Every week, a product marketing leader reaches out asking me to help fix their positioning, refine their messaging framework, or optimize their launch process. We schedule a call. I ask a few diagnostic questions about their pipeline conversion, trial activation rates, and customer retention. Within thirty minutes, the pattern becomes unmistakable: they don't have a GTM problem. They have a product-market fit problem.
The positioning isn't broken. The messaging isn't the issue. The launch process isn't why adoption is struggling. The uncomfortable truth is that their product doesn't solve a painful enough problem for a well-defined enough market. Prospects take demos and ghost. Trial users activate but don't convert. Customers churn quietly after six months.
No amount of better messaging will save a product that customers try and decide isn't worth switching to. No launch process will drive sustainable adoption if customers experience the product and don't see compelling value. You can't market your way out of weak product-market fit.
The hardest part of product marketing—the part nobody teaches you—is knowing when to fix GTM execution and when to tell leadership the brutal truth: "Our problem is deeper than marketing. We need to fix the product or redefine our target market before any GTM investment will work."
Here's how to diagnose whether you have a GTM problem or a PMF problem, and what to do about it.
The Signs You Don't Have Product-Market Fit
1. Sales conversations die after the demo
Prospects are interested in discovery. They take the demo. Then they ghost.
What PMM thinks: Our messaging isn't resonating. Our demo flow is wrong.
What's actually happening: Prospects see the product and realize it doesn't solve their problem well enough to justify switching.
The test: Ask your top sales rep: "When we lose deals after demo, is it because we didn't communicate value well, or because the product doesn't deliver enough value?"
If the answer is the latter, messaging won't fix it.
2. Feature requests are all over the map
You ask customers what they want and get 50 different answers. No clear patterns. Every customer wants something different.
What PMM thinks: We need better customer research to find common themes.
What's actually happening: You haven't found a clear segment with a common problem. You're selling to loosely-related buyers with different jobs-to-be-done.
The test: Can you articulate in one sentence the core problem your best customers use your product to solve? If you need three different sentences for three different customer types, you don't have PMF.
3. Trials activate but don't convert
Users sign up, try the product, complete onboarding, then don't buy.
What PMM thinks: Our pricing is too high, or we need better onboarding.
What's actually happening: Users experience the product and decide the value doesn't justify the price (or the effort to switch).
The test: Interview 10 trial users who didn't convert. Ask: "What would we need to change for you to buy?" If they say "nothing, I just don't need it enough," you have a PMF problem.
4. Customers churn quietly
You're getting new customers but losing them at 20-40% annually. They don't complain—they just quietly stop using the product.
What PMM thinks: We need better customer success or onboarding.
What's actually happening: The product solved a problem that wasn't urgent enough to retain them long-term.
The test: Ask churned customers: "What did you replace us with?" If they say "nothing, we just stopped," your product solves a nice-to-have, not a must-have.
5. Your best customers are edge cases
When you list your best customers—highest engagement, lowest churn, biggest advocates—they don't fit a pattern. They're in different industries, different sizes, using the product in totally different ways.
What PMM thinks: We have a broad market opportunity.
What's actually happening: You accidentally found PMF with edge cases, but haven't found a repeatable segment.
The test: Can you describe your ideal customer profile in a way that would help sales find 100 more companies just like them? If not, you're picking up one-off wins, not building a repeatable GTM motion.
The Hard Conversation
If you have 3+ of these signs, your problem isn't positioning or messaging—it's product-market fit.
This is the conversation no one wants to have. Leadership wants to believe a better launch, better messaging, or better sales enablement will unlock growth. Admitting you don't have PMF means pausing growth initiatives to fix product.
But avoiding the conversation just burns budget and time. You'll keep hiring demand gen people and reps who can't hit quota because the product doesn't resonate.
Here's how to have the conversation:
Don't lead with "we don't have product-market fit." That's abstract and sounds like blame. Lead with specific evidence.
Do say: "We're seeing a pattern where prospects are interested until they see the product, then 70% don't convert. That suggests a product resonance issue, not a marketing issue. Let's dig into why."
Don't say: "No amount of marketing can fix this product."
Do say: "I can improve our messaging, but I'm seeing evidence that our core value prop isn't resonating with prospects. Before we invest more in marketing, I think we need to validate that we're solving a painful enough problem."
Frame it as protecting the investment: "We're about to invest $500K in a launch. If the product isn't ready, that money won't drive the ROI we expect. Let's make sure the product is ready first."
What to Do When You Don't Have PMF
Option 1: Find Your Best-Fit Segment
Maybe you have PMF with a specific segment, but you're diluting it by trying to sell to everyone.
How to test it: Segment your customers by vertical, company size, use case, or persona. Look for one segment with:
- Higher conversion rates (trial-to-paid)
- Lower churn
- Higher engagement
- More referrals
Go all-in on that segment for 90 days. Build for them, message to them, sell to them exclusively. See if metrics improve.
If one segment shows strong PMF signals, you've found your wedge. Expand from there.
Option 2: Deepen the Solution
Maybe you're solving the right problem, but not deeply enough. The product is a vitamin, not a painkiller.
How to fix it: Interview your best customers. Ask: "What would happen if we disappeared tomorrow? What would you do instead?"
If they say "we'd be fine, we'd just use [alternative]," you're not solving a must-have problem.
If they say "we'd be screwed, we'd have to hire two people to do this manually," you've found your wedge. Now make that value prop clearer and expand it.
Option 3: Pivot the Problem
Maybe you built a solution to a problem that isn't painful enough, but in the process you accidentally solved a different problem that is.
How to find it: Look at your best customers' usage data. What are they actually using the product for? Often it's not what you designed it for.
One company built a project management tool and discovered their best customers weren't using it for projects—they were using it for client communication. They pivoted to "client collaboration platform" and found PMF.
Option 4: Accept You Don't Have PMF Yet (And Fix It)
Sometimes the honest answer is: we built something, but we haven't found the problem/market fit yet. That's okay—but it means pausing GTM investment until you do.
What this looks like:
- Pause all paid marketing and outbound sales
- Keep one sales rep for inbound/demo requests only
- Focus product and PMM on customer research and product iteration
- Run rapid experiments with different segments and value props
- Measure activation, engagement, and retention—not just pipeline
This is hard because it feels like going backwards. But if you don't have PMF, scaling GTM just scales failure.
When GTM Problems Are Actually GTM Problems
Not every challenge is a PMF problem. Sometimes you DO have PMF, but GTM is broken.
Signs you have PMF:
- Customers who activate have <10% churn
- NPS from active users is >40
- Users refer their peers without incentives
- You can clearly describe the segment, problem, and why your solution is 10x better than alternatives
- Sales cycles are getting shorter, not longer
If you have those signals but growth is stalling, it's probably GTM:
- Your messaging doesn't communicate value clearly
- Your pricing doesn't capture value effectively
- Your sales process has friction
- Your target market is too small (you found PMF in a niche, now need to expand)
In this case, PMM can fix it. Better positioning, better enablement, better launch process will unlock growth.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Most product marketers spend their careers optimizing GTM for products that don't have strong PMF. They're talented, hardworking, and frustrated because no matter how good their messaging is, it doesn't drive the growth leadership expects.
You can't market your way out of a product problem. The best positioning in the world won't make people buy a product that doesn't solve a painful problem.
The most valuable thing a PMM can do sometimes is tell leadership: "We need to fix the product before we scale GTM." It's uncomfortable. It might make you unpopular. But it's the truth.
And in the long run, companies that face that truth early outperform companies that avoid it.