For a long time, I treated growth and marketing as the same thing.
More channels.
More distribution.
More content, ads, posts, experiments.
When growth stalled, my instinct was always to look outward.
What I eventually learned was uncomfortable:
If a product doesn’t grow by itself, marketing only makes the failure louder.
Early growth problems rarely come from traffic
In early-stage products, traffic is almost never the real bottleneck.
What usually breaks growth happens much earlier:
- Users don’t understand the product fast enough
- The first meaningful outcome arrives too late
- There’s no obvious reason to come back
No channel fixes that.
Marketing can bring attention, but it cannot manufacture clarity.
Growth is a product property
Real growth shows up when a product answers three questions without explanation:
- What is this?
- Why does it matter now?
- What should I do next?
If users hesitate on any of these, growth stalls — regardless of how good your distribution is.
This is why many “growth experiments” fail quietly: they test channels before fixing comprehension.
Distribution amplifies what already exists
Once the product loop is tight, distribution suddenly feels easy.
The same content performs better. The same landing page converts higher. The same referral mechanic starts working.
Nothing changed in marketing. Everything changed in the product.
Growth didn’t come from a new channel — it came from removing friction.
The mistake I stopped making
I no longer ask:
“How do I get more users?”
I ask:
“Where do users stop understanding or caring?”
Every fix there compounds across every channel.
That’s the only kind of growth that lasts.
Final thought
Marketing is not where growth starts. It’s where growth becomes visible.
If growth feels forced, the product usually needs the work — not the funnel.