Why Marketing Often Feels Harder Than Building the Product

When most people hear “product,” their minds jump to design, features, and technology. The excitement of brainstorming, wireframing, or coding something new always feels tangible. You can see it, touch it, test it, and iterate on it. That’s the magic of building.

But here’s the paradox: building the product is often the easier part. The real mountain to climb is getting people to care.

I learned this firsthand while working on digital products. Launch day always feels like a milestone. “We did it! The product is live.” But that’s when the real test begins. Marketing isn’t just about shouting the loudest; it’s about understanding human behavior, solving for distribution, and creating a story that resonates with the right people at the right time.

Unlike product development, marketing doesn’t give instant feedback. When you’re coding, a bug shows up immediately. When you’re designing, the flaws are visible on the screen. But with marketing, the silence can be deafening. You run a campaign, put out content, and test channels, and sometimes nothing happens. That’s where resilience, creativity, and strategy matter more than tools.

Another challenge? Building is usually done within a controlled environment with a team, a roadmap, and a set of tools. Marketing, on the other hand, throws you into the wild. You’re competing with attention spans, trends, platforms, algorithms, and a hundred other products vying for the same audience.

But here’s what makes marketing beautiful: it forces you to think beyond the product. It reminds you that products don’t succeed just because they exist they succeed because they reach people, solve problems, and create meaning in their lives. Marketing bridges that gap.

So, whenever I face the uphill battle of distribution, I remind myself: building gets you started, but marketing keeps you alive. The product may win hearts in the lab, but it’s marketing that earns trust in the real world.And that’s why I believe great products are half-built in code and half-built in conversation.