Marketing Strategy Framework: How to Get More Leads & Sales in 2025

Tired of throwing marketing spaghetti at the wall? Want a proven system to generate consistent leads and sales? 

Learn a simple 4-step marketing framework that helped generate millions in revenue by focusing on audience building, lead generation, and strategic conversion.

Why Marketing Strategy Matters Now More Than Ever

Many entrepreneurs and marketers focus heavily on tactics without having a clear strategy in place. This tactical-first approach to a marketing plan often leads to scattered efforts and overwhelming uncertainty about what actions to take.

Your marketing strategy doesn't need to be complicated. Instead of focusing on tricks or hacks, you just need to think about strategy as creating an experience for potential customers.

This experience-focused approach creates an intentional pathway that takes someone from not knowing your brand to becoming a lead and, ultimately, a customer. Without this clear direction, approximately 90% of business owners and marketers report feeling like they're just throwing spaghetti at the wall and trying random tactics without a cohesive plan.

Tactics are Temporarily Effective; Strategy is Timeless

While marketing platforms and algorithms constantly change, a well-constructed marketing strategy can remain effective over long periods. Hirsh reveals that she's been using the same fundamental strategic framework for over a decade, adapting it as needed while maintaining its core principles.

As long as you build a solid strategy based on the principles and foundational facts of marketing and experiential marketing, it is timeless. The key is focusing on core marketing principles rather than temporary tactics or hacks that might become outdated.

When changes occur in the marketing landscape—whether algorithm updates or new platform features—a solid strategy allows you to adapt without completely overhauling your approach. The foundational elements remain constant while the tactical implementation evolves with the times.

What tends to become obsolete are not the strategies themselves but rather the “hacks” and temporary tactics that some marketers rely on instead of developing a comprehensive marketing strategy. A well-designed strategy can evolve alongside your industry, niche, and offer while maintaining its effectiveness.

How to Develop an Effective Custom Marketing Strategy

When it comes to marketing strategy, one size does not fit all. You must customize your strategy to your business rather than following templated approaches like “everyone needs a webinar.”

A customized approach is crucial because your business has unique elements that must be considered. You sell a unique offer; you have a unique experience, wisdom, background, and ideal customer.

Step 1: Articulate Your Core Outcome Statement

The first crucial step in developing your marketing strategy is establishing what Emily Hirsh calls your foundation. At the heart of this foundation is a simple question: What is the core outcome your business solves for somebody?

“If I was to be sitting across from you in a casual conversation and I ask you, what do you do? Could you tell me that in a very clear one sentence?” Hirsh asks. The key is to use language your ideal customer would actually use, making it instantly understandable.

This foundational statement applies to all types of businesses, whether you're selling services, physical products, or digital products. Hirsh shares several real-world examples of clear, simple outcome statements:

• “I help entrepreneurs create a marketing strategy that generates leads and sales.”

• “I help repair people's blood sugar and A1C without needing medication.”

• “I help photographers add sports photography to their offerings.”

• “I sell a skincare product that heals your skin with natural ingredients.”

The power of these statements lies in their simplicity and clarity. This core statement becomes the driving force behind all your marketing efforts, from copy to strategy. Hirsh notes that this approach isn't just for promoting your overall business—it can also be applied to individual marketing initiatives like webinars or new funnels.

Using Your Customer's Language to Describe Frustrations, Problems, and Desires

Understanding and using your customers' language is crucial for creating an effective foundation. You need to talk directly to your ideal customers to gather this language. Luckily, people generally love to talk about their problems and share insights.

If you have an audience, surveys can get the insights and customer feedback you need from your target market. 

If you don't have an existing audience, you can post questions in Facebook groups or Reddit threads to learn what people struggle with in your niche. 

An alternative approach suggested by Michael Stelzner is using ChatGPT for initial research. By prompting the AI to act as your target customer, you can gather insights about typical challenges and phrases your ideal clients use, leveraging ChatGPT's training on vast amounts of online content.

Pro Tip: Using open-ended questions rather than structured surveys allows you to see the exact language people use to describe their situation, which you can use in your marketing copy.

Step 2: Define Your Unique Process

The second step in developing your marketing strategy is identifying your unique process or method. “Every single one of you has unique experience, wisdom, beliefs, and opinions because you've seen things that don't work and do work,” Hirsh explains.

This uniqueness is often missing from modern marketing approaches, making it difficult for you to stand out in an industry.

Some marketers worry about talking too much about themselves rather than their customers in this step, but Hirsh believes that talking about your process is actually all about the customer because instead of leaving them to sift through multiple resources, books, and courses to find a solution, you are giving them a shortcut–the exact method or product they need to get their desired outcome in the fastest way possible.

If you're struggling to identify your process, imagine trying to explain to someone how you achieve the results you offer or why your physical product is better than others on the market.

Record this explanation, and use AI tools like ChatGPT to help structure it into a process. This can help identify core values and components.

This approach works for various business types:

• For service-based businesses, it might involve explaining how you work with clients to achieve results. 

• For physical products, it could be why you created the product or what makes it different from others. 

• For event organizers, it might include unique aspects like speaker curation or event structure.

Step 3: Build a Target Audience By Showing People Who You Are

Today, attention is currency, and building an audience starts with delivering content that makes someone say, “This content is worth my time.” You're not asking for contact information or pushing for sales; you're only building value.

Create Your Content

Your content should directly connect to the foundation work in steps 1 and 2, including your core promise and your ideal customer's problems, frustrations, and desires. Each problem your ideal customer faces can generate multiple content ideas across different formats.

The key is aligning your content with your expertise and what excites you. “I always tell people, align your content with what you are excited to talk about, what you're excited to create, or what you're naturally good at,” Hirsh says. This helps you create magnetic content that audiences want to consume.

Distribute Your Content

The key to successful audience building is having a defined marketing mix strategy that answers the following:

• What social media platform(s) and marketing channels will you us

• Where will you post

• How often will you post

• What are your core content pillars

Instead of trying to be everywhere, focus on platforms and content types that align with your strengths and where your audience spends time. Whether it's written content, audio, or video, consistency in your chosen format is more important than trying to do everything.

Hirsh recommends allocating about 5% of your monthly budget to promote content through ads. She uses this strategy for her podcast, creating short face-to-camera videos that preview episode content and directing traffic to specific page pages on her website. The cost of these ads is typically around $0.30 per click in the B2B space, though results in your industry will differ.

She posts organic content four to five times per week, mixing various formats, including Reels, carousel posts, and photos. She views organic social media as a nurture strategy while using paid ads for growth. “I personally think organic can be a huge time suck without a lot of payoff,” she notes.

Step 4: Generate Leads by Communicating What People Can Have

Emily Hirsh approaches lead generation as an experience rather than just a collection of tactics. 

When developing lead generation content, think about how you can create the best experience for a lead to have complete clarity and full confidence in your offer. Hirsh recommends solving the same problem your business solves on a different scale.

While you can't completely solve someone's problem in a 45-minute webinar, you can give them clarity about the path forward. 

For example, one of her clients helps people with type 2 diabetes repair their blood sugar without medication. The client uses a webinar to teach her core process at a high level, gaining potential customers' buy-in to her methodology.

If you worry about giving away too much information in your lead generation content, don't. Hirsh advocates for over-delivering in free content, explaining that people will pay for speed and convenience. “You could listen to 600 episodes of my podcast and probably do everything I do without ever hiring me. But do you have time to do that? No.”

The key is making the experience manageable rather than overwhelming. If you try to use a webinar to teach someone everything you do for clients, they'll be too overwhelmed. That's not valuable. However, you can give them your solution at a high level so they can buy into the validity and value of your process.

To develop your lead generation formats, consider these two ideas:

• Use your process as the outline of a high-level webinar.

• Run a free challenge that fully reveals the first step in your process. Hirsh runs a free challenge where participants implement the first step of her process for launching a visibility ad. On the final day, she shares a high-level overview of the steps they'll need to take to succeed.

Step 4: Convert Leads by Communicating How They Can Get What You Offer

Conversion becomes much easier when you have strong audience building and lead generation in place because it takes approximately 30 micro touchpoints before someone makes a purchase.

A micro touchpoint could be seeing your email in their inbox or seeing your ad while they're scrolling Instagram. Even if they don't open your email or click on your ad, they see your name for a microsecond.

When these elements have done their job, you can move on to converting your audience.

Tips to Effectively Communicate Your Offer

• Use Words Your Customers Use: One common reason for poor sales performance is ineffective offer communication. To evaluate your offer presentation, take your sales page headline and read it back with “I want” in front of it as if your ideal customer were speaking. Ask yourself: Would they say this in their own words? If the answer is no, work on your language.

• Concentrate on Outcomes and Benefits Rather Than Features: If you're promoting an event, don't build your offer around how many days it runs, how many sessions it has, and where it is held. Customers don't care about those details when they want a solution. What they care about is the outcome they're going to get by attending the event, attending the sessions, and actually showing up live.

• Consistently ask Yourself, “What's in it for my customer? Why is what I offer important to them?” All of your marketing communications should be filtered through this perspective, ensuring the focus remains on the customer's desired outcomes and benefits.

• Target Existing and New Leads: Many businesses focus heavily on generating new customers while overlooking their existing audience. Hirsh emphasizes that your most significant opportunity often lies with your current leads. “I just had someone sign up for our program who's followed me for nine years,” she shares, highlighting the importance of long-term nurturing.

• Use Multiple Email Sequences: Don't limit your offer exposure to a single email sequence. If you mention your offer only once in a welcome sequence, you’re leaving money on the table. Develop multiple sequences to remind people about your offer.

Other Notes From This Episode

• Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Instagram and @Mike_Stelzner on X.
• Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.

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✋🏽 If you enjoyed this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast, please head over to Apple Podcasts, leave a rating, write a review, and subscribe.

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