Why Most Entrepreneurs Market Backwards
Introduction
Frustrated with marketing your business?
Oftentimes, this is not a result of a lack of effort; it's really a direction thing. Many entrepreneurs are working hard but still struggling because they are building marketing around themselves instead of around customer clarity.
They begin with what theywant to sell instead of understanding who they are serving, what problem exists, and what actually builds trust.
During my most recent workshop, I noticed that most of the entrepreneurs who joined had a few things in common. Most of them associated marketing with their follower count, posting every day without a clear direction, and I even had a few people focus on colors and logos. But when I asked the question, “What does all of that have to do with the customers?” I received blank stares and crickets.
Let’s Address The Elephant In The Room
Marketing backwards looks like running a 5k before you even learn how to crawl. You post because every influencer is telling you to, but your message is not resonating; you have no idea who you are marketing to, so you are throwing darts into the dark and hoping something will stick.
It looks like sprinting to Canva and sharing a few templates you think might stand out to you because the colors are pretty. Marketing backwards is skipping the strategy and going straight to posting every single day and chasing trends without a strategy.
Before I really started to understand the vast world of corporate marketing and understand why brands create targeted advertisements for a reason that's aimed at a certain audience, I honestly thought marketing was only about counting followers and chasing trends.
I have found myself marketing backwards on multiple occasions with past businesses that did not do as well as I would have liked. One clear sign of marketing backwards was throwing out an offer, promoting something, and not being consistent, as I should have been. I found myself focusing too much on designing a website, creating social media content, and writing blog posts that I forgot to truly get clear on my audience and actually solve a problem or understand their problem.
This created nothing but stress, because I was frustrated with not making money. Anxiety, because I was watching my analytics like a hawk instead of creating actual engagement with my audience. Failing to be intentional and consistent with my posting.
When I discovered the truth
A shift in thinking around how marketing should be done actually happened during a project I was working on for a major event. My old mindset immediately went to let's jump right into content marketing ( LinkedIn posts, email blasts) and hope that something resonates. I realized that while all that was great, it wasn't an actual strategy. I was just saying things we thought we should say and do. With the help of my team we were able to pull back a few steps and really assess the event we were going to and who was going to be there, what there problems have been, what they might be interested in learning about, Regionally where they are from , and once we were able to have a full picture of these things, our marketing became more targeted and focused. Our message resonated, more engagement happened, and it actually led to a significant increase in opportunity value for the team as a whole.
I’ve come to realize that this same shift in thinking can also happen for entrepreneurs and new business owners.
BURNOUT is the Reality
Burnout is the destination when entrepreneurs, side hustlers, and new business owners feel like their marketing is not working. This stems from an original burst of energy and motivation to post every day, and cross their fingers that something is working. After a while, without a clear plan or focus, confusion kicks in. This is the point where you are not truly understanding why no one is listening to your content or engaging, and you’re wondering where you are going wrong.
Suddenly, you see trendy influencers during your midnight TikTok and Instagram scrolling session, and your mind does the comparison game, and you are feeling the pressure to perform these random trends in hopes that someone ( ANYONE) will see your content and engage. And then when the dollar signs are at a $0, discouragement is knocking on your door. Because you feel like giving up, or you're just performing an activity, not actually marketing. And as I mentioned at the beginning, by the end of this cycle, you are burnt out; you feel like you want to let go of your idea.
Could Social Media be to blame?
Social Media has been the star of the show when it comes to people approaching marketing incorrectly. As I also mentioned, I was a victim of this as well. Any platform you get on, as a business owner, it's really easy to start posting just to post without a strategy, a clear audience, and being consistent.
Starting with The Product Instead of the Problem
Many businesses immediately focus on selling their offer before deeply understanding the customer’s actual pain points, desires, behaviors, or transformation.
Right away, when someone has a new business idea, product, service, you name it, they want to talk about how great it is , all of the cool features, what it can do, and why a person needs it…. Blah blah blah.
This is a huge mistake, and instead of having a solid and consistent business model, your marketing falls flat, and you suddenly sound like an infomercial. They are off the TV for a reason.
Trying to sell before fully understanding the customer is saying …oooh look at me and making it all about yourself. Customers don't care about that. They want to feel understood, they want a problem to be solved, and feel like the solution was made for them. Trying to sell something without fully understanding who your customer is becomes the leading cause of high rejection rates, low trust, and eventually low close rates.
Here are questions you should ask to gain clarity on your target audience and their needs before pressing that post button:
Who is this specifically for? – Unless you are creating a brand new Amazon store ( where there is something for literally everyone), slow your role and get a grip on who your offer would connect with most. Is it single mothers? Is it busy blue-collar workers, or school teachers? Parents of Pre-teens? You need clarity around the who before anything else.
What is their primary pain point right now? – Are they exhausted when they get home and do not want to cook? Are they having a hard time teaching their students or keeping them engaged? ( Their pain or problems will be what creates the urgency to buy or consider buying what you are offering) the best place to do research on this would be places like Reddit, Facebook Groups– yes those are still a thing, In the comment section under popular posts, word of mouth, asking people, or simply posting a question (not an offer, or promotion, a simple question– Threads is perfect for this)
Is your audience fully aware of their problem, or do we need to educate them? – Now this can be a bit tricky. Sometimes people do not know what they need until they know what they need. Meaning maybe there is a problem they didn't know existed. For example, my favorite problem I hear the people closest to me say is that they do not have enough time. Or they wish they had enough time to do X, Y, and Z. I take that as they do not understand how their time management is creating more problems than necessary in their lives. So my solution could be in this example, Time tracking, or some sort of tool that would make it easy to track time.
Customer research helps you address real objections before they are even asked. It helps your brand feel more relatable, transparent, and authoritative. While researching, you will be able to clearly identify frustrations and roadblocks your audience may be dealing with, so you can position your offering as the ideal solution to their problem. Customer research can also enhance the way you speak your audience’s language. It will reveal the exact words and phrases that they use. If you are able to mirror their thoughts, then relying on confusing industry jargon can help your brand feel more personable.
If you are struggling with breaking down who your true audience is. I recommend checking out my Customer Clarity Blueprint Tool. This will help you break down all of the details you need to truly understand who your real audience is. You can download your copy below
Customer Clarity Blueprint
The Customer Clarity Blueprint was designed to help entrepreneurs, creators, and service providers clearly define who they serve, what their audience truly needs, and how to create messaging that feels human, strategic, and effective.
This guided digital workbook combines teaching, prompts, note-taking space, and actionable exercises to help you build a stronger understanding of your customer from the inside out. Inside the Blueprint, you’ll work through:
Ideal customer identification
Pain points and emotional triggers
Buying motivations and decision-making
Customer psychology and behavior
Customer Clarity Snapshot worksheet
This resource is designed to help you:
✔ Create more effective content
✔ Improve your messaging
✔ Build stronger customer trust
✔ Stop posting random content
✔ Understand what your audience actually needs
✔ Market with more confidence and clarity
What’s Included:
• Digital slide workbook
• Guided prompts and exercises
• Final Customer Clarity Snapshot page
• Instant digital download
Here are a few examples of beautiful brands that have struggled with messaging. Keep in mind these are just my opinions and takes.
Tyra Beauty - This was a beauty brand/organization I personally joined back in 2015-2017. This started out as a cosmetics brand created by Tyra Banks herself. Unfortunately, the brand suffered massively and was slammed by critics for giving very scam-like undertones due to the setup nature of the business that mirrored a Multi-level pyramid scheme. While the branding was intended to market to young millennials, it relied entirely too much on Tyra’s personality rather than establishing a solid community and trust –Read more here.
Burger King also ran a campaign where the messaging not only came off wrong, but it was also offensive. One tweet, “ Women belong in the kitchen,” immediately backfired because on a day that was supposed to honor “International Women’s Day,” it felt very tone deaf and reinforced outdated stereotypes. As a result, the brand was forced to clean up its mistake. -Read more here
They Focus on Visibility Before Clarity
Entrepreneurs often believe the answer is “more content,” when the real issue is unclear positioning and messaging.
This mistake is another fast track to being burned out. You think that posting just to post will create engagement and drive sales. But without consistency or a clear plan, you will be creating more work for yourself, and you will not see the actual results you were hoping for. Being consistent is great, but with unclear messaging and how you are positioning yourself, it will be very difficult for people to understand what it is that you do.
Here are a couple of signs your message may be lacking clarity:
High traffic and low conversions. For a while, “good marketing looked like a high number of followers and clicks. While that is great for the Instagram algorithm, it is only beneficial if you are seeing those clicks transform into actual views on your landing page or conversion. Chances are, your “hook” caught your audience’s attention, but once they got further in, some of the next steps were vague, confusing, or did not deliver the original promise.
Jargon Overload– this is what happens when you use too many buzz words, or insider words that the normal reader would not understand. If your goal is to get more people interested in your product/service, you need to simplify how you speak.
They Build Their Brand Around Themselves Instead of the Customer Experience
A lot of entrepreneurs unintentionally make their brand self-centered instead of customer-centered.
Customer-centered branding leads first with the customer’s pain, goals, and outcomes. Not about you and your company. Take a look at these examples:
“I created this company because… I am passionate about…”
”If you are struggling with 'X', here’s how we can help you fix it.”
Which one sounds like it for the customer, and which one sounds like it's only talking about the founder?
One way you can test this is by seeing if the homepage of your website could be mistaken for a“customer testimonial.” If not, chances are you are making it all about you.
Your brand promise should be “Outcome-focused”. Instead of positioning around personality or expertise alone, customer-centered branding is defined by the result that is delivered. Keep in mind that customers do not buy identity; they buy transformation. Here’s an example:
We help B2B companies turn ….. Into…..
Customer-centered marketing mirrors the customer's buying journey. We will get into the details of the buyer's journey in a later post. For now, think of it as a map of how people actually make decisions. Think of this flow.
Awareness: “What’s going wrong?”- I have a problem
Consideration: “What are my options?” - How can I solve this problem
Decision: “ Why should I trust you?’- Can you really help me? ( how)
One of the ways that customer-centered branding relies heavily on evidence is through proof. The Decision step is where this will help your business grow. Presenting Case Studies, testimonials, transformations, and actual DATA is where you can help your customers decide if they want to move forward with your offering. In other words, back up what you say.
One last way you can shift your messaging approach from being founder-centric to being customer-centered is to make the CUSTOMER the hero of every story. I know that as founders and business owners, we are super close to our brands, and in many ways, we can act as helicopter parents.
But you have to remember that as a founder, it's okay to be visible and position yourself as a GUIDE. Not the spotlight. Here’s an example of what to do and what not to do:
“I built a 7-figure business, and now I teach others how…”
“Clients come to us stuck with X, and we help them achieve Y.
You see how that takes the focus off of you and puts it back on the customer and what they are dealing with.
A Framework you can use to help simplify this:
Customer= Hero
Brand/ Founder = Guide
Product/Service/ offering = PLAN
Success = Outcome
Conclusion
Marketing becomes a lot less overwhelming when you stop treating it like a performance and start treating it like a conversation. The entrepreneurs who build sustainable brands are not always the loudest online or the ones posting every hour on the hour. They are the ones who understand their customers deeply, communicate clearly, and create solutions that genuinely solve problems.
When you shift your focus from chasing visibility to building connection, your strategy becomes more intentional, your content becomes more effective, and your audience begins to trust you. Before your next post, campaign, or offer, pause and ask yourself one question: “Am I marketing for attention, or am I building trust?” That answer changes everything.
If you enjoyed this article and want more practical insights on marketing strategy, career growth, and building smarter brands, subscribe to The Growth Brief. You’ll get access to fresh articles, strategic resources, downloadable guides, and upcoming courses designed to help you market with more confidence and less guesswork. Join the community and keep growing with us.
