This isn't a marketing problem...but maybe it is

Let's just try TikTok. That'll work.

Author

Adam Lasky
July 28, 2025

Welcome to the final chapter of This Isn’t a Marketing Problem, a 7-part series on why startups burn money not because of bad marketing, but because of everything that comes before it: the wrong message, the wrong audience, the wrong system.

Now for the final piece of the puzzle. Part 7: This Might Be a Marketing Problem

🧩 Why your marketing isn’t the problem…yet
🔁 The broken loop debug checklist
🎯 When it is a marketing problem
✅ TL;DR: Fix the System First

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🧩 Why your marketing isn’t the problem…yet

Founders love saying "marketing isn't working." What they mean is:

  • Nobody is clicking

  • The ads aren't converting

  • We posted but it didn't go viral

  • Our list is dead

But those are symptoms, not causes. The problem isn't that marketing doesn't work. Sometimes the real problem is: the machine you’re feeding marketing into is already broken.

  • Your offer isn't differentiated

  • Your system can't retain customers

  • Your data is too thin to prioritize

  • Your team is moving, but not learning

After TeePublic, I was poached to become CEO of TeeFury, a once-iconic daily t-shirt site that had just posted 5 straight years of revenue decline. My mandate: fix the brand and get it growing again. So I did what I knew worked. I rebuilt the Google and Meta Ads accounts. Migrated the shopping feed to a feed management service. Relaunched email. Re-architected the site for SEO. We saw 97% year-over-year growth.

But it wasn't enough.

The marketing worked but the system was broken.

The defensive moat that once made TeeFury strong (exclusive artist designs) had evaporated. Artists were now cross-listing on dozens of marketplaces. TeeFury's value prop had been commoditized. Platforms like TeePublic (ironically, the one I helped build) had stronger distribution, deeper pockets, and could outbid us on every channel.

Marketing wasn't the issue. The offer, the model, the moat: that was the issue. If you're pouring budget into acquisition but still not growing, ask yourself: is marketing broken, or is the machine it's feeding into already dead?

🔁 The Broken Loop Debug Checklist

So let's debug the growth loop piece by piece before we blame marketing (don't worry, we're going to blame marketing soon…just not yet).

Trigger Broken?
→ You're not showing up in front of the right people
→ Your hook is weak, recycled, or boring
→ There's no emotional jolt, no "oh damn, that’s me" moment

Action Blocked?
→ Users are confused or overwhelmed
→ Your CTA is hidden or unclear
→ There's no momentum: people click, then freeze

Output Missing?
→ Nothing shareable, remark-worthy, or memorable
→ Users don't talk about you because there's nothing worth repeating
→ No public signal = no social proof = no flywheel

Reinput Absent?
→ You're not capturing what worked (comments, replies, click paths)
→ No retargeting based on behavior
→ No remixing of successful content or messaging

Trust Never Built?
→ You asked for too much, too soon
→ You never earned the second touch
→ You skipped the nurture step and jumped straight to "buy now"

Want the full checklist to audit your loop?
👉 Broken Loop Debug Checklist

🎯 When It Is a Marketing Problem

There are moments when marketing actually is broken. But not because your intern forgot to post on Instagram. It's because you're missing a system. It could manifest itself in a number of symptoms:

  • You've hit a CAC wall and need new segments or channels

  • Your creative fatigues and CTRs drop

  • Your email flows plateau and unsub rates climb

  • You want to scale, but LTV or payback lags

  • You're not sure what lever (reach, trust, urgency, AOV) to pull next

These symptoms are the result of a missing system. And one of the biggest is the Spray-and-Pray system. It's when a startup throws a bunch of marketing tactics at the wall (ads, emails, social posts, random partnerships) without any cohesive system, prioritization, or feedback loop. It looks like activity, but there’s no strategy behind it. It's marketing chaos disguised as hustle.

💀 What it feels like:

  • Let's just try TikTok, maybe that'll work

  • Run some Google Ads with $100 and see what happens

  • We should post more on LinkedIn

  • Let's send an email blast this week

🔥 The real problem:

  • No clear goal

  • No prioritization system (like ICE or PIE)

  • No experiment tracking

  • No feedback loop from what’s working

🧠 How doe we fix it?

Create Orchestration and Rituals
✅ Weekly growth syncs
✅ Shared KPI dashboard (trends + anomalies)
✅ DRIs for each core loop or funnel
✅ Postmortems + learning time baked in
🔥 No cadence = no compounded learning = no growth system

Experiment Log Review
✅ Every test logged with outcomes
✅ Winners templatized
✅ Failed tests reviewed, not forgotten
✅ Tests scored with ICE or PIE
🔥 If you don't log the lesson, the mistake becomes strategy.

Feedback Systems
✅ Growth log accessible to all teams
✅ Wins reused across channels
✅ Learnings feed back into roadmap
🔥 Insight that doesn't return to the system dies.

📦 Want to Install These Systems?

Download the Growth Marketing OS and dive deeper into these individual fixes:

🔥 TL;DR: Fix the System First

This Isn't a Marketing Problem…
Until it is.
Marketing doesn't work if:

  • The offer sucks

  • The audience is unclear

  • The loop is broken

But when you do have a great product and great message and it's still not converting?

That’s a marketing system problem.
And systems can be fixed.

💡 Want help fixing yours?
Reply to this email and we can chat about it. You've already got the toolbox, now let's turn it into a system that scales.

This newsletter is for you. What marketing challenges are you facing in your startup journey? Reply directly to this email with your questions or topics you'd like to see covered in future issues.

Until next week,

P.S. Found this helpful? Forward it to another founder who might benefit. We're all in this together.

P.P.S. Don't forget to download the Growth Marketing OS by clicking the button below.