Running marketing without a marketer? How to identify what’s broken (and fix it)

If you’re a founder, CEO, or CRO owning marketing by default, I doubt you actually need another campaign (the default response), you likely just need a go-to-market assessment. You might need more leads, but you first have to figure out why you're not getting them in the first place.

When pipeline is weak or results feel sporadic, the fastest way forward is actually to step back and assess your fundamentals. Fixing even one of these often moves the numbers faster than spinning up another ad or email.

Start with ICP clarity

Be precise about who you’re for and who you’re not.

Most small teams try to cover too many audiences, so that they don't leave money on the table, and end up paying the “unclear focus” tax: higher acquisition costs (and wasting precious budget dollars), longer cycles, and content that tries to target everyone and convinces no one.

Concentrate on one or two ideal customer profiles with clear use cases. A simple gut check is to look at your last quarter wins and identify patterns in company size, titles (decision maker and influencer) industry, trigger events (why they needed to buy now), and problems solved.

If you can’t see a pattern, your target is likely too broad.

Tell a buyer-led story

If a stranger in your target market doesn't understand what pain you solve or need you address in two sentences, your message isn’t doing its job.

The buyer's first exposure to you and your organization should not be a litany of functionally or a soliloquy of features. Leave the acronyms and jargon at home and share a plain-speak narrative that connects the buyer’s pain to the outcome you create and your point of view on how to get there.

Put that story where it matters most - above the fold on your website, in the first minute of a sales conversation, and in the first slides of your deck. If prospects have to translate your language into their reality, they won’t.

Let proof do the lifting

You don’t need a library of case studies, but you do need three strong proof points that are impossible to miss: measurable outcomes, credible ROI, and recognizable customer stories or logos.

Make them visible everywhere buyers look e.g. homepage, sales materials, outreach, and events. Even in the early days where you might not have the solid proof yet, you should be sharing use cases of how you can solve their problems uniquely and how it could likely improve their ROI or efficiencies.

The goal is to prevent trust from resetting at every touch.

Find the real leak in the pipeline

Before asking for “more leads,” check the flow. Look at conversion and speed (or stall) across the core stages for the last 60–90 days: traffic to lead, lead to opportunity, opportunity to close.

The biggest drop or delay is the work and focus for the next few weeks.

If traffic converts poorly, the message or offer is off. If leads don’t become opportunities, your targets or qualification is misaligned. If opportunities stall late, you likely have an enablement, pricing, or confidence problem.

Make adjustments and then check again in a few weeks/months so you can see if the changes are making an impact. Then move onto the next slow point.

Close the gap at the handoff

Strong campaigns still fail when follow-up is inconsistent (or non-existent).

Align sales and marketing on definitions (ICP, stage entry/exit criteria), who own's what at each stage, be clear on what's supposed to happen at each stage, and response times. Sales, marketing, service leaders all need to sign-off on this or it's all for nought.

If your inbound hand-raisers wait days for a reply, there’s your issue. If your trade show or conference leads never get followed-up on you just flushed a tremendous amount of cash down the proverbial toilet.

This is a process problem masquerading as a marketing problem.

Go-To-Market Assessments - Don't tackle it all at once

Resist the urge to “do more marketing” until these basics are solid. More leads doesn't mean much if the hand-offs are flubbed, they're not the right leads, or the sales stall at critical stages.

Choose one weak area, assign an owner, and define a single outcome that demonstrate the appropriate improvement. When that shows success, move to the next area.

Early on you can move fast, luck into a lot of things, and see success, but at some point the inconsistency and sporadic approaches will slow you down. Taking the time to assess vs. "do more marketing!" will get you further, faster in the long run.

Want to go deeper on your go-to-market assessment? Take the 10-minute GTM assessment