The Hidden Growth Tax: Why Climate Tech Startups Can't Afford to Ignore Marketing

George McTaggart helps early-stage climate tech and cleantech companies sharpen their go-to-market strategy, generate demand, and build lean, AI-forward marketing teams that deliver results. As a fractional CMO, he partners closely with founders to accelerate growth, and turn strategy into scalable execution.

We sat down to talk about why marketing often gets undervalued in the early innings, and what that delay really costs founders. Interested in learning more about the ideas in this piece? Email George at [email protected].

What’s the number one mistake you see climate tech founders make when it comes to marketing?

I often see marketing treated as something you do later, after the market is ready.

Founders are moving fast - whether it's direct air capture, energy storage, orSaaS for climate analytics and reporting, they’re focused on solving massive technical problems. That’s understandable. But marketing often gets left behind and is consistently undervalued.

In both hard-tech and software-based startups, weak marketing strategy and a lack of strong marketing leadership creates real friction. In hardware, the challenge is educating buyers and building trust across long, risk-averse sales cycles. In software, it’s differentiation, storytelling, and generating demand in a noisy space. Across both, founders face complex buyer ecosystems, long sales timelines, and growing pressure to prove impact - fast.

Another pattern I see often is founders leading with climate impact, when their buyers are measured on cost savings, risk reduction, or compliance. Climate outcomes might seal the deal, but they rarely open it. You have to meet buyers where they are, and translate the value into their language, not yours.

Some people still think marketing is about promotion or the old “4Ps”. But it’s much more than that. It’s the system that connects your great climate tech product to the market: defining who you serve, why it matters to different stakeholders in the buying group, how you’re positioned, and how you move prospects from awareness to actual adoption. 

In early-stage companies, it spans messaging, brand strategy, sales enablement, customer education, and investor communications. And it leverages a modern, AI-forward stack of tools to track buyer intent, automate outreach and nurturing, personalize content delivery, and generate actionable insights across the funnel. Done right, marketing reduces risk, clarifies direction, and accelerates growth across the entire commercial journey.

You’ve said that underinvesting in marketing early on is like paying a “hidden growth tax.” What do you mean by that?

It’s the cost founders don’t see on a balance sheet - but they feel it in their pipeline. When companies delay building a real marketing function, they usually experience confused messaging, which leads to longer sales cycles, unproductive sales hires, and investor skepticism.

You might save some budget up front, but the cost shows up in slower traction, missed revenue targets, and deals that drag out because the story’s unclear. I’ve seen companies push marketing off as a “later” function, then they hit a wall and suddenly it’s a scramble - one that is costly and often avoidable.

Delays in strategic marketing—like unclear buyer personas or weak positioning—quietly chip away at your company’s valuation. This diagram shows how.

So why do so many founders wait so long to bring in real marketing leadership? 

There are a few reasons, and they’re all understandable.

1. Technical bias: Founders believe if the product is strong enough, it’ll sell itself. But in most climate sectors, the buyer needs education and reassurance before they buy.

2. Budget pressure: Early-stage teams want to invest in engineers or salespeople who feel “closer to revenue.” A marketing leader feels like overhead until it’s painfully obvious they’re missing one.

3. Misunderstanding the role: Some see marketing as tactical - ads, emails, a website - not strategic. They don’t realize it’s what connects product to revenue and shapes how the market sees them.

4. Control: Founders often want to own the story. They fear bringing someone in will dilute the vision. Ironically, a good marketing partner sharpens it.

What’s the impact? Without defined customer personas, strong positioning, and useful content mapped to the buyer journey, sales cycles get longer. New sales hires struggle to ramp, and founders stay in every conversation. That’s not sustainable, especially if you're trying to scale or fundraise. This can ultimately impact investor confidence - When there’s no clear GTM strategy or customer acquisition model, it’s hard to justify a strong valuation.

Let’s say you’re sitting down with an early-stage founder. What are a few high-return marketing investments they should make right now?

You don’t need a 10 person marketing team to move the needle. There are four things I recommend almost universally:

Define your ICP and buyer personas. Know exactly who you’re targeting, what they care about, and how they buy. This saves so much time later.

Clarify your positioning. Get to a tight, differentiated narrative that aligns with your commercial strategy. This helps in sales, fundraising, and recruiting.

Create core sales tools. A strong pitch deck, a simple product one-pager, and a credible case study or pilot story. That’s often enough to improve conversions immediately. From there, you’ll want to develop content assets that map to each buyer persona and help them from awareness through consideration to selection.

Set up basic marketing ops. Get your CRM in order. Define lead stages, scoring, nurture paths, and KPIs. Without that, you can’t scale or measure what’s working.

These are foundational. They support not just marketing, but sales, partnerships, and investor relations.

You work as a fractional CMO - how does that actually work for an early-stage company that’s not ready for a full-time marketing exec?

That’s where the fractional model really shines. Most early-stage companies don’t need - or can’t afford - a full-time CMO. But they do need strategic marketing leadership.

The first phase of an engagement can be fairly intense, as I work with them to get their marketing house in order. Then, I’ll embed 10–12 hours a week, further developing and executing a strategy, while leveraging a network of specialist contractors that focus on execution. I help define GTM strategy, shape positioning, coach internal teams or junior marketers, and ensure we’re executing against business goals. The difference now is, we can be incredibly lean and still move fast.

AI has made this model even more powerful. A modern, AI-forward marketing org doesn’t need a big team - it needs a clear strategy, strong creative direction, and smart execution. The key is iterating: develop → launch → learn → refine. We’re using AI to develop campaigns faster, improve targeting, and rapidly test different messaging. It’s how a small team can deliver outsized results.

Marketing isn't something you “set and forget.” It’s a learning loop. The fractional model gives companies flexibility to build that loop without overcommitting.

Can you share an example of a company that made the leap from tactical to strategic marketing - and what changed as a result?

Sure. I worked with a company that was spun out of a larger organization. Great tech, early customer interest, but no real brand identity or go-to-market plan. Every sale depended on the founder explaining the value in 60-minute one-on-one meetings.

Over the course of a year, we repositioned the company with a focused value proposition, built a strong message house, created a complete sales toolkit, and launched an account-based marketing program to target enterprise buyers.

More than anything, what changed was how the company reduced perceived risk for enterprise buyers. The narrative was clear, the sales tools were credible, and the overall experience signaled maturity, which is what unlocked trust from those Fortune 500 accounts.

The results were tangible: They signed multiple Fortune 500 customers, closed their first of several seven-figure deals, and built a credible commercial pipeline that caught the attention of a strategic acquirer.

The product didn’t change. The difference was in how clearly and confidently they showed up in the market.

Final word to founders: what would you say to someone who’s still on the fence about marketing?

If you’re seeing traction but struggling to explain why customers buy - or if your sales team is spinning their wheels - it’s time.

You don’t need to go big. You just need to be strategic.

Define your ideal customer, understand their pains and emotional triggers, get your messaging straight, and build a system that lets you scale. In this post-ESG moment, as the climate narrative gets challenged and buyers focus on fundamentals, not just mission, marketing is how you reframe your impact story in terms of value, not simply virtue. Done right, marketing doesn’t just support growth - it unlocks it.

Interested in learning more about the ideas in this piece? Email George at [email protected].

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