Dear Founders: Being Your Own CMO Isn’t a Flex. It’s a Risk.

I say this often, but it still catches people off guard. If you’re building a company, you already are the CMO. Whether you like it or not, every decision you make is shaping your market perception. You might have a great product, a bold vision, maybe even strong funding. But if you’re not thinking about your positioning, your buyer’s mindset, your market signals… you’re leaving money on the table.

And I’m not talking about “go viral” kind of marketing, that disappears after 5 mins. I’m talking about the type of clarity that gets people to say, “Oh wow, this is for me.” Most early teams underinvest in this. They obsess over product features and sprint velocity. Meanwhile, the market is just confused. Or worse… unaware.

I’ve seen too many founders focus on “getting marketing done” without ever pausing to think, what are we really saying here? And to who? For what purpose?

The Real Job Is to Think in Systems

I remember working with a SaaS startup last year. They had raised a healthy seed round, were hiring fast, and wanted to “scale marketing.” Problem was, everything was reactive. On the surface, they were doing a lot — blogs, webinars, paid ads, a few founder threads on LinkedIn. But under the hood? No strategy. No segmentation. No system. Just scattered execution and last-minute launches. Smart team, no leadership on the marketing front.

So we paused, zoomed out and got brutally honest about three things:

• What do our best customers really care about?

• Where are we showing up, and how are we showing up?

• Are we prioritizing short-term content over long-term market trust?

That reset changed everything. We stopped chasing tactics and started building a flywheel. No more random acts of content, every piece of content had a job. No more “launch and ghost” campaigns. We mapped content to real buying stages, set intent-based KPIs, and created a shared language between marketing and sales. Every asset was mapped to the buying journey. Sales and marketing weren’t guessing anymore; they were aligned around how the message needed to land based on ‘who’ they are targeting.

Once the message was nailed and every piece of content had a clear job, the team stopped second-guessing everything. Sales calls got sharper. The story held up without needing constant explaining or rescuing. Prospects showed up with context instead of confusion. And internally, things just moved faster. Less back-and-forth, fewer edits, and no more rewriting the narrative every time someone asked, “What exactly do we do again?”

When the Message Wobbles, Everything Else Slows Down

Forget funnels for a second. Think about trust signals. That’s the currency. Every blog, every touchpoint, every landing page… it’s either building trust or leaking it.

Here’s where most teams go wrong. They separate brand from performance. As if awareness lives in some soft, fluffy corner and conversion is this hard, serious number-driven machine. The truth is, they’re deeply connected. People don’t convert if they don’t believe you can solve their problem. They don’t believe you if they’ve never felt anything from your message.

Founders often treat branding like a luxury. Something to invest in after Series B. That’s a mistake. Brand is what makes people choose you when features look the same. It’s how you create preference before the sales call even happens.

If your paid ad is promising a silver bullet, but your site is screaming generic startup jargon, trust breaks. If your onboarding email sounds like it came from a robot, trust breaks. If your founder voice disappears after the pitch deck, trust breaks.

Great marketing doesn’t look like marketing. It looks like consistency. It looks like knowing who you are and never getting sloppy with it.

Five Buyer Journey Stages: Where Most Teams Lose (And Don’t Even Notice)

You’ve probably seen these before: awareness, consideration, evaluation, decision, retention. Nothing new, right? Most companies know these stages. Fewer know what they actually mean. Even fewer know where they’re bleeding momentum because no one owns the full arc.
Let’s stop treating them like checkboxes. The gold is in how you activate each stage.

1. Awareness

This is the “why should I care” stage.

At this stage, most buyers aren’t problem-aware. They’re casually observing — seeing headlines, hearing phrases, skimming posts. Even without intent, they’re forming a mental list of what sounds relevant, useful, or sharp. That’s where awareness starts. Recognition, not traffic.

Most early-stage teams confuse visibility with traction. They publish often. Metrics look fine on the surface. But when you ask someone in their target market what they’re known for, the answers don’t hold up. Sometimes there’s no clear answer at all.

This is usually a signal clarity problem. Content is shipping, but the core message isn’t landing. When early buyers hear too many themes or see too much brand noise, they stop trying to make sense of it.

To earn brand recall, the message has to register clearly and repeatedly. One strong idea, delivered across channels, reinforced through founder voice and positioning. If that idea shifts constantly or gets buried under content volume, the market forgets you faster than it found you.

Think founder hot takes, pattern-breaking observations, lessons learned. The type of content that makes someone pause mid-scroll because it hits too close to home. That’s the content that builds memory. And memory is what gets you into the shortlist later.

You don’t need to “sell” here. You need to build salience. I’ve seen founders 10x their reach just by talking like real people with real insights. That alone creates brand gravity.

2. Consideration

At this point, they’re comparing. Thinking. Reflecting. They’re asking themselves, “What kind of solution do I even need?”

This is where positioning becomes your secret weapon. It’s the layer that helps shape how the buyer understands the problem, and what to look for in a solution. This is also when your content needs to step up.

Show them how to think through their decision. While they’re collecting vendor names, they’re also building the lens they’ll use to evaluate who makes the shortlist. That lens is either working for you or against you… long before the first call.

Help them. Give them frameworks. Buyer guides. Decision calculators. The kind of content that lets your prospect say, “Ah, this is the category I’ve been looking for.”

I had one founder say to me, “We kept writing blogs, but no one converted.” I asked, “Were you helping them decide, or were you educating?” That moment changed how they approached content forever.

The buyer feels smarter after reading something useful. That clarity builds trust that carries straight into the sales process.

If you skip this stage, you feel it later. The calls drag. You’re fielding weird objections. Prospects show up with the wrong expectations because they’ve been working off someone else’s map.

You can’t afford to leave this open-ended. Own the lens your buyer walks in with. If you don’t, someone else will.

Most early-stage content stays too surface-level. It explains features. It walks through product benefits. It tries to be helpful, but misses the chance to shape how the buyer understands what they need.

3. Evaluation

This stage doesn’t get enough love. It’s easy to forget that your best marketing channel is a happy customer.

Most teams treat this stage like a post-sale handoff. But for the buyer, this is where the real experience begins.

Retention starts with onboarding… but it can’t end there. It’s the entire experience a customer has after the contract is signed. That experience signals whether the relationship is worth continuing.

I tell teams to treat onboarding like a second sales process. Every interaction is an opportunity to validate the decision. This is where confidence compounds… or quietly fades.

Retention content should focus on outcomes the customer cares about, not updates your team wants to announce. Show them how others in similar roles are using the product to hit their targets. Give them examples that are easy to share internally. Create content they’d forward to their boss without being asked.

Smart teams stay proactive here. They build in small signals that show up consistently: monthly success check-ins, tailored ROI snapshots, role-based playbooks, even a quick “Saw this use case, thought of you” kind of follow-up. These touches seem small, but they build equity over time.

The best customer content is proactive and specific. It solves problems before the support ticket. It teaches something before the churn risk. It keeps reinforcing the promise that brought the buyer in to begin with.

High retention also drives better acquisition. Happy customers create case studies that don’t sound forced. They make warm intros. They expand without the extra sales push. But none of that happens if the company disappears after onboarding.

I’ve worked with teams that increased MRR dramatically without adding features. They made customer content a core GTM motion instead of treating it like a support function.

Every post-sale touchpoint is still marketing. If it adds value, customers stay longer. If it doesn’t, they start looking elsewhere.

Retention is education that makes them look smart in front of their boss. It’s roadmap visibility. It’s those small nudges that show you’re still thinking about their success… even when you’re not selling.

The more surprise and delight you create here, the easier your next upsell or referral becomes.

When retention is strong, CAC goes down. MRR goes up. Your LTV model stops looking like wishful thinking.

Map Your Content to These Stages… Everywhere

Don’t think of this like some rigid framework. Think of it like a lens. When you’re writing a post, launching a new campaign, even tweaking your homepage… ask yourself, which stage is this serving?

Here’s how that shows up:

• Social content: Mix between awareness (telling sharp stories), consideration (frameworks, comparisons), and evaluation (behind-the-scenes, founder POVs).

• Emails: Think about what context your subscriber is in. Are they new? Nurture. Already engaged? Guide them to evaluation.

• Web content: Your homepage should address multiple stages, not just “convert now.” Add proof, stories, and education that meets people where they are.

• Lead magnets: Don’t overdo the PDFs. Instead, give something truly helpful that fits the stage your ideal buyer is in. A calculator might serve consideration. A deep ROI case study might serve evaluation.

Every stage is an opportunity to stay relevant. And relevancy is what gets remembered.

Build Like a Marketer. Operate Like a Strategist.

Here’s the mindset shift that changes the game. Great marketers don’t just do marketing. They think in bets. They track signals. They know when to push and when to pause. They obsess over behavior, not vanity metrics. And they know that clarity at the top means velocity at the bottom.

Your job as a founder isn’t to know every marketing channel. Your job is to make space for the right kind of marketing to work. That starts with hiring thinkers, not task-doers. Giving them context, not just deadlines. And aligning every campaign to where the company is headed, not just what looks good on LinkedIn.

Founders often say, “I just need someone to execute.” No. You need someone who can prioritize. The wrong execution at the wrong time is just wasted noise.

I’ve worked with some brilliant teams who were stuck… not because they lacked effort, but because they lacked strategic flow. Once we fixed the focus, results followed. 200 percent YoY growth isn’t magic. It’s ruthless prioritization.

The CMO Mindset for Long-Term Growth

The CMO mindset isn’t a title, but a decision to lead with clarity, operate with purpose, and show up like a growth partner to your entire company.

Whether you’re building your first GTM motion or trying to fix a leaky funnel, the shift happens when you stop marketing in isolation. When you start thinking about how everything connects > strategy, team, content, data, execution… and you’ll notice momentum kick in across the board.

This is how real growth gets built. Through alignment. Through clarity. Through intentional, insight-driven marketing that actually serves your business goals.

You’re already doing the work. Founder OS helps you systemize it.
If your early wins feel scattered, or your GTM relies too heavily on founder hustle, it’s time to build the system underneath the momentum.
👉 See how Founder OS works →