The Marketing Misconceptions series will focus on topics that are common perceptions of marketing and then clarifying them. Some are light hearted ones that make most Marketers roll their eyes. Others are actually pretty important and could be hurting your business.
Deprioritizing Marketing At the Beginning Is Costly
Starting a business can be daunting, yet totally thrilling. You’ve got an innovative idea, maybe a small but mighty team, and boundless energy to bring your vision to life. Like me, you'll work incredibly hard to build your foundation and start growing your business. But amidst the hustle of building a product, securing funding, and assembling your crew, it’s easy to fall into a common trap: believing marketing can wait.
This misconception—that startups don’t need marketing early on—is one that I come across quite a bit when speaking to early stage founders. And it's a HUGE mistake out of the gate. Sometimes, its this idea that the product will “sell itself” or that marketing is an expensive luxury better reserved for a later stage when your product is ready for prime time. Other times its a total misunderstanding of what marketing is or what it does.
Here are 5 reasons why these mindsets are not only misguided, but they potentially harmful to your startup’s success.
Securing Investor Confidence
I think there is this misconception that you don't need to market yourself or position yourself strategically to investors, even early on. But marketing for investment purposes is a two-folded need.
Yes, a big part of gaining investors is building relationships to gain their trust. But investors are consumers too, deciding what to invest their money into. With a boatload of startups to look at, they need to see some communications that get their attention. They also want to see that what they are considering investing in is actually going to bring value or give them a return on that investment. To show them the promise in your offering, guess what you need to be able to do? Tell a compelling story about your product. Guess where storytelling capabilities usually lie? With Marketers.
Additionally, investors love seeing a clear market demand for a product. It shows promise that you have a truly viable offering. Therefore, having some early marketing efforts in play can demonstrate traction, whether it’s website traffic, email sign-ups, or social media engagement. These metrics show investors that there’s interest and a potential path to profitability. In addition, it shows them that you are gathering insights and information already to support your business case. Which leads me to the next point.
Validating Your Market Before You're Too Far Down the Path
Marketing isn’t just about selling—it’s about listening. Early campaigns, even small ones, help you gather data about your audience: Who connects with your product? What messaging resonates with them? What problems are customers trying to solve? Does your product or service truly solve those problems? Or does it only partially solve it? This feedback loop allows you to refine and improve both your product and your go-to-market strategy.
This is extremely important feedback to gain early on when it's easier and, quite frankly, less expensive to pivot. If you delay marketing until later stages, a few things can happen—you can get a product so far down the pipeline to launch it without that feedback that you have completely missed the customer need or value.
This leaves Marketing to try to polish a turd product to make it as appealing as possible without much value to bring to the forefront and Sales trying to sell the unsellable based on that weak value because it's not fulfilling a customer need. Or you've grown to such a large size that once you finally start marketing, you realize that the refinement or shift in brand, marketing and go-to-market strategy necessary is painful and costly.
In other words, if you don't invest in Marketing to learn as you go, usually you end up in a penny-wise, pound foolish situation—saving small amounts of money up front only to end up spending 5x as much to fix it later on which can have catastrophic consequences for the business, your employees and your investors.
Building Awareness in a Crowded Market
No matter how groundbreaking your product or service is, you’re entering a world where customers have endless options. You may think you have the most unique product or service there is and that you have no competition (yes, I have spoken to founders who genuinely believe they don't have any competition).
However, it is very rare these days to be carving out or building a brand new market space or need. To give you some context, I have honestly lost count on exactly how many product launches I've done in my 20 year career, but let's just say for argument's sake, I have launched at least 15 products. In all those products I've launched, I have seen a net new category with zero competition where you have to invest time and money teaching your audience about the new market space, or unmet need that they don't know they have, exactly 3 times in 20 years.
Literally every market is saturated with competition. That doesn't mean you can't succeed, but without a unique value proposition or clear and compelling way to let people know you exist and why your offering is the right one for them, your startup risks fading into obscurity. Marketing creates a clear and unique value proposition around your product, builds visibility around it and helps potential customers understand why your solution is worth their time and money over the competition. Which takes us to number 4.
Outpacing or Keeping Pace with Competitors
If you wait to invest in marketing, chances are your competitors won’t. And if you are a small fish entering a marketplace with a big whale or lots of other fish, it's safe to say the competition has been investing heavily. They are either investing to grow their own business or they are investing to fortify their marketshare in preparation for your launch.
By the time you’re ready to “flip the switch,” they may have already accelerated their marketing spend to claim more mindshare in your target audience or have developed a defense strategy against your product as a new entrant. Essentially, starting marketing early helps you carve out your place in the market and define who you are on your own terms, before your competition either does it for you or renders you obsolete before you've flipped that switch.
Attracting Early Adopters
Your first customers are more than buyers—they’re advocates, beta testers, and sources of invaluable testimonials. And let's be honest, testimonials and ratings are one of the most important bottom of funnel activities to help consumers decide to convert and purchase your product.
One of the hardest things to do when you launch a new product into a crowded or established marketplace is to gain trust with customers. These early adopters are crucial to helping you build that rapport and credibility with your audience. But if they don't know about you because you didn't market to them, you're creating an uphill battle for your business as you enter the race.
An effective and comprehensive go-to-market strategy that was built early on will include a way to identify and engage these early adopters to create momentum and social proof for your startup. And guess where that go-to-market strategy comes from? Marketing.
Shift Your Mindset
In general, my ask would be that founders please shift your mindsets around marketing. Hopefully this blog post has helped to debunk this misconception that Marketing is not necessary until much later in your startup's journey and helped you see the inherent value an ongoing marketing investment can bring to your startup.
Marketing isn’t just an add-on to your business—it’s an integral part of building it. By integrating marketing into your strategy from the beginning, you’re setting yourself up for growth, resilience, and long-term success. In the crowded startup ecosystem, early marketing can be the key to ensuring your innovative idea doesn’t just exist—it thrives.
Let's Connect
Like what you read here? Considering how it might apply to your own business? Then let’s connect and get started on building your brand and marketing strategies today.
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