Is Marketing Taking the Blame for a Product Problem?

This week: Why product, not marketing, is often the real reason for stalled growth, and the playbook Monday.com used to get more efficient while 5×’ing ARR. Plus, how buyers now Google you inside ChatGPT. Giddyup!

Rethink Your Go-to-Market Math

“If growth stalls, marketing isn’t broken 90% of the time — the product is,” warns Rand Fishkin. Leadership sets aggressive quotas, then looks to the CMO when leads don’t materialize. A classic misdiagnosis.

Causation unpacked by TK Kader: the “one more feature” myth and the “we just need volume” lie funnel cash into leaks. Dev Basu counters: treat the first two quarters of any motion as $-per-truth estimation, not forecast theatre. Start with baselines, not assumptions.

Avoid crash-diet growth plans. Marketers who arm CEOs with hard baselines and segmented CAC live to fight another round; those who promise unsubstantiated results face consequences when the math collapses.

• Comment on Rand’s post: “Marketing accelerates the inevitable; if it’s not inevitable, you’re just burning money.”

• Same thread: top-down expectations usually start with VCs pushing impossible comps.

• Dev Basu thread reply: “Leadership wants commitments, not est—friction begins there.”

Monday.com’s Efficiency Flywheel

Contrary to SaaS lore, Monday shrank Sales & Marketing spend as a share of revenue from 95% to 48% while 5×’ing ARR (SaaStr). The lever wasn’t head-count—it was product synergy. Add-on modules pulled existing accounts deeper, ballooning LTV and subsidizing cheaper acquisition.

Toast replicates the playbook vertically: embedded payments finance boots-on-the-ground reps, which can be difficult for horizontal SMB SaaS to replicate. The shared pattern—dominate a focused ICP (100k→2M ARR founder on Reddit)—builds a defensible wedge before horizontal expansion.

Sequence matters: nail retention + expansion economics first; asking marketing to accelerate a leaky funnel simply magnifies losses. Use ARR per CAC segment as your north star before any broad spend.

• Shiv Narayanan: map revenue source (new vs. expansion) before budget allocation.

• SaaStr commenter: Monday’s PLG motion slashed upfront CAC too.

• Reddit insight: “Hired a marketer before knowing repeatability—wasted $40k.”

Search Has Already Re-Written Its Own Rules

Seeing organic traffic dip? Zenith.ai parsed 30,000 Gen-AI citations; LLMs quote company domains and docs 7× more often than blogs or forums. Translation: classic SEO keywords aren't the only path to visibility anymore. Buyers ask ChatGPT, not Google.

The fix is GEO—Generative Engine Optimization: crystal-clear specs, official docs, tight schema markup. Gavin Heaton calls it “becoming the answer instead of a result.” Surprising wrinkle—G2.com is the #4 cited source in ChatGPT answers (Adam Goyette). Your reviews just became TOFU.

Restrategize: website, docs and even G2 profiles are now first-touch discovery assets. Audit every page for cite-worthiness—zero fluff, factual learnability.

• HN user: “LLMs ask for specs, not spin.”

• Allie Smith thread comment notes we need “a shift from content to knowledge.”

• Reddit: founder listed his SaaS on Crunchbase & G2 with schema, overnight “found by GPT.”

Sound Bites

• 🎙️ B2B Lead Generation Crisis: When Word of Mouth Marketing Stops Working: Darrell Evans explains why referral pipelines are drying up for B2B tech and how to pivot with strategic video content and targeted paid advertising.

• 🎥 How To Build A High Converting Sales Team That Won’t Get You Sued: Sales expert Josh Troy breaks down how to build a high-performing and compliant high-ticket sales team in the current trust-depleted market.

• 🎙️ The Seller-Free Trend Will Be MASSIVE: Marcus Sheridan explains why 75% of buyers now prefer a seller-free experience and how to arm them with self-service tools before they even ask for a demo.

Until next week!