One of the cardinal rules of starting and growing a startup is that you must not grow your startup until you know your product in a must-have, why it is a must have, and to whom it is a must have: in other words, what is its core value, to which customers, and why.

The attractive narrative that most entrepreneurs believe is that to grow your business you have to increase the marketing budget.

As the saying goes: you have to spend money to make money.

But the hard truth is that no amount of marketing and advertising, no matter how clever, can make people love a substandard product.

A glitzy launch can create some initial interest, but if your product doesn’t wow people, all the celebrity spokespeople and multimillion-rands ad campaigns in the world won’t result in sustainable product.

If the product is lousy, there is no great marketing that’s going to save it.