11 Marketing Strategies that Almost NEVER Fail (in any niche)

Summary

Sabri Suby presents 11 direct-response marketing tactics intended to improve conversion, lead quality, and ad performance. The central theme is to find friction points and objections across the customer journey, then address them with targeted messaging and tests.

The 11 strategies

1. Add a “negative CTA” below the main call to action. Place a deliberately absurd opt-out beneath the main CTA, such as “No, I don’t want free money.” The contrast is meant to make the primary action more compelling. Suby recommends testing it on funnel pages, upsells, VSLs, and emails.

2. Use VSLs throughout the funnel (“VSL stacking”). Don’t limit video sales letters to the initial pitch. Use short videos at later stages to explain what to expect, address objections, encourage booked prospects to attend calls, and follow up with leads who don’t buy. Identify funnel drop-off points and tailor videos to them.

3. Sell against inaction, not just competitors. Describe the specific consequences of not solving the customer’s problem, then present taking action and doing nothing as two distinct paths. Suby recommends detailed, emotionally resonant copy based on what the customer’s situation could look like 12 months later.

4. Add friction to improve lead quality. Balance easy lead capture with qualification questions. Suby’s suggested rule of thumb: if the sales close rate is above 40%, reduce obstacles; if it is below 20%, add qualification. A/B test a more-qualified form and compare lead quality with the resulting lead cost.

5. Offer a small first “yes.” Instead of leading with the most expensive offer, use a useful free resource—such as a PDF, checklist, or calculator—to attract prospects. Design the subsequent steps to lead naturally to the core product.

6. Clone winning ads for different audiences. Rather than constantly starting from scratch, adapt proven creative for different customer segments, such as age groups or genders. AI tools can help rewrite the ad while preserving its core concept; test variations as distinct ads.

7. Retarget based on objections. Use sales-call transcripts, support data, or surveys to identify common objections. Turn those objections into separate retargeting creatives rather than repeatedly showing the same generic ad. Suby suggests using AI to surface the most frequent objections and draft ad concepts around them.

8. Interview customers who bought. Ask new customers what nearly stopped them, why they bought anyway, why they chose your business over alternatives, and what would have made the decision easier. Send a founder-signed welcome email with a question in the postscript, then use responses to sharpen messaging and offers.

9. Make ads valuable even to people who aren’t ready to buy. Teach something useful in the ad to build trust and engagement with a wider audience. Repurpose the strongest 20% of organic content—identified through views, likes, shares, and saves—and add a CTA. Suby suggests reviewing content from the previous 90 days or 12 months.

10. Pin a comment on high-performing ads. Add a humorous or attention-grabbing comment, optionally with a GIF and CTA, and pin it to the top. The aim is to capture attention in the comments, encourage interaction, and create another route to the offer.

11. Use competitors’ negative reviews to differentiate. Review the one-, two-, and three-star reviews of major competitors to identify recurring customer frustrations. Use those pain points in ads and sales presentations, then explain how your product’s distinct mechanism addresses shortcomings in existing solutions.

Metrics and claims cited

• Suby says he has generated $10.2 billion in client sales across 1,184 industries.
• He says adding a negative CTA has doubled conversions in some funnels.
• He estimates that adding VSLs at funnel leakage points can improve throughput by 15–20% per stage. He claims four to five VSLs can produce a 100% improvement in overall funnel efficiency.
• His suggested sales-close-rate thresholds for adjusting qualification friction are above 40% to reduce friction and below 20% to add it.
• He cites 1–2% CTR as a typical ad click-through rate and says many more people seek information than are ready to buy.
• He gives an example of a pinned-comment ad with about 11 million views.

These are the speaker’s reported results and rules of thumb; the video does not provide supporting methodology for them. The practical emphasis is to test changes against business-specific baselines, tracking conversion rate, lead quality, show-up rate, close rate, lead cost, and ROAS.

Presenter/source: Sabri Suby; YouTube channel Sabri Suby.