What Most Founders Get Wrong About Marketing at Scale (And How to Fix It)
- Samantha Riel
- Aug 6
- 4 min read
If you’ve ever jumped into marketing with the urgency of a founder trying to hit next quarter’s number and then wondered why the results fell flat, you’re not alone.
In the latest episode of Scale Without Chaos, I sat down with Christian Radley, co-founder of Ziggy, a demand gen agency for B2B SaaS and enterprise companies. We unpacked one of the most common (and costly) mistakes we see founders make when they try to scale marketing.
It’s not about budget. Or headcount. Or how many channels you’re running.
It’s about chasing activity instead of impact.
Let’s dig in.
Mistake #1: Confusing Noise for Momentum
Christian put it bluntly: most founders confuse marketing activity with marketing impact. They equate doing more with growing faster. And while that might work for a sprint, it rarely works for scale.
What happens instead?
They launch campaigns without a clear strategy
They obsess over short-term pipeline at the expense of long-term positioning
They jump into bottom-of-funnel channels (like paid search) and neglect brand-building
They rely on surface-level data, never peeling back the layers to see what’s really working
The result? A bloated funnel filled with leads that don’t convert, or worse, customers who churn within months.
Mistake #2: Focusing on Leads Instead of Revenue
One of my favorite lines from our conversation was this:
“Lead scoring is like the show Whose Line Is It Anyway: the game is made up and the points don’t matter.”
If you’re still measuring marketing success by MQL count alone, you’re stuck in a playbook that’s been broken for years.
Christian explained it perfectly: if your goal is to drive revenue, then your metrics and your strategy need to reflect the entire customer journey. That means:
Aligning marketing data with sales and retention data (what Christian calls the “full bow tie”)
Tracking expansion revenue and long-term retention, not just closed-won
Identifying bottlenecks within your funnel and optimizing those first
Because the truth is, not all leads are created equal, and what you measure, you multiply. If you optimize for volume, you’ll get volume. But it might not be the kind you want.
Mistake #3: Misunderstanding Your Ideal Customer
Another trap we both see often: assuming your best customers are the ones who are easiest to close.
Not necessarily true.
Christian shared how Ziggy helps companies segment their customer base, not just by size or industry, but by lifetime value, expansion potential, onboarding success, and long-term retention.
They dig into:
Which segments renew most consistently
Which products lead to long-term stickiness
How performance changes by region or customer tier
What messaging resonates across high-retention segments
Most companies stop at high-level metrics. But the real insight lies in the layers, looking across market, message, and product to spot repeatable patterns.
That kind of analysis is cross-functional. It doesn’t belong to just sales or marketing or CS. It belongs to the business.
Mistake #4: Ignoring Brand Until It’s Too Late
When most people hear “brand,” they think logos, colors, and design guidelines.
That’s not what we’re talking about.
Christian framed brand like this:
“Brand is your DNA. It’s how you build trust and authority across every channel, especially with future buyers who aren’t ready to buy yet.”
Early-stage founders often ignore brand because it feels intangible. It doesn’t show up in your CRM. It doesn’t generate direct response metrics. And it definitely doesn’t give you a clear CAC to justify to the board.
But without it?
You blend in with every other blue-and-purple-logo SaaS company on the trade show floor
Your website sounds like every competitor’s
Your ads become a race to the bottom
You become reliant on channels that are slowly disappearing
This is especially dangerous today, as the way people search is changing. Google is losing ground. Buyers are turning to LLMs, YouTube, Reddit, and peer content to research solutions.
Your brand needs to show up before people are in market. It needs to live beyond search.
Mistake #5: Not Giving It Enough Time
Let me say this as clearly as possible: marketing takes time.
Too many founders treat campaigns like vending machines. They ask, “Will this work in 3 weeks?” or “Can we get leads in 6 months?”
Yes, there’s pressure to deliver pipeline. But brand-building, market positioning, and full-funnel optimization require consistency. Not quick fixes.
As Christian said:
“Scaling marketing isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing what matters consistently and building on top of that, over and over again.”
It’s about stacking initiatives that compound. Not flipping switches and hoping something sticks.
The Takeaways
This episode was packed with hard-earned insights from someone who’s helped dozens of companies scale without losing their soul or their customers.
Here’s the cheat sheet:
✅ Don’t confuse activity with momentum
✅ Peel back your data across the full funnel (and beyond the sale)
✅ Identify your best-fit customers, not just your easiest-to-close ones
✅ Brand isn’t optional, it’s the foundation for scale in a changing search landscape
✅ Stop expecting overnight wins; build layered, repeatable programs that compound
If you’re a founder or GTM leader looking to scale smarter, not harder, this conversation is a must-listen.
Listen to Episode 8: What Most Founders Get Wrong About Marketing at Scale (And How to Fix It)
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