Stop Calling Marketing a “Nice-to-Have” For Crying Out Loud, Chad

Your business is not stuck. Your marketing is starved.

You call marketing “essential,” then staff it like a side project. You ask for growth, then treat the people who create demand like a luxury.

That tension is why your pipeline feels fragile. It is not a mystery. It is math.

In every company I work with, the same thing happens right before growth stalls:

• Marketing is underfunded
• Marketing decisions are reactive
• Marketing leaders do not have real authority

Then everyone acts confused when revenue starts to flatten.

This article is for founders, CEOs, and revenue leaders who secretly know their marketing team is running on fumes and still expecting miracles.

I am not here to flatter you. I am here to tell you the truth you keep outsourcing to “market conditions.”

1. How Companies Accidentally Starve Marketing

No one wakes up and says, “Let’s sabotage our growth today.”

What actually happens is quieter:

• “We will hire a marketer later, once sales ramps.”
• “Let’s get a junior generalist; we are still early.”
• “We will pause spend this quarter to be cautious.”
• “We will let sales handle outreach; they are closer to the customer.”

Each decision feels small, safe, and rational. Together, they form a pattern.

You end up with:

• A part-time marketing function
• A rotating cast of freelancers with no strategy
• A founder who is still the main marketer
• Sales teams doing DIY content and outbound, badly
• No one in the room whose full-time job is demand, narrative, and reputation

Then leaders wonder why their brand awareness is low, inbound is inconsistent, and content feels scattered.

It is not a talent problem. It is an investment problem.

2. The Real Job of Marketing (It Is Not “Making Noise”)

If you still think marketing’s main job is “getting our name out there,” you are fifty tabs behind.

Marketing’s real job:

• Make the right buyers see you
• Make them understand you quickly
• Make them feel safe choosing you
• Make it easier for sales to close and expand

That means:

• Positioning that matches reality, not fantasy
• Messaging that sounds like your buyer, not your pitch deck
• Content that builds trust before a rep ever sends a calendar link
• Proof, stories, and narratives that de-risk the decision

When this is missing, everything feels harder:

• Sales cycles stretch
• Discounting becomes normal
• Churn quietly rises
• Teams start blaming each other

You do not fix that with “more hustle.” You fix it with serious marketing.

3. The Hidden Cost of Underpowered Marketing

Leaders often look at the marketing budget and think, “We cannot afford more.”

Here is the part that stings: You are already paying for it. Just in a less visible way.

You pay for it in:

• Lost deals that never even enter the pipeline
• Sales reps spending hours writing their own content
• Founders stuck on LinkedIn instead of building the company
• A website that gets traffic, then shrugs at it
• Teams running “campaigns” that do not ladder up to anything

You do not see these debits on a line item. You feel them in stress, confusion, and flat growth.

A weak marketing engine does not save money. It just hides the bill in other departments.

4. What It Looks Like When Marketing Is Treated as Infrastructure

The companies that win treat marketing like operations. Non-negotiable. Essential. Built in.

When marketing is treated as infrastructure, you see:

• A senior leader who owns narrative, demand, and brand
• A clear strategy that outlives a single campaign
• Guardrails around priorities so the team is not a task rabbit
• Feedback loops with sales, CS, and product
• Clear definitions of “good” for awareness, pipeline, and expansion

Most important, marketing has the right to say:

• “No, that request does not fit our strategy.”
• “This message will not land with our ICP.”
• “We are not ready to promote this feature yet.”
• “This is not a marketing problem. It is a product or pricing problem.”

If your marketer never says no, you do not have a marketing leader. You have a creative service desk with a very tired human inside.

5. How To Stop Treating Marketing Like a Nice-To-Have

If you recognize yourself in any of this, here is where you start.

Step 1: Tell the truth about your current state

• Is marketing a real function, or a set of favors?
• Who actually owns demand and narrative? Name a person, not “we all do.”
• How much of your content exists because someone “asked for it” versus because it supports strategy?

Write it down. No spin.

Step 2: Decide what marketing is responsible for

Pick 3 to 5 outcomes. For example:

• Consistent inbound opportunities from your ICP
• A website that explains who you are in under 10 seconds
• A LinkedIn presence that warms up markets and partners
• Content that shortens sales cycles and supports expansion

If marketing is responsible for everything, they are responsible for nothing.

Step 3: Staff to the level of your ambition

You cannot outsource your way into a category. At minimum, you need:

• Someone senior enough to own strategy and say no
• Enough budget to execute without constant panic
• A realistic timeline for results

You do not get to whisper “category leader” and then hire one junior marketer and a Canva subscription.

Step 4: Protect the function you just invested in

Once you level up marketing, you have to protect it from:

• Random “urgent” requests
• Executive pet projects
• Monthly strategy pivots
• “Can we just quickly…” energy

Every yes your marketing team gives has a cost. Treat those yeses like cash.

6. The Decision in Front of You

You can keep pretending that marketing is a decorative extra and call it “being lean.”

Or you can admit something less comfortable and more useful:

Your company is not behind because you lack hustle. It is behind because you have treated the function that creates demand, shapes reputation, and supports revenue as optional.

The moment you stop calling marketing a “nice-to-have” is the moment growth stops feeling mysterious.

It is not magic. It is structure, resourcing, and respect.

The good news is you can fix that. The bad news is you have to choose to.