We have seen it many times, founders convinced that having a great idea and a great product will automatically make their business successful. Yet, CB Insights‘ recent analysis found that 43% of VC-backed startups that shut down cite poor product-market fit as the primary cause.
Product-market fit isn’t only about building the right product.
It’s also about finding the right customer, understanding how to reach them, and building the acquisition infrastructure to do it at scale. You can’t find product-market fit without understanding your customer.
One of our favorite examples of how marketing can solve product-market fit is Listerine. Invented in 1879 as a surgical antiseptic. For decades, the product struggled. Until, in 1920 marketers invented the term “Halitosis” and showed consumers all the downfalls of bad breath. Sales went from $115,000 to over $8,000,000 in seven years. Today, you would be pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard of Halitosis. That is the power of strong marketing, it can build a category and create a market for your product. People can’t buy a solution if they don’t know it exists. Building the product is only part of the challenge. Helping customers understand why it matters is where marketing comes in.
Understanding who your customer is, in practice and not just in theory, is marketing work.
Where do they spend time online? What message resonates? Which channels reach them at the right moment? What does it cost to acquire one, and how does that change as you scale?
We often see across early stage companies, that the product evolves over time, but the understanding of the customer stays where it was on day one. The marketing infrastructure is set up in the early days and not revisited often enough.
A fintech subscription company came to us with an affiliate program no one had touched in years. The customer had shifted, yet the marketing approach hadn’t. We restructured the publisher relationships, rebuilt the acquisition logic around the current customer profile, and scaled. In six months we saw an 80% reduction in CAC and a 3x subscriber growth year over year.
Any growing company, VC-backed or not, that hit a plateau where organic growth won’t scale enough to hit their goals most likely is not failing because of the product alone.The product evolves. The business evolves. But the understanding of the customer often stays where it was on day one. Early channels carried them to Series A or early growth. However, scaled, structured acquisition, the kind that lowers CAC, builds compounding channels, and reaches the right customer profile, was never built. VCs can usually identify which portfolio companies have this gap. The question is how do you address it before the next raise?
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