5 Powerful Marketing Strategies Designed For Business Growth

It’s not enough to have a great product or service.

You also need to be able to reach your target audience.

That’s why today we are going to share five powerful marketing strategies designed for business growth.

Want to grow your business FAST?

Table of Contents:

The Value Ladder Sales Funnel

Marketing is all about generating traffic. But that’s just the first step!

You then need to convert that traffic into leads, those leads into paying customers, and those customers into repeat customers.

If you don’t have a system for that, then even if you do manage to generate traffic, it won’t help you much because you won’t be able to convert it.

In fact, you might end up burning through your marketing budget without having anything to show for it. Traffic is expensive!

That’s why we recommend building a sales funnel first. It will enable you to convert visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers on autopilot. Once you have that system in place, you can start driving traffic to it.

However, there are several popular sales funnel models out there. Which one should you use to grow your business?

What is the Value Ladder Sales Funnel?

We believe that the most effective way to sell anything online is the Value Ladder sales funnel.

It was created by our co-founder Russell Brunson who then used it to take ClickFunnels from zero to $10M+ in annual revenue in just one year (it’s at $100M+ now!).

This sales funnel has four stages:

Bait – You offer the potential customer your lead magnet in exchange for their email address.
Frontend – You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product or service.
Middle – You offer the customer a more expensive and more valuable product or service.
Backend – You offer the customer your most expensive and most valuable product or service.

Ideally, you also offer a continuity program of some sort, meaning, a subscription product that generates recurring revenue.

We also recommend adding downsells, upsells, and cross sells to these core offers in order to maximize your revenue.

The reason why this sales funnel works so well is that it allows you to:

Start the relationship with that person by offering free value.

Nurture that relationship by continuing to provide free value via email.

Build trust by providing progressively more paid value at each stage.

Here’s how Russell explains it:

How to Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel (Step-by-Step)

If the Value Ladder graph above seems overwhelming, don’t worry.

You can start with just a lead magnet and a frontend offer and then build out the rest of your Value Ladder over time.

Step #1: Create a Super Valuable Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer to the potential customer in exchange for their email address.

Digital Lead Magnets

A digital lead magnet can be anything that the potential customer can either download to their device or access online:

A report
An eBook
A video class
A video course
An email course
A webinar
An app

…etc.

Physical Lead Magnets

Physical lead magnets, also known as “FREE + Shipping” lead magnets, are physical products that the potential customer can get for free provided that they agree to cover the shipping costs.

For example, Russell has written three best-selling books on the subject of growing online businesses. You can get all of them on Amazon.

However, we also use these books as “FREE + Shipping” lead magnets, so you can get them directly from us for free:

All we ask is that you pay for shipping!

Get “DotCom Secrets” for FREE!

Digital Lead Magnets vs. Physical Lead Magnets

So what kind of lead magnets should you use in your business?

In general, digital lead magnets require fewer resources to produce and therefore are less risky than physical lead magnets.

Also, persuading someone to give you their email address is much easier than persuading them to part with their hard-earned money, even if it’s only shipping costs.

Consequently, digital lead magnets should be the default option, especially if you don’t have any previous funnel building experience.

Meanwhile, physical lead magnets are a much riskier bet since not only do they require more resources to produce but you also need to store them somewhere.

However, physical lead magnets are typically perceived as more valuable than digital lead magnets, even when they include the exact same content.

Say, an eBook version of a book will likely be perceived as less valuable than the paperback version.

Moreover, while persuading someone to pay for shipping is much more challenging than persuading someone to give you their email address, the people who are willing to spend money to get your lead magnet will probably be much more likely to convert to paying customers.

What we typically see is that digital lead magnets generate more but lower-quality leads while physical lead magnets generate fewer but higher-quality leads.

Neither approach is right or wrong. They can both work extremely well. Also, you don’t have to choose between them, you can use both of them to grow your business. That’s what we do!

All that being said, if you are building your first sales funnel, we strongly advise you to go with a digital lead magnet because it’s the safer bet.

What Makes a Lead Magnet Effective

Regardless of whether you decide to use a digital or a physical lead magnet, what matters is that:

Your lead magnet provides a solution to a problem that the potential customer is struggling with.
That problem is either the same one or related to the one that your frontend offer addresses.

Ideally, your lead magnet should not only serve as bait but also set the stage for the upcoming frontend offer pitch.

One way to do that is the “Free Sample” approach. You know how you sometimes see those free sample stalls in the grocery store where you can try some food item for free and then buy it if you like it? You can use the same approach in your sales funnel.

Say, if your frontend offer is a book, you can use its first chapter as a lead magnet. If the potential customer likes it, they will probably want to buy the book.

Alternatively, you can use the “Free Information + Paid Tools” approach where you offer educational content for free, and then pitch a tool that can help the potential customer implement what they learned.

That’s what we do as a software company. We teach people how to build sales funnels for free, then pitch our funnel building software so that they can put what they learned into practice.

To summarize, there should be a logical progression from your lead magnet to your frontend offer.

Also, the days when people were excited about random digital junk just because it was free are long gone. No one wants to download useless low-effort eBooks anymore. But what does that mean for you?

It means that people won’t give you their email addresses unless you offer them something super valuable in return.

That’s why the key to designing an effective lead magnet is creating something that your dream customers desperately want…

And then giving it to them for free!

Step #2: Create a Landing Page for Your Lead Magnet

Okay, so now that you have a lead magnet, it’s time to create a landing page for it.

We recommend starting with a squeeze page which is the most basic type of landing page that is characterized by only being one screen long.

Here’s a simple, yet high-converting squeeze page that we use for our “The Funnel Hacker’s Cookbook” lead magnet:

Create a Landing Page for Your Lead Magnet

Get “The Funnel Hacker’s Cookbook” for FREE!

Also, we don’t recommend building your landing page from scratch if you don’t have any previous landing page design experience. Why?

Because online marketers have been relentlessly optimizing landing pages for more than two decades.

At this point, we know what works and what doesn’t. Or, to be more precise, we know what’s most likely to work.

Consequently, when it comes to creating a high-converting landing page, your best is to follow the established landing page design best practices.

The most straightforward way to ensure that your landing page complies with those best practices is to use a proven landing page template.

Our software, ClickFunnels, includes a template library that features high-converting landing page templates for all of the most common use cases.

So why waste time reinventing the wheel when you can simply do what’s been proven to work?

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Step #3: Create an Irresistible Frontend Offer

Okay, so now you are done with the Bait stage of your Value Ladder, also known as the lead generation funnel. But how can you convert leads into paying customers?

You can use an existing product or service as your frontend offer but we recommend creating a new product specifically for that purpose.

You want it to be a no-brainer impulse purchase that people will buy on a whim because why not.

Here’s the formula for creating an irresistible offer:

High Value + Low Price = Irresistible Offer

It sounds like basic common sense but you would be surprised how many entrepreneurs fail to get this right and then wonder why they are struggling to make sales!

Here are three guidelines for creating an irresistible frontend offer:

Your frontend offer should be an info product regardless of what your company sells. eBooks, video classes, video courses, etc. can all work well.
Your frontend offer should be priced at $7. It’s a price point that isn’t low enough to make the potential customer doubt the quality of the product but is also not high enough to make the potential customer stop and think twice before buying.
You should provide a 30-day no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.

For example:

Russell primarily used webinar funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $10M+ in annual revenue in one year.

Needless to say, everyone wants to know how he did it, so he could charge a lot of money for that information.

However, instead of doing that, he decided to create an info product called “Perfect Webinar Secrets” and use it as one of our frontend offers. It only costs $7!

This is the “High Value + Low Price = Irresistible Offer” formula in action. Who’s gonna say no to an opportunity to learn from one of the leading sales funnel experts in the world when it only cost seven bucks?

Also, there’s a money-back guarantee, so worst-case scenario, you can simply get a refund!

Get “Perfect Webinar Secrets” for just $7!

Step #4: Create a Sales Page for Your Frontend Offer

You also need a sales page for your frontend offer.

When it comes to the sales page design, we recommend using one of the proven sales page templates from the ClickFunnels template library.

As for the sales page copy, we can’t cover this subject adequately in this article due to space limitations, but here are the most important principles that you should follow:

Make sure that the headline conveys the value of your frontend offer. How will this product make the potential customer’s life better? Focus on that.
Have a subheadline that provides more information about your frontend offer. Explain the format (e.g., an eBook), the scope (e.g., 367 pages), and the delivery method (e.g., instant access).
Reiterate the primary benefit of your frontend offer and introduce additional benefits in the body copy of your sales page.
Display social proof such as customer testimonials, endorsements from well-known people in your niche, “As Seen On” media badges, etc.
Provide an unconditional, no-question-asked 30-day money-back guarantee.

These are just the basics but if you get them right, you’ll probably have a decent sales page that converts well.

That being said, copywriting is the most important skill that you need to master if you want to make money online, so we recommend reading our friend Jim Edwards’ book “Copywriting Secrets”.

It was designed to serve as a shortcut for busy entrepreneurs who want to learn copywriting FAST!

Create a Sales Page for Your Frontend Offer

Get “Copywriting Secrets” for FREE!

Step #5: Create a 6-Email Welcome Sequence

We don’t recommend hitting the potential customer with a sales pitch the moment they give you their email address. You haven’t built enough trust yet!

Send them this 6-email welcome sequence instead:

Email #1: Who Are You? Introduce yourself to the new subscriber.
Email #2: Where Did You Come From? Share your origin story. How did you come to do what you do now?
Email #3: What Do You Do? Explain in more detail what it is that you do.
Email #4: How Did You Gain This Expertise? Explain what makes you qualified to do what you do. Share relevant experience, credentials, and accomplishments.
Email #5: Who Do You Do This For? Explain who are your dream customers + share a case study on how you helped such a person get the results that they wanted.
Email #6: How Can You Do It For Me? Pitch your frontend offer and provide a link to its sales page.

Send one email per day so that the entire sequence would take six days.

If you do it right, by day six the potential customer will probably be open to at least checking out your frontend offer.

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will purchase it, but the likelihood of them converting into paying customers will be higher than it would have been without this welcome sequence.

Our Top 5 Marketing Strategies

Okay, so now you have a system for converting visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers. But how do you get visitors in the first place??

This is where marketing comes in. Now that you have your sales funnel ready, it’s time to start driving traffic to your lead magnet landing page.

Here are our top five ways to do that…

#1: Paid Advertising

We recommend starting with paid advertising because paid traffic is immediate, targeted, and scalable.

All major social media platforms allow you to run ads on them:

Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
LinkedIn
YouTube
TikTok

Pick the platform that makes the most sense for your business, create an ad campaign for promoting your lead magnet, and start running it with a small daily budget.

Once you figure out how to run ads profitably, you can begin gradually scaling your campaign as well as experimenting with other platforms.

#2: Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a booming industry that is set to grow to $21.1 billion this year. And there’s a good reason for that – it can be a great way to reach your target audience!

Also, contrary to popular belief, influencer marketing doesn’t necessarily mean working with celebrities.

In fact, brands seem to favor nano-influencers and micro-influencers, which is understandable given that they are much more affordable than social media superstars.

Here’s what we recommend if you want to see if influencer marketing works for your business:

Identify several promising nano-influencers in your niche.
Reach out to them and agree to pay them for three shoutouts over the course of three months.
Create a referral link for each influencer and ask them to promote your lead magnet.

Then analyze the data to see which campaign generated the most leads and continue working with that influencer.

Use this methodology to find influencers that can produce measurable results and then develop long-term relationships with them. As your business grows, you can expand your search to micro and macro influencers.

Also, after a year of working with an influencer, you want to take a closer look at the leads generated from their campaigns. Are they converting to paying customers?

Do the math to see if it makes sense to continue the partnership with that influencer. Is it profitable?

#3: Podcast ads

After steady growth over the last decade, the podcast industry seems to have stabilized, at least in the United States where last year’s monthly podcast listening slightly declined.

Podcasts nevertheless remain an extremely popular form of entertainment with 38% of Americans above the age of 12 being monthly podcast listeners in 2022.

It’s probably reasonable to assume that the state of the podcast industry looks similar in other English-speaking countries as well.

So if you are targeting people in the United Kingdom, Australia, or North America, podcast ads might be a great way to reach them.

You should use an approach similar to the one we recommended for influencer marketing:

Identify promising podcasts in your niche.
Reach out to the hosts and agree on three podcast ads over the course of three months.
Create a referral link for each podcast and ask them to promote your lead magnet.

Then analyze the results to see which campaign generated the most leads and continue running ads on that podcast.

After a year, analyze the data to see if those leads are converting to paying customers. Does it make sense to continue this partnership?

Meanwhile, if you are targeting people in other European countries, Asia, Central and South America, or Africa, the effectiveness of this marketing strategy will vary depending on what’s going on in that particular region.

If you find that the local podcast industry still hasn’t reached its peak, it might make more sense to capitalize on that and start a podcast of your own, especially if you see that there’s a market demand for what you have to offer.

So far we have discussed generating paid traffic, which is what you should focus on when you are just starting out.

But you don’t want to remain completely dependent on paid traffic forever. That’s why you should also allocate some resources to building traffic-generating assets of your own.

The easiest way to do this is to build a social media following. While each platform has its own peculiarities, the key principles that you should follow remain the same:

Create a content schedule that you can keep up with indefinitely.
Commit to that content schedule and adhere to it religiously. You can produce content in batches and then use social media scheduling tools like Buffer or Edgar to schedule it and publish it.
Ensure that each and every piece of content that you publish provides value to your followers.
Use your social media to promote your lead magnet but don’t be obnoxious about it. Providing value to your followers should be the main focus.
Interact with your followers. Ideally, you want to respond to each tweet, comment, or reply that you get.

And that’s pretty much all there is to it. If you want to build a social media following, you need to regularly post high-quality content over an extended period of time. Consistency is the name of the game.

#5: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is the practice of generating organic search traffic.

Here’s a quick overview of the process:

You do keyword research to identify a promising keyword.
You do competitive research to see what’s currently ranking on the first page of Google for that keyword.
You create a piece of SEO content that targets that keyword and is better than everything that’s currently ranking on the first page of Google for it.
You build backlinks to that piece of content which lets Google know that it’s legit.
You promote your lead magnet on that page with an opt-in box at the bottom of the article and an exit-intent pop-up.

We recommend using Ahrefs for keyword research and Clearscope for optimizing your content.

Also, there’s always a buzz in the online marketing world about some new SEO tactic, an innovative SEO tool, the latest Google algorithm update, or whatever. You can safely ignore all that. It’s just noise.

As Adam Enfroy, who launched his blog in January 2019 and now makes over $250k/month from it, once explained:

“While you can read about a ton of fancy “hacks” and shiny new tools, there are fundamental principles that have not changed when it comes to SEO and blogging.

Content and links
Content and links
Content and links

This has remained unchanged for the last 10+ years.”

Search engine optimization takes time but if you continue publishing high-quality SEO content and building backlinks to it, you will start seeing results eventually. So keep at it!

But What if Your Sales Funnel Isn’t Converting?

Okay, but what if you have followed all the advice in this article, and yet your sales funnel still isn’t converting?

You need to look at the conversion rate data to locate the problem. What exactly are you struggling with?

Converting visitors into leads?
Converting leads into paying customers?
Converting customers into repeat customers?

Once you have located the problem, you need to figure out its cause. Here’s how you should go about troubleshooting any given page in your sales funnel:

Look at the traffic. It’s possible that the traffic you are sending to that page is not a good match for that offer. In that case, you want to focus on increasing traffic quality, which you can achieve by improving the targeting of your marketing campaigns.
Look at the copy. It’s possible that the copy of that page doesn’t convey the value of the offer. In that case, you want to focus on improving the copy.
Look at the offer. It’s possible that the offer in question simply isn’t valuable enough. In that case, you have to make it more appealing by either increasing its value or lowering its price. Or both! If that doesn’t work, ditch that offer altogether, go back to the drawing board, and come up with something better.

You can use A/B testing, also known as split testing, to optimize the pages in your sales funnel.

Build a Sales Funnel for Your Business With ClickFunnels!

ClickFunnels has everything you need to build a sales funnel for your business:

Sales funnel and landing page templates.
Visual editor that you can use to customize those templates.
Email marketing functionality that allows you to send broadcast emails, set up automated email sequences, and create email workflows with behavioral triggers.

We also offer a free trial which means that you can check out our software without any risk. So why not start building your Value Ladder sales funnel today?

Start Your Free Trial

5 Powerful Marketing Strategies Designed For Business Growth