The lie isn’t that great marketing doesn’t matter. It obviously does, always.
The lie is that marketing can fix a growth slowdown without any product improvement.
At Series A-C, you’re usually facing one (or more) of these realities:
- Your early adopters were unusually forgiving… and now you’re selling to normal people
- Your ICP shifted, but your product and onboarding didn’t
- The Industry shifted, but your product didn’t (or did, but the added features or pivot missed the mark)
- Your self-serve motion worked at low volume, but hurts the sales motion at scale
- Proper activation got harder because or product, data, or operations complexity
- “Time-to-value” quietly doubled as you added features
Marketing can’t out-run those. It can only spotlight them.
The Plateau Pattern: What It Looks Like in the Wild
Here’s a common storyline:
- Marketing ramps: traffic, signups, trials—nice.
- Pipeline looks “fine”: enough volume to feel hopeful.
- Conversion stalls: free ? paid doesn’t move, trial ? paid flatlines, sales cycles stretch.
- Everyone asks for more leads anyway: because it’s the only number that still goes up.
This is where teams start shopping for:
- a new website
- a new positioning exercise
- a new channel
- a new content engine
- a new head of growth or additional team members
Sometimes those help. But if your activation and retention are weak, you’re pouring water into a leaky bucket and calling it hydration strategy.
My Diagnosis Framework: “Where Is the Friction Really?”
When I’m trying to figure out whether we have a marketing problem or a PLG plateau problem, I start with one question:
Where is the highest-friction moment between “interest” and “value”?
Then I work backward from revenue.
Step 1: Find the “Truth Metric”
Pick the metric that tells the truth even when dashboards lie:
- Free ? paid conversion (or trial ? paid)
- Activation rate (whatever “activated” truly means in your product)
- Time-to-value (median, not average)
- Day-7 and Day-30 retention
- Expansion adoption (if you’re multi-product or usage-based)
If these are stuck, your growth ceiling is probably product-led, not marketing-led.
The 4-Quadrant Diagnosis: Marketing vs Product
Here’s the simplest way I’ve found to diagnose the bottleneck:
1) High traffic + low activation = Product experience problem
You’re getting people in the door. They’re not getting to “aha.”
Symptoms
- Signups are healthy, but onboarding completion is low
- Users don’t hit the key event (first project, first integration, first workflow run, etc.)
- Support tickets spike immediately after signup
- NPS comments like “seems nice, but…”
- Customer discovery interviews point to a large TAM but small SOM (product limitations)
What to fix (product-led)
- Reduce setup/onboarding steps or friction
- Build a “first success” path that works without sales or solutions help
- Add templates/sample data so users can see value before they build
- Instrument onboarding like a funnel (in Amplitude/GA)
- Create a highly polished walk-through of the app after onboarding
- Prioritize new features and product growth that is developed for the ICP using customer research, not investor demands
Marketing’s role here isn’t “more leads.” It’s aligning expectations and feeding insights back into product for sustainable growth.
2) High activation + low paid conversion = Packaging / value perception problem
People get value… but don’t feel compelled to pay.
Symptoms
- Activation strong, usage decent, but upgrades lag
- Users stay on free forever or churns after trial
- Sales calls sound like: “We like it, but…”
What to fix
- Rework paywalls around value moments (not arbitrary feature gates)
- Make ROI obvious everywhere (usage dashboards, impact summaries, case studies with real data)
- Tighten the “why paid” story: security, collaboration, governance, scale
- Consider pricing that matches how users experience value (seats vs usage vs tiers)
Marketing can help articulate the value, but the product has to create the upgrade moment.
3) Low retention = Core value mismatch
This one hurts because it’s existential.
Symptoms
- Users activate, maybe even pay, then disappear
- Churn reasons are vague (“not using it enough”)
- Product feels like a vitamin, not painkiller
- Usage is spiky and event-driven, not habitual
What to fix
- Re-check the ICP: are you building for the user you wish you had?
- Identify the “sticky loop” (the repeatable behavior that creates compounding value)
- Add triggers: alerts, scheduled reports, workflow nudges, integrations
- Improve the “second session” experience—not just first session
No amount of top-of-funnel can save a product that people feel like they could live without.
4) Strong conversion + strong retention + slow growth = Now it’s marketing
If the product is truly converting (paid only) and retaining, and you’re still not growing, then yes—it’s marketing.
Symptoms
- Paid conversion rates look healthy across the funnel
- Retention cohorts are solid
- Expansion exists
- But you’re not reaching enough of the market
What to do
- Scale channels that match your ICP (SEO, integrations/marketplaces, partnerships, communities, events)
- Invest in category/point-of-view content
- Build a repeatable outbound + inbound handshake
- Improve brand recall (especially in crowded tools categories)
This is the “pour gas” moment. But you only earn it after the engine runs clean.
The Fastest Way to Tell If It’s Product (Not Marketing)
Here are a few brutally efficient tests I use:
Test A: “Do we know our median time-to-value?”
If you can’t answer this, you’re guessing. And if it’s more than a day (for many PLG products), you likely have a product-led bottleneck.
Test B: “What % of signups hit the key event within 24 hours?”
If you don’t have a key event, that’s the problem. If you do and it’s low—also the problem.
Test C: “Can a smart user succeed without talking to us?”
If your product requires human intervention to reach value, you don’t have PLG. You have a sales-assisted product with a free trial.
Which is fine. Just be honest about it.
Test D: “Are we scaling confusion?”
If support, onboarding calls, and ‘how do I…’ content is exploding as traffic grows, you’re scaling friction.
Marketing is not the fix for friction. It can only sugarcoat it, which seldom works well.
What “Rejuvenating Product-Led Growth” Actually Means (In Practice)
“Product rejuvenation” sounds like a big rewrite. It usually isn’t.
It’s often a handful of high-leverage changes:
- Shorten setup: kill optional steps that feel mandatory
- Move value earlier: show outcomes before configuration
- Build guided paths: role-based onboarding (dev vs manager vs admin)
- Improve activation messaging: in-app messaging is both product and marketing
- Instrument everything: activation funnels, drop-off points, cohort retention
- Clarify the ah-ha moment: make paid value feel inevitable, not forced
- Survey would-be customers: do actual customer discovery for product improvements
- Stay ahead of the industry: Keep a pulse on the trends and have a plan ahead of time for them.
- Reduce free tier: Have a generous free plan? This can reduce the perceived value of your product.
The Best Marketing Teams Tell the Truth
The most valuable thing marketing can do at Series A–C isn’t “more campaigns.”
It’s being the team brave enough to say:
“We can absolutely drive more demand… but it won’t turn into revenue until we couple it with a strong product growth plan.”
That’s not marketing being difficult. That’s marketing being accountable.
A Simple Diagnostic Scorecard (Steal This)
If you want a quick internal workshop exercise, score each 1–5:
- ICP clarity (do we agree who it’s for?)
- Time-to-value (do users reach value fast?)
- Activation rate (do users hit key event?)
- Upgrade clarity (is it obvious why paid matters?)
- Retention (do users come back?)
- Expansion (do accounts grow naturally?)
- Distribution (are we reaching enough of the market?)
If product-side scores are low, marketing isn’t the lever. If product-side scores are high, marketing is your accelerator.
Closing: Stop Asking Marketing to Perform Miracles
If you’re at Series A–C and growth is slowing, it’s tempting to believe there’s a “better marketing” answer out there.
Sometimes there is.
But often, the real constraint is that the product-led engine—activation, time-to-value, retention, upgrade triggers—needs a tune-up.
Marketing can bring the traffic. Marketing can sharpen the story. Marketing can build the machine.
But the product has to deliver the moment where the user thinks:
“Oh. I get it. I need this.”
That moment is not a campaign.
It’s product.
