Hold the performance marketing budget

Hey there.

Let’s talk about paid marketing. Not a new topic. Still misunderstood. And in most cases, prioritized way too early.

If you’ve got product-market fit, a clear story, a well-defined ICP, and a website that actually converts? Great. You’ve earned the right to think about performance marketing.

If not, you’re probably lighting your (or your investors’) money on fire, and calling it “growth.” Many startups are still trying to buy their way into traction before they’ve earned any. That’s not growth. That’s gambling. (And the house, or in this case, Meta, always wins.)

Let’s be clear: performance marketing can work. But only when the foundation is solid — your message, your positioning, your funnel, your brand. If that stuff is shaky, paid just accelerates the failure.

The Performance Mirage

A few years ago, Airbnb shifted spend away from performance and into big, bold brand campaigns, and saw better returns. Slack didn’t touch TV until it had already become a household name in PLG circles. Monday.com scaled past $500M with performance spend, but it was built on top of years of brand investment and relentless creative testing.

What do these companies have in common? They weren’t just buying clicks. They were reinforcing something real. A story that already made sense to the customer. A brand foundation that took years to build.

Because when you skip the groundwork and jump straight to paid, the outcome is predictable: CAC spikes, conversions stall, retention craters. Not because your ads are bad. But because the customer doesn’t get what you’re selling, or why it matters.

Performance is easy to outsource. Brand isn’t. That’s why the uncomfortable work — positioning, narrative, messaging — often gets skipped. No one owns it, and it doesn’t show up in a dashboard. So it gets buried under CTRs and CPCs until the budget’s gone and the story still doesn’t land.

Before You Spend a Dollar

Here’s a quick gut-check. If you can’t say yes to most of these, you’re not ready for paid:

• You can describe your ideal customer like a real person.
• Your website explains what you do in plain English.
• You’ve got a strategic narrative that makes sense to someone who doesn’t work at your company.
• Your product solves a real problem, for real people, who know they have it.
• You’re already converting some organic traffic, or getting qualified leads through referrals, community, or content.

If you can’t check these boxes, don’t throw paid at a broken funnel. Fix the story first.

Brand as a Force Multiplier

Brand is compound interest. You won’t see the return right away, but over time, it makes everything else easier (and cheaper): sales, hiring, growth.

You might not feel it in week one. But by month three, it’s clear. The startup with a strong brand just moves faster.

One of my favorite current examples in healthcare: Abridge. Their design is incredible, brand voice consistent, product clear, and pace impressive. Every touchpoint reinforces a brand that’s already working.

Zero-Based Marketing Budgeting

Let’s pretend you had to rebuild your marketing plan from zero today. Clean slate. No legacy spend. What would you actually do?

Thought leadership. Useful content. Community participation. Third-party validation. Press releases that actually get picked up. All that boring, unscalable stuff? It builds authority and trust that performance marketing can’t fake.

Or as Seth Godin would say: don’t buy attention… earn it.

When Paid Does Make Sense

This isn’t a full takedown of performance marketing. It has its place:

• You’ve hit product-market fit and want to pour fuel on what’s working.
• You’re testing new messaging, ICPs, or use cases with clear hypotheses.
• You’re in B2C and need to hit scale fast.
• You have a brand foundation and are just trying to increase your share of voice.

And even then: test small. Spend slow. Find someone in your network who understands paid growth to help you start.

Fight Entropy, Not Just CAC

Startups don’t fail because they didn’t run enough ads. They fail because they couldn’t tell a clear story. Or explain why they matter. Or convert the attention they were already getting.

The real battle isn’t against CAC. It’s against entropy — the drift toward average. The temptation to skip the hard stuff and “just run some ads.”

Before you launch that next campaign, ask yourself: Does my brand actually deserve attention yet?

If the answer is no, good news: it costs zero dollars to fix that.

Yours in marketing,
Jeff