Focusing directly on sales:

First off, start ups run ads before doing any of the necessary groundwork. No brand building. No relationship building. No positioning. Just “ads = leads.”

I’ve seen it first hand. Companies skip all of this and go straight to paid campaigns. Sure, they get some leads — but the cost per lead is sky high, the response rate is terrible, and when the sales team follows up, the leads have no idea who they are. No website to check. No social media to scroll through. Nothing to build trust. So they ghost.

Marketing isn’t a light switch you turn on to get results. For paid ads to actually work, you need the foundation in place first — a proper website, active social media, email marketing, SMS marketing. These aren’t optional extras. They’re what make a lead convert instead of disappear.

Ads amplify what already exists. If nothing exists, you’re just paying to introduce yourself to people who will forget you by tomorrow. learn more

Copying biggest names instead of finding their own voice:

Start ups look at what the top brand in their industry is doing and copy it. Same format. Same tone. Same offer structure.

I see this constantly especially with content creators/ Marketers. They idealize the biggest names in their space and try to replicate exactly what they’re doing. But here’s what they’re missing: that brand built its audience when nobody knew who they were. They were scrappy, experimental, and consistent for years before they hit scale. Now they’re in the Cash Cow phase — coasting on brand equity that took a decade to build.
You can’t copy the Cash Cow phase when you’re still at zero. That gap in context creates a gap in performance, every single time.

The start ups that win find a specific angle, a specific audience, and a voice nobody else in their space has. Differentiation isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s survival.

Using marketers as executors, not strategists:

Start ups hire a marketer and immediately ask: “Can you post on Instagram?” “Can you run some ads?” “Can you design a flyer?” They treat marketing like a production role — output, output, output.

That’s a massive gap.

If you want real marketing results, the marketer needs to be the decision maker — not the executor of someone else’s guesses. They have the fundamentals. Let them use them.

But here’s the real problem. The people giving those instructions aren’t marketers. They’re founders, sales managers, or ops people who think they understand marketing because they use social media. So you end up with a qualified marketer — sometimes degree-level — executing tasks from someone who doesn’t understand a funnel.

If your start up is making any of these mistakes, the good news is they’re all fixable — but only if you’re willing to let marketing lead, not follow.

I’m Marwa, a performance marketer specialising in paid media and growth systems. If you want to stop wasting budget and start building marketing that actually converts — let’s talk OR Book Free Consultation

Paid Ads Specialist | Growth Marketing Specialist | Performance Marketing Specialist | Meta Ads | Google Ads | TikTok ads | You-Tube Ads