Buying things isn’t a marketing strategy

Whenever I meet new marketers, I secretly sort them into two groups:

A founder messaged me: “Hey Matt, my marketing advisor says I should implement HubSpot. What do you think?”

“I think you should fire him.”

Why so certain? Why so harsh?

This was a pre-seed founder hustling cold outbound – 4 leads/week for his SaaS, and the consultant’s first instinct was to spend money. And that’s the red flag.

Whenever I meet new marketers, I secretly sort them into two groups:

1. People who think their job is to make money

2. People who think their job is to spend it

It's easy to fall into that second camp. Marketers hold most of their company's discretionary budget, so vendors swarm them like seagulls attacking french fries.

And if your inbox becomes your to-do list, you'll fill your calendar with sales calls and demos. You'll spend months evaluating things you could buy: ads, a rebrand, event sponsorships, referral software, a CRM.

At the end of the day, your marketing budget becomes their bonus, and you’re not better off.

Meanwhile, the hard work – figuring out who buys your product, where they are, what they need to hear – has no salesperson. No demo. No deadline. Just you and the problem.

What to do instead

If your business has real potential, there must be loads of people out there who desperately need your product – they just don't know you exist.

Your job is to figure out who they are, how to reach them, and what to say. And that's not something you buy, it's something you discover.

Better copy. New referral partners. UX tweaks that unlock product-led growth.

None of this requires a six-month HubSpot implementation.

As for our founder friend? I sent him a copy of my book.