Why Marketing Stops Being a Cost Centre Long Before Most Tech Companies Realize It

Ask a founder what’s keeping them up at night, and marketing almost never makes the cut. It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that survival has a way of crowding out everything else. Build the product. Land the customers. Stretch the runway one more month. Marketing gets pushed to ‘later,’ quietly filed under expenses the business isn’t ready for yet.

But what happens when the product is ready, customers are responding, and the company wants to scale? What happens when founder referrals slow down, new markets get harder to crack, and the product alone stops winning attention?

That is the question we put at the centre of our first episode of More Than 2 Cents with CDM. Our host Sujata Upadhyay, Founder of CDM Media Group, sat down with Anand Gera, Co-founder of eWay Corp and a digital transformation leader, for a conversation that goes well beyond marketing tactics.

We opened with a grounding observation. Many companies do not fail because they built the wrong product. They struggle because the market never fully understood the value of the right one.

From Cost to Growth Engine to Trust

Anand framed how marketing’s role shifts as a company matures.

“For an early startup, marketing is definitely a cost. For an organization that’s starting to scale, it’s a growth engine. For an established organization, it’s about building trust.”

Most tech companies are founded by engineers. They want to explain every feature, every capability, every architectural decision. Buyers think differently. They want to understand the business problem being solved. Clarity before complexity.

As Anand put it, “Engineers optimize for depth and accuracy. Marketers optimize for understanding.”

This gap becomes critical once founder-led growth hits its ceiling. Every startup grows through the founder early on. Relationships generate referrals. Personal credibility opens doors. But founders cannot personally scale every conversation, every geography, every customer relationship.

“Founder growth becomes very difficult once you want to scale. You need repeatability in sales, repeatability in outreach, and the only way that happens is through marketing.”

For Indian SaaS companies expanding into North America, Europe, or Australia, this matters more than most realise. A strong product gets you in the door. A recognisable, trusted brand gets you the meeting before the first sales call happens.

The Problem With AI-Generated Sameness

We also got into AI-generated content, and it is worth paying attention to. Producing blogs, landing pages, and social posts has never been easier. The problem is everyone sounds identical now.

AI-first. AI-powered. AI transformation.

Anand’s point was direct. “Everybody sounds exactly the same. Companies are losing differentiation by creating volume instead of creating value.”

AI improves efficiency. It does not replace original thinking or genuine positioning.

Brand Versus Performance, and the Trust That Closes Deals

On brand versus performance marketing, Anand did not frame it as a debate. They solve different problems. Performance marketing captures demand that already exists. Brand marketing creates demand that does not yet exist.

In B2B technology, where buying decisions take months and involve multiple stakeholders, that distinction matters. Enterprise buyers do not purchase after one ad. They buy from companies they have heard about repeatedly and gradually learned to trust.

The simplest line from the conversation was also the sharpest. Business is not transacted between companies. It is transacted between people. Technical capability matters. Trust often decides.

“Marketing is the discipline of making value understandable, memorable, and trustworthy.”

Watch the full episode of More Than 2 Cents with CDM on our YouTube channel.