to their website.
Check out how Sunsama is using Instagram to extend their reach & drive more traffic:
It’s a super simple approach that has been proven over and over again to be extremely effective.
But it’s not just about the reach you get on social media platforms.
It’s also about the opportunity to interact with your audience in a more casual manner.
These interactions remind people that you’re actively listening to them and building for them. It helps increase the loyalty they feel for your brand.
In the example above, Ahrefs takes feedback directly from their audience and then uses that feedback to drive their audience to specific places on their website where their users can get support.
Now, to make this strategy work, you’ll want to spend some time mapping and planning out your approach as well as laying the foundation to track the results you generate.
To get started, you’ll want to choose the right platforms — the ones that align with your audience and where they’re already gathering together.
Then, you’ll want to look into your competition to figure out what they may be doing and what could be working for them. Think about areas you can improve or stand out & add your spin to the approach.
Finally, create a content plan that determines the type of content you’ll create — images, videos, or articles — and establish a content calendar so you’re being consistent in your delivery.
You can use a simple spreadsheet like the one below to track the progress of your campaign.
To make it easy to optimize what you’re doing, use the following columns:
- Date: The date the content will be published
- Day of Week: The day of the week corresponding to the date
- Platform: Where the content will be published (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
- Content Type: The format of the content (e.g., video, blog post, image)
- Title/Topic: The title or topic of the content
- Description: A brief description of the content
- Target Audience: Who the content is aimed at
- Content Creator: The person responsible for creating the content
- Status: The current status of the content (e.g., Draft, Scheduled, Published)
- URL: The link to the published content (if applicable)
- Engagement Metrics: Key metrics you might want to track (likes, shares, comments, etc.)
- Notes: Any additional notes or comments
Then, periodically check in on the results of previous content marketing efforts to determine what’s been working really well, what could be optimized, the best sources of traffic, and how you can improve based on the feedback you’ve been receiving from your audience.
With the right approach, planning, and mindset, each of the marketing strategies you’ve discovered in this guide can help you establish a solid footing in even the most competitive markets.
The key, though, is being consistent in your effort.
And, as you’re implementing each of the strategies we’ve broken down for you, make sure you’re building on a platform that can grow and scale with you as you start seeing amazing results.
A platform like ClickFunnels. Click here to start your free trial now.