When considering when to hire a marketing expert, it's essential to have strong product-market fit. This ensures that marketing efforts amplify existing demand rather than create it from scratch.

In marketing, it's crucial to understand how people buy your product rather than just focusing on selling it, as different users have varying needs and approaches to finding solutions.

To find product-market fit, you need to engage in thorough conversations with customers, asking detailed questions to uncover their actual needs and pain points, as customers will share their vision and problems if you ask the right questions, leading to valuable insights for product development.

Understanding the sales funnel is crucial. Start by making a list of potential customers, which is known as prospecting or lead generation. Use tools like Google spreadsheets to organize this information.

When testing for product-market fit, it's essential to ask customers deep, probing questions to truly understand their problems and needs.

To map your sales funnel, start with your goal of acquiring new customers and work backwards to determine the necessary steps and conversion rates needed to achieve that goal.

Founders often get stuck at various levels of product-market fit, and it's essential to evaluate which of the four Ps—persona, problem, promise, or product—needs to change to move forward.

Mapping out the conversion funnel helps identify unnecessary steps that can be eliminated to improve user experience and conversion rates.

Many marketing metrics are vanity metrics, focusing on clicks and views rather than the actual customer experience. It's crucial to understand the impact of marketing on signups and revenue, not just superficial numbers.