Marketing Effectiveness for Scaleups: Are You Driving Real Growth Beyond £3m ARR?

Every business hitting the £3 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) mark faces a critical question:

Is your marketing really driving growth, or just converting sales that would have happened anyway?

Understanding where your brand and marketing stand today is the first step to unlocking faster, smarter growth. That’s where the OSER free Growth Marketing Effectiveness Diagnostic comes in.

For founders and CEOs, marketing effectiveness for scaleups isn’t about doing more activity, it’s about understanding whether marketing is genuinely driving incremental growth, brand reach and long-term value.

This concise yet powerful assessment enables businesses like yours to pinpoint strengths and gaps in brand reach, positioning and marketing effectiveness. It’s designed to reveal how well your marketing supports sustainable growth ambitions – and where sharper focus could make a measurable difference.

Marketing Effectiveness for Scaleups: Understanding Spend and Business Stage

One of the first questions explores your marketing budget: what percentage of revenue do you currently invest in marketing? This single figure often reveals whether growth is being fuelled by demand creation and reach, or constrained by underinvestment and short-term tactics.

Next, the diagnostic asks you to identify your current business stage. Are you:

• Scaling fast and expanding into new markets?

• Consolidating by improving efficiency and ROI?

• Preparing for investment or acquisition?

• Transforming through AI, automation, or rebranding?

Each stage demands a different marketing approach. Fast-growing scaleups often need to prioritise brand reach and market presence, while businesses preparing for acquisition must demonstrate credibility, consistency and provable marketing effectiveness.

Clarifying Your Top Goals for the Next 12 Months

Growth means different things to different businesses. OSER’s diagnostic helps you clarify your top priorities, such as:

• Accelerating revenue growth

• Strengthening brand positioning

• Building investor confidence

• Improving marketing ROI

• Launching new markets or products

• Integrating AI or automation across teams

• Maximising incremental profit

Defining these goals ensures marketing activity is aligned with business outcomes. For example, entering new markets requires building awareness and mental availability before performance marketing can deliver results.

Pinpointing Areas for Improvement in Brand and Marketing

The diagnostic then explores which parts of your marketing engine need the most attention. You may need to improve:

• Brand positioning and market distinctiveness

• Brand reach and media effectiveness

• Performance marketing and paid media

• Lead generation and conversion

• AI integration and automation

• Content and campaign effectiveness

• Customer experience and retention

For instance, a business struggling with lead conversion may discover the real issue isn’t performance spend, but weak brand salience or unclear messaging earlier in the customer journey.

Reviewing Your Brand Assets and Recognition

Strong brands have distinctive assets that customers recognise instantly, even without a logo. What brand assets do you have from these?

• Logo

• Strapline

• Icon

• Character

• Colours

• Distinctive packaging

  
  

How confident are you that customers would recognise your brand without your logo? Think of Nike’s swoosh or Apple’s apple - these brands have built powerful recognition beyond just their name.

This exercise reveals whether your brand identity is strong enough to stand out in crowded markets or if it needs refreshing.

Connecting Marketing Activity to Business Growth

Do you have a documented brand and communications strategy that clearly links marketing activity to business growth?

Many scaleups run campaigns without a clear line between reach, effectiveness and commercial impact. OSER’s diagnostic helps assess whether your marketing strategy genuinely supports growth objectives, rather than operating in silos.

This alignment is critical for making confident investment decisions and scaling efficiently.

Tracking the Right Metrics to Measure Success

What metrics do you actively track? Key indicators that show marketing effectiveness include:

• Brand awareness

• Category entry points

• Distinctive brand asset strength

• Creative effectiveness or ad recall

• Media performance (reach, share of voice)

• Incremental profit from advertising

• Advertising ROI or ROAS

  
  

Tracking these metrics helps you understand not just if your marketing is working, but how it contributes to growth. For example, measuring incremental profit from advertising shows whether your campaigns generate new revenue or just shift existing sales.

How Confident Are You in Your Marketing’s Impact?

The diagnostic closes with a direct question:

How confident are you that your marketing is driving growth, not just converting sales that would have happened anyway?

If the answer isn’t clear, it’s a strong signal that your marketing strategy needs sharper focus on reach, effectiveness and long-term value creation.

Why Take the OSER Growth Marketing Effectiveness Diagnostic?

This free assessment is designed specifically for businesses with £3m+ ARR that want to scale more intelligently.

By taking the diagnostic, you’ll gain:

• Clarity on marketing spend and growth priorities

• Insight into your business stage and objectives

• Identification of the biggest constraints to growth

• A review of your brand’s distinctiveness and reach

• Confidence that marketing activity supports business outcomes

• A clearer view of which metrics actually matter

  
  
  
  

Ready to Unlock Faster, Smarter Growth?

Want to understand how your marketing really stacks up – and where sharper strategy, stronger brand reach and better effectiveness could accelerate growth?

Take the free OSER Growth Marketing Effectiveness Diagnostic today.

Then join OSER’s upcoming Effectiveness Webinar with Diego Chicharro (ex-Publicis), where he’ll unpack diagnostic insights and share practical guidance on improving marketing performance, effectiveness and ROI.

Your growth journey starts with clarity. Now is the time to find out where you stand.

Take the OSER Growth Marketing Effectiveness Diagnostic

Join the OSER Brand Effectiveness Growth Webinar