Your Marketing Problem Might Be Happening Before Marketing

Marketing doesn’t begin when you start promoting. It can begin much earlier, that is, when you are still trying to figure out what to build, who needs it and why they should care.

Yet this is the part businesses can easily overlook while they spend so much time thinking about how to get their products in front of people they haven’t spend enough time asking whether they have built something those people actually want, or whether they understand the problem well enough to create a meaningful solution for them. 

Before you know it, sales are declining.

So the business owner says, “We need more content.”

Then someone suggests running ads. Another person recommends an influencer. Someone else says, “Let’s give them a discount.”

And just like that, everyone starts looking for ways to promote the business more and more…

But what if the problem happened even before promotion?

What if the business is trying to solve a product, customer or positioning problem with more marketing?

And why is it that the moment your business starts lagging, the first thing that comes to mind is more and more marketing?

What Happens Before You Start Marketing?

Most businesses are familiar with what is called downstream marketing. It is the work that happens closer to the customer buying: advertising, content, promotions, influencer marketing, sales and distribution.

But there’s another form of marketing that drives and influence the results your downstream marketing produces. 

In other words, upstream marketing happens and should have before downstream marketing.

It should happen before because it asks questions such as:

• Who are we building for?
• What problem are we solving?
• How important is that problem?
• What are customers currently doing to solve it?
• What are competitors missing?
• What should we build, and how should we position it?

While on the other hand, downstream marketing asks:

• “How do we sell this?”

The Danger of Marketing Something People Don’t Care Enough About

Imagine a niche skincare brand spending ₦500,000 on advertising a product that customers don’t consider particularly useful.

The ads might be beautiful.

Even the copy might be excellent.

The influencer might have a huge following.

But none of these automatically makes the product more relevant.

Now imagine the brand had done more upstream marketing work and discovered that its target audience weren’t simply looking for another skincare product. 

For the audience, their bigger frustration was understanding which products to use, when to use them and how to build a routine without wasting money.

That insight could influence everything: product, positioning, content or even the customer experience.

Now the business isn’t simply promoting a skincare product. It is responding to a problem it has taken the time to understand and has a solution for it. 

Sometimes good marketing doesn’t help you sell a bad idea.

Upstream Marketing Can Tell You What Not to Build

This is one of the most valuable parts of upstream marketing.

Research can reveal that customers don’t actually want the product in the form you’re imagining.

Perhaps they already have several alternatives.

Maybe the problem isn’t painful enough for them to pay for a solution.

Or the audience you thought would buy isn’t actually interested.

Finding this out before investing heavily in production and promotion can save your business from an expensive mistake.

This is why marketing should not always begin when the product is ready to launch. There should be pre-marketing, marketing and post- marketing. 

Sometimes marketing begins by asking whether the product deserves to be launched in the first place.

Your Positioning Is an Upstream Decision

A business cannot simply decide downstream that it wants to look different.

It first needs to understand why it should be different and whether that difference matters to the people it serves.

Two businesses can sell the same product but occupy completely different positions because they understand their customers differently.

One may compete mainly on price.

Another may focus on convenience.

Some may build around a specific customer problem.

The difference is not merely how they communicate. It affects what they offer and how they build the business.

That makes positioning a business decision, not just a marketing communication exercise.

Conclusion

Businesses naturally focus on what they can see: posts, ads, influencers, promotions and sales. But some of the most important marketing decisions happen before any of those things.

Upstream marketing forces the business to think about the customer, the problem, the product and the position before asking how to promote them.

Don’t just get better at marketing what the business has. Get better at deciding what the business should be marketing in the first place.