We Built It. Now Just Make People Buy It.

Good morning. Welcome to a 7 part series called This Isn’t a Marketing Problem.

In Part 1 of this series, We Built It. Now Just Make People Buy It:

💥 The most honest quote I found from r/Entrepreneur
🎯 Why your real issue is confusion (leave CAC out of this)
✍️ A 1-sentence formula to fix your positioning
🧰 Sharpen your message before you light your budget on fire

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💥 The most honest quote I found from r/Entrepreneur

If you've ever worked with a technical co-founder or built something yourself, you've probably felt this. The assumption is that marketing is some post-launch checkbox, something you think about (and layer on) after the product is “done.” Unfortunately, there are a few problems with this line of thinking:

1. No one but you and a few of your friends care about your product.

2. Marketing isn’t a magician’s hat that pulls a rabbit out of its hat on command.

The truth is that startups don’t fail because they couldn’t build it. They fail because no one understood why it mattered. Founders get so deep into their own product that they assume everyone else will instantly get it and care. But no one gets it and no one cares. Because, first, you built it for you and assumed everyone else is just like you. And second, you haven’t given anyone a compelling reason to care.

🎯 Why your real issue is confusion (leave CAC out of this)

Exactly. They think the problem is either: they don’t have enough budget or they are spending too much without the return or the conversion rate is too low or the landing page wording isn’t right. So they start to blame marketing for the lack of product stickiness or adoption rate: the bidding is wrong, the targeting is off, Google Ads is lying about conversion volume.

That’s not to excuse marketing or give it a free pass. Side note: we’ll deal with Google Ads is lying in a future newsletter. But, before you start blaming marketing, can you clearly answer in one sentence:

• What problem your product solves?

• Who your product is for?

• Why they should care right now?

And not light, fluffy, BS answers like:

• We’re redefining the way people connect with what matters.

• We optimize engagement across the full value stack.

• A platform that empowers growth through seamless synergy.

If you can’t answer those 3 questions, your issue isn’t necessarily marketing. Your issue is your positioning. And this can be diagnosed pretty easily:

• If your homepage doesn’t make a stranger say “I get it”

• If your ad headline could belong to five different companies

• If your product takes more than one sentence to explain...

You have a positioning problem. And this is the difference between:

❌ We built something cool, now let’s push it.

✅ We understand our customer’s pain better than anyone and here’s why our product fixes it.

✍️ A 1-sentence formula to fix your positioning

If you made it through that last section and realized your pitch is vague, bloated, or only makes sense to you…good. Now let’s fix it. Here’s the formula:

We help [specific person] solve [painful, obvious problem] by [doing what, specifically?].

It’s simple. It’s hard. And it works. But only if you do the work of:

• Talking to actual users and ask about what they hate.

• Repeat back their words in your positioning statement.

• Niche down so hard it feels like your total addressable market is 3 people.

Your only job is to make someone say “Oh sh!t, that’s me!”

Here are a few examples:

• We help Shopify store owners recover abandoned checkouts without sounding desperate.

• We help diabetic parents track their child’s glucose levels in real time using fun, sticker-powered patches.

• We help first-time founders write landing pages that actually convert without hiring a copywriter.

Each one of these names a specific person, solves a real, painful problem, and removes buzzwords.

🔗 Sharpen your message before you light your budget on fire

If you’re still staring at your Google Ads wondering why no one’s converting, don’t throw more money at it. Fix the message first. I built a quick template inside the Growth Marketing OS to help you stop hand-waving your pitch and actually make it land. In under 10 minutes, you’ll:

• Figure out who you’re actually building for

• Identify a real, painful problem (not just “low engagement”)

• Write a one-liner that doesn’t sound like every other AI-powered synergy platform

• Share it with 3 people and see if they say “That’s me”

You can out-code everyone and still fail if people don’t get what you do in 3 seconds.

Don’t fix the product. Fix the perception.

Next week: Part 2 – You’re Selling Features, Not Outcomes
We’ll unpack why “AI-powered,” “seamless,” and “integrated” don’t actually mean anything, why no one cares about your roadmap, and how to rewrite your feature list into real outcomes that convert.

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,

Adam

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