Marketing Misunderstood: The Invisible Work Behind Real Growth
- Chelsey Reynolds
- Aug 22
- 5 min read
When founders say, “I need more leads,” the instinct is usually to chase tactics, like ads and flashy visuals. But as Tamara Ceman explains in this episode of the Growth Department podcast, real marketing is much more than promotion. Real, great marketing is about doing the invisible work that keeps your business growing long after a campaign ends.
Marketing means understanding your audience, positioning your product clearly, and making sure your business is solving the right problem in the right way. Without those fundamentals, no campaign will hold up for long.
Why Marketing Literacy Matters
Many business leaders struggle with marketing because they’ve never been taught what it actually is. Tamara, who brings over 16 years of experience across SaaS, tech, and small business, says the biggest marketing mistakes come from confusion.
Founders are usually experts in their product.
They know the craft, the tech, or the service inside out. But when it comes to customer development, messaging, and go-to-market strategy, they’re often starting from scratch. That’s where the breakdown happens.
Tamara sees three common reasons marketing gets misunderstood:
Limited experience with go-to-market strategy. Many founders have never held decision-making executive roles that exposed them to the commercial side of business.
Marketing left out of leadership conversations. It gets treated like a support function instead of a strategic driver. "Slap a logo on this" mentality is common and not ideal.
Bad experiences with under-qualified marketers. A poor hire or disappointing campaign reinforces the idea that "marketing doesn’t work".
These challenges stack on top of each other. A founder makes the wrong hire, sees lackluster results, and concludes that marketing must not matter. The cycle repeats until someone resets the definition.
What Is Marketing, Really?
Marketing is misunderstood because people only see its surface. Logos, content, and social posts are visible, but they represent just one slice of the work. The real engine sits underneath, often unnoticed.
Tamara explains it as two connected sides:
The invisible side. Strategy, customer research, positioning, and go-to-market planning.
The visible side. Content creation, social media, ads, and campaigns.
The visible side can’t succeed without the invisible side. When founders skip research and strategy, the visible work feels like doodles on a page. Pretty, maybe. But not purposeful.
As Tamara says, this isn't a call for all founders to take courses and learn to become marketers. However, they do need to understand that marketing defines how a business presents itself and connects with customers. They need to see and respect the invisible side of marketing. That understanding alone changes how leaders set budgets, hire, and measure success.
The Invisible Essentials Every Founder Should Build
Before spinning up content calendars or investing in ads, founders need to invest in strategy. This is the invisible work that keeps messaging aligned, customer journeys smooth, and brands memorable.
Tamara recommends starting with a few non-negotiables:
Know your buyer better than they know themselves. Conduct interviews. Talk to current and prospective customers. Listen carefully and capture their language about challenges and success.
Clarify your positioning. Identify the problem you’re solving, how well you solve it, and how you’re communicating that solution.
Bring marketing into strategic conversations. Don’t silo it. Include marketing when discussing product, engineering, and leadership. Alignment at the top translates to alignment everywhere else.
None of these steps require a massive budget. They require curiosity, empathy, and time. Do them well, and everything else - from creative to campaigns - works better.
Why Leaders Mistrust or Devalue Marketing
Marketing often gets mistrusted or devalued because its results don’t always look as immediate as sales getting a signed contract. That tension can make early-stage leaders nervous about investing.
Tamara hears the same reasons again and again:
Leaders mistake marketing for surface-level promotion.
The term “marketing” feels too vague. One founder called it “a cloud with no shape.”
Poor hires reinforce the myth that marketing doesn’t work.
After a few bad experiences, some founders close the door altogether. They stop being curious about marketing, which shuts off opportunities for growth. Resetting the narrative starts with clarifying what marketing is, why it matters, and how to do it responsibly.
How Founders Can Reset the Narrative
If you feel you've been burned by marketing in the past, you’re not alone. But, at Growth Department, we're all about continued learning and second chances ... so, you don't have to stay stuck in this mindset!
Tamara recommends a few practical ways to rebuild your approach to marketing:
Educate yourself. Read, listen, and ask questions. The more you understand the role marketing plays, the better decisions you’ll make.
Start small. You don’t need a full team. Interview customers. Track what you hear. Build a base of research.
Hire a fractional or consulting partner. Instead of leaping to a full-time CMO, start with someone who can build a foundation and assess readiness.
Loosen the reins. Give your marketing partner space to do their work instead of micromanaging every post.
These steps might not feel glamorous, but they prevent the cycle of quick hires, mismatched expectations, and wasted resources. Give it a try!
If You Are a Marketer: Rebuilding Trust
Marketers also have work to do in reshaping how leaders view the discipline. In order to rebuild trust and have leaders value the invisible, necessary side of marketing, we must be consistent with education, transparency, and clarity.
Tamara encourages marketers to focus on:
Educating as you go, instead of assuming clients know the difference between strategy and tactics.
Validating the pain leaders bring from past experiences, before offering solutions.
Tying marketing to business infrastructure, just like HR or product.
Calling out hype and oversimplification when you see it.
Leading with meaningful metrics, not vanity numbers.
Reframing the relationship: your role is to build systems that create results over time.
As Tamara puts it, marketers often show up as strategist, therapist, and translator. If you can create early wins and explain the process, long-term trust follows.
Why the Invisible Side Is Non-Negotiable
Marketing is not a nice-to-have. It’s a business function that supports everything from customer acquisition to retention. The invisible side (strategy, positioning, research) is what makes outward campaigns work.
Skipping this step is like launching a product without testing it. You might get lucky, but chances are you’ll spend more, miss the mark, and feel disappointed when results don’t show up.
Tamara says it best: “Not failing is a proof of ROI.”
In other words, the invisible work creates stability. It keeps you from running in circles.
How Founders Can Get Started Today
Not sure where to begin?
Tamara suggests a handful of simple actions that help you reset your marketing and build momentum:
Talk to five customers or prospects this week. Capture their exact words about challenges and solutions.
Review your messaging. Does your website clearly explain who it’s for, what problem it solves, and why it’s different?
Audit your current marketing. Are you doing visible activities without a strategy to back them up?
Explore fractional help. A consultant can give you an audit and roadmap without locking you into a long-term hire.
Track insights in a single document. This keeps learning visible and informs your next steps.
These actions won’t solve everything at once, but they will cut through the fog and get you moving toward clarity. Take little bites at these suggestions, and over time, you will be amazed with the results.
Final Thought: Build the Foundation Before the Funnel
Marketing only feels like magic when the invisible work has been done. Research, strategy, and alignment create the conditions for campaigns to succeed. Without them, even the flashiest tactics fall flat.
If you’re a founder trying to grow, this is the takeaway: build your foundation before your funnel. Invite marketing to the strategy table. Work with partners who understand both the art and science of growth.
Sustainable marketing comes from connecting the right message with the right person, again and again, until trust turns into traction.
Follow Tamara on LinkedIn
Learn more, get her free guides, and reach out on her website.
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