Performance Marketing Strategy: A Founder's Framework

Launching in a new market feels like you're flying blind, doesn't it? No data, no benchmarks, just a lot of opinions and a budget that feels smaller by the day. The common advice is to "test everything," which is just a polite way of saying "set your money on fire." You don't have the time or the cash for that. The good news is, you don't need a mountain of local data to build a killer first performance marketing strategy. You just need to stop thinking about channels and start thinking about pain.

Most businesses get this backwards. They pick a platform—"we should be on LinkedIn!"—and then try to shoehorn their message into it. This is a recipe for failure. The truth is, the right platform reveals itself once you've done the hard work of defining who you're selling to and what keeps them awake at night. This isn't about guesswork; it's a framework. This is the exact process we use to take clients into new territories, and it starts with ditching the traditional idea of a customer profile. It's the core of how you can build your first performance marketing strategy from the ground up.

So what is my Ideal Customer Profile then?

Forget the sterile, demographic-based profile your last marketing hire made. "Companies in the finance sector in London with 50-200 employees" tells you absolutely nothing of value. It's a lazy shortcut that leads to generic ads that speak to no one and get ignored by everyone. To stop burning cash, you must define your customer not by who they are, but by their pain. Their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare.

Your Head of Engineering client isn't just a job title; she's a leader terrified of her best developers quitting out of sheer frustration with a broken workflow. Your target at the law firm isn't just 'Head of Litigation'; he's the partner who wakes up in a cold sweat dreaming about missing a critical filing deadline and exposing the firm to a malpractice suit. Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state. It's a nightmare.

When you're entering a new market, this is your only reliable compass. The specific regulations in Germany might be different from the UK, but the underlying fear of a compliance breach is universal for a finance director. The local slang in Manchester is different from Bristol, but the frustration of a sales manager with a CRM full of dead leads is the same.

Before you spend a single pound, you need to be able to answer these questions with absolute clarity:

• -> What is the single biggest problem my product or service solves? Be specific. Not "improves efficiency," but "stops engineers from wasting 10 hours a week on manual deployments."
• -> What is the tangible, financial cost of this problem? Does it lead to £50,000 in wasted salary a year? Does it risk a £100,000 regulatory fine?
• -> What is the emotional cost? Is it the stress of constantly being behind? The fear of looking incompetent in front of the board? The frustration of using outdated tools?

Once you've isolated that nightmare, you can start building a real profile. Where do people experiencing this specific pain go for information and relief? Find the niche podcasts they listen to on their commute, like 'Acquired' or 'The Diary of a CEO'. Find the industry newsletters they actually open, like 'Stratechery' or a local equivalent. Identify the SaaS tools they already pay for, like HubSpot or Salesforce. Are they members of the 'SaaS Growth Hacks' Facebook group? Do they follow people like Jason Lemkin on Twitter (now X)?

This intelligence isn't just data; it's the blueprint for your entire targeting strategy. Do this work first, or you have no business spending a single penny on ads. This foundational step is far more important than any platform-specific tactic and is the only reliable way to choose the right advertising channels without wasting money.

How do I choose the right channels without any data?

Once you've defined the nightmare, choosing the channel becomes almost laughably simple. You're no longer guessing. You're just matching the customer's state of awareness to the platform's strength.

There are only two states that matter for a new launch:

1. They are actively searching for a solution to their nightmare.

These people are problem-aware and solution-aware. They know they have a toothache and are actively looking for a dentist. Their behaviour is simple: they go to Google and type in their problem or the solution they're looking for.

This is where Google Search Ads are unbeatable. You're not interrupting them; you're answering a question they've just asked. For a new market, this is your lowest-hanging fruit. The intent is baked in.

Your job here is to get inside their head. What would they type? An outreach tool company shouldn't just bid on "Apollo.io alternative". They should bid on the problem: "how to find contact info for leads" or "best software for lead generation". For a local service, like an electrician in Birmingham, you'd target "emergency electrician birmingham" or "electrical repair services near me". These keywords show clear commercial intent. You are catching them at the exact moment of need.

2. They are suffering from the nightmare but NOT actively searching for a solution.

These people are problem-aware but solution-unaware. They know they have a toothache, but they're just grumbling about it. They haven't decided to look for a dentist yet. Or worse, they are completely unaware they even have a problem; the pain is just a normal part of their day.

You can't reach these people on Google Search, because they aren't searching. You have to interrupt their day. This is the territory of LinkedIn Ads and Meta (Facebook/Instagram) Ads.

This is where your "nightmare" research pays off. On LinkedIn, you don't target "Finance Industry." You target "Job Title: Finance Director" at "Company Size: 50-200" who are members of the "CFO Club" group and follow "The Financial Times". You're targeting the person, not the company. You then hit them with an ad that speaks directly to their nightmare: "Tired of your cash flow forecasts being a work of fiction? Here's how to build a dashboard that actually predicts your bank balance in 30 days." One B2B software client of ours, targeting decision-makers, managed to get their cost per lead down to just $22 on LinkedIn using this exact hyper-specific approach.

On Meta, it's about interests and behaviours. You target people who like your competitor's pages, follow industry influencers, or show interest in tools that your ideal customer would use (e.g., people interested in 'Shopify' and 'Klaviyo' if you sell an e-commerce app). I remember one e-commerce store launch where we generated 1,500 leads at just $0.29 each by targeting interests in very specific, related brands before they'd even made a single organic sale.

A word of warning here. Many people are tempted to run "Brand Awareness" or "Reach" campaigns on Meta when they start. This is a catastrophic mistake. When you set your campaign objective to "Reach," you are giving the algorithm a very specific command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price." The algorithm does exactly what you ask. It seeks out the users inside your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever buy anything. Why? Because those users' attention is cheap. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product. Always, always, always optimise for a conversion objective—a lead, a signup, a sale—from day one. Awareness is a byproduct of sales, not the other way around.

What kind of offer actually works in a new market?

Now we arrive at the most common failure point in all B2B advertising, and it's even more critical in a new market where you have zero trust: the offer. The "Request a Demo" button is perhaps the most arrogant Call to Action ever conceived. It presumes your prospect, who has never heard of you, has nothing better to do than book a 30-minute slot in their calendar to be sold to. It's high-friction, low-value, and instantly positions you as just another commodity vendor.

Your offer’s only job is to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. It needs to solve a small part of their problem for free, instantly, to earn you the right to solve the whole thing for money. This is how you use paid ads to validate your offer and build that initial trust.

What does a good offer look like?

• -> For SaaS founders: This is your unfair advantage. The gold standard is a free trial (no card details needed) or a freemium plan. Let them use the actual product. Let them feel the transformation. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. You aren't generating Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) for a sales team to chase; you are creating Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) who are already convinced. We've seen this work time and time again. One of our B2B SaaS clients generated 1,535 trials using this method, and another got 5,082 trials at just $7 a pop. The product did the selling for them.
• -> For Service Businesses / Consultancies: You are not exempt. You must bottle your expertise into a tool, content, or asset that provides instant value. For a marketing agency, this could be a free, automated SEO audit that shows them their top 3 keyword opportunities. For a data analytics platform, it could be a free 'Data Health Check' that flags the top issues in their database. For a corporate training company, it could be a free 15-minute interactive video module on 'Handling Difficult Conversations'. For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy, it's a 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns completely free. You must solve a small, real problem for free.
• -> For E-commerce: The offer is often a discount, but you can be more creative. "Get a free [complementary product] with your first order" can be more powerful than "10% off". A free, valuable guide ("The 5 mistakes people make when buying [your product category]") in exchange for an email can build your list and establish authority before the sale.

Delete the "Request a Demo" button from your landing page. Replace it with something that gives, rather than takes. This single change can have a bigger impact on your lead flow than any amount of campaign optimisation.

How much should I budget and what results can I expect?

This is the question every founder asks, and most agencies give a vague "it depends" answer. Let's get specific. The real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer lies in its counterpart: Lifetime Value (LTV).

Before you spend anything, you need to understand this number. If you dont know you're LTV, you're just gambling. Here’s how you calculate it:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month/year?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? (Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold) / Revenue.
• Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

The calculation is simple: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's play with some numbers. Use the calculator below to see how these metrics impact your LTV and what you can afford to spend to acquire a customer.

Suddenly, that £250 lead from a CTO on LinkedIn doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth and frees you from the tyranny of cheap, low-quality leads. For a more detailed breakdown, our guide to paid ad budgeting goes deeper into financial modeling for startups.

Now, what can you expect in terms of actual costs? This varies wildly, but from our experience running campaigns across dozens of niches, we can give you some realistic ballpark figures. These are based on campaigns optimised for conversions (leads, signups, etc), not sales.

In developed markets (UK, US, Western Europe, Australia), you can expect Cost Per Click (CPC) to be in the £0.50 - £1.50 range on platforms like Meta. With a decent landing page converting at 10-30%, your Cost Per Result (lead, signup) will land somewhere between £1.60 and £15. For e-commerce sales, where conversion rates are lower (typically 2-5%), your Cost Per Purchase could be between £10 and £75.

In developing markets, these costs can be much lower. CPCs might be £0.10 - £0.50. This translates to a Cost Per Result of £0.33 - £5, and a Cost Per Purchase of £2 - £25. However, be warned: lower cost often comes with lower quality. The leads might be less qualified, or the purchasing power might be lower. You must track post-conversion metrics to ensure you're not just buying cheap clicks that never turn into revenue.

How do I structure my first campaigns for learning?

Your first campaigns have two jobs: generate leads/sales, and generate data. You need a structure that lets you learn quickly without burning through your budget. For platforms like Meta, I always recomend a simple funnel-based approach, even for a new account. You can create a simplified version of a ToFu/MoFu/BoFu (Top/Middle/Bottom of Funnel) structure.

Here’s how it works:

1. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Prospecting: This is your cold traffic. You'll have one campaign dedicated to this. Inside this campaign, you create different ad sets, and each ad set targets a different audience based on your "nightmare" research. For example:
   • -> Ad Set 1: Targets interests related to competitor software (e.g., people who like 'HubSpot' and 'Salesforce').
   • -> Ad Set 2: Targets interests related to industry publications and influencers (e.g., people who like 'TechCrunch' and follow 'Jason Lemkin').
   • -> Ad Set 3: Targets a broader behaviour (e.g., 'Small business owners' or 'B2B decision-makers').
   You run your best ads to all of these ad sets. Within a few days to a week (depending on your budget), you'll start to see which audience is responding best. You turn off the losers and give more budget to the winners. This is your engine for finding new customers.
2. Middle/Bottom of Funnel (MoFu/BoFu) - Retargeting: This is your warm traffic. These are people who have already shown interest by visiting your website, watching your video, or engaging with your ad. You create a second campaign just for them. Initially, since your audience will be small, you can group them all into one ad set:
   • -> Ad Set 1: Targets all website visitors from the last 30 days, all video viewers, and all ad engagers. Exclude people who have already converted (purchased or become a lead).
   You show these people different ads. These ads can be more direct. Think testimonials, case studies, or a reminder about your high-value offer. The goal here is to convert the people who are already considering you. This audience almost always provides the highest Return On Ad Spend (ROAS).

This simple two-campaign structure lets you test cold audiences systematically while efficiently converting the warm traffic you generate. It's a clean, logical way to manage your spend and learn what works. If you are a small business owner running your first ads, this structure is a great starting point.

Your First Performance Marketing Strategy: The Action Plan

Launching into a new market is daunting, but it doesn't need to be a gamble. By following a logical framework instead of chasing tactics, you can build a strategy that learns fast and delivers results. Stop worrying about the lack of data and start creating it with a focused, intelligent approach.

This is the main advice I have for you, boiled down into a step-by-step plan:

Executing this requires discipline. It means doing the hard strategic work upfront instead of just jumping into an ad account and pressing 'boost'. But the payoff is immense: a performance marketing engine that is built on a solid foundation, ready to scale as you conquer your new market.

If you've gone through these steps and feel that navigating the nuances of ad platforms, copywriting, and ongoing optimisation is more than you want to handle alone, it might be time to consider expert help. A dedicated consultancy can accelerate your learning curve dramatically and help you avoid the costly mistakes that are common when launching from scratch. We offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy consultation where we can review your plan and provide specific advice for your business. Feel free to reach out if you'd like an expert second opinion.