One of the things I commonly hear is 'I haven't got any money to spend on marketing' or 'I need to wait until I'm making money before I invest in marketing'.
This perhaps stems from the fact that people have advertising in their head when they think about marketing and this is just a tiny part of the marketing mix.
My view is that marketing should be at the very heart of a business and hence a company can't afford to not at least invest time in thinking about their marketing.