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Startups fail for a lot of reasons. Bad marketing is one of them — and it’s something entrepreneurs don’t pay nearly as much attention to as product development or raising capital.
I’m a professor at a leading business school, Babson College, and have spent most of the last three decades helping aspiring entrepreneurs learn how to market their businesses. Marketing can boost sales, help your company live up to its potential and enable internal alignment around goals.
Many entrepreneurs, however, are confused about the role of marketing. Some treat it as an afterthought. Some push too far, overpromising benefits they can’t deliver. Others don’t go far enough, failing to leverage marketing to generate employee, stakeholder and customer buy-in.
Here are three of the most common misconceptions about marketing, and what your business should do instead.
Related: Failed Startups Made These 7 Marketing Mistakes — Are You Making Them, Too?
Myth #1: Marketing is about selling your product’s features
One of the things I admire most about entrepreneurs is their passion. The founders I teach and advise are steeped in the details of their products, while carrying the big-picture conviction that what they’re working on could be a game-changer.
Entrepreneurs’ passion, however, can create blind spots. For example, founders are often so excited by what they’re building that they begin with their product’s characteristics and ask: “How can I convince customers of the value of these features?”
The result is a disconnect between entrepreneurs, who are immersed in what they’re offering, and customers, whose attention is often focused on solving their own problems.
What you should do instead
As painful as it may be to admit, entrepreneurs should recognize that customers largely don’t care about the careful thought that goes into a product. What they really care about is solving their problems.
Every startup began by thinking about a customer problem. But as time goes on, entrepreneurs can lose sight of this north star and get bogged down in a laundry list of specific features.
To articulate true value to consumers, reach back to the earliest stages of your company’s development when you were constantly asking, “What need is there to build this?” Marketing should start from this customer-centric viewpoint and work backward to the product, rather than start with the product and rationalize why customers should care.
Related: The Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing and Growth Strategies
Myth #2: Marketing requires you to go big or go home
Entrepreneurial passion can also fuel overly ambitious marketing in which companies exaggerate benefits or even misrepresent reality.
This happens more than you might think. One Gallup poll found that “only 27% of employees strongly agree that they always deliver on the promises they make to their customers.” Overpromising about what your product can do almost always catches up with your company, and can lead to financial, reputational and legal consequences.
That’s true for defunct startups like Theranos, which claimed to offer revolutionary blood testing technology, or FTX, which supposedly heralded a new era in cryptocurrency. It’s also true for established companies. Gerber settled false claims that one of its baby formulas prevented allergies. Volkswagen’s deceptive “Clean Diesel” campaign led the world’s top-earning automaker to pay $25 billion in fines.
What you should do instead
Marketing departments must balance being bold with being honest, never letting the urge to go big outweigh reasonable expectations of what the company can deliver. You can inspire customers with an overall vision without leading them on using specific promises.
When your company crafts its next marketing campaign, be sure that you aren’t promising more than you can follow through on. Keep tabs on whether your product underperforms — and if it does, raise the issue with product teams and adjust your messaging as soon as possible. Marketing’s role isn’t just to articulate value; it’s also about helping ensure you deliver it.
Related: 10 Effective Growth Marketing Hacks and Strategies for Your Startup
Myth #3: Marketing is just about selling to potential customers
Another mistake entrepreneurs make is treating marketing as only about selling a product to customers. That’s a big part of it. But marketing is also about getting your team on the same page and securing their buy-in.
A lack of internal alignment is more common than you think. Another Gallup poll found that only 41% of company employees “know what my organization stands for and what makes our brand different from our competitors.” Imagine that: Most people at your company may be unsure what your brand is about or what makes it compelling. That results in employees who are less engaged and less effective.
This is a huge gap where marketing can and must step in. An effective marketing function helps align every employee on your team around the company’s value proposition, market and customer segments.
What you should do instead
Rather than bring on marketing later in your company’s development to sell what’s already been created, integrate it from the very beginning. Use marketing to ensure that everyone within the organization has a sense of the company’s core value proposition.
You might launch an internal marketing campaign aimed at strengthening employee buy-in. Or host a pop-up event that blends employee appreciation with an attempt to communicate the company’s mission. The key is message consistency. Don’t take for granted that employees understand the founders’ vision.
Related: 6 Innovative Marketing Strategies Designed for Startups
Bottom line
In an age where technology is developing so rapidly and companies regularly promise what seems like science fiction, it is more important than ever to use marketing to craft and deliver compelling value and enable organizational, market and customer focus.
Judi Dench. Photo by John Phillips/Getty Images for BFI
Jeff Bezos. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images)
