Mastering the Scaleup Journey: The 5 Marketing Moves That Drive Real Growth (OSER’s Guide for UK Scaleups)
- Laura Derbyshire
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Elevating a business from startup to scaleup is rare, and getting it right is more critical than ever. While hundreds of thousands of UK businesses launch each year, only a small percentage break through into the high-growth category.
According to the ScaleUp Institute Annual Review 2025:
The UK now has 44,595 scaleups, the highest number ever recorded, with a further 20,980 businesses in the “scaling pipeline” on track for high-growth classification.
These scaleups are responsible for £2.19 trillion in turnover, equivalent to 50% of all SME and mid-size business output, despite representing just 0.8% of UK companies.
At OSER, we help founders and leadership teams transition confidently into the scaleup phase through strategic brand positioning, creative differentiation, and AI-enabled growth systems. Based on ScaleUp Institute insights and our experience advising UK scaleups, here are the five marketing moves that consistently unlock the next stage of growth.
1. Build a Scaleup-Ready Marketing Strategy (Not a Startup One)
Startup marketing is about hustle and validation. Scaleup marketing is about systems, strategy, and scalability.
The 2025 ScaleUp CEO survey - the largest ever conducted, covering 1,009 CEOs - shows that 9 in 10 scaleups expect to grow in 2025, with 6 in 10 planning to increase headcount and 5 in 10 planning revenue growth. But despite this optimism:
The top growth barriers remain: access to markets (58%), talent (55%), and growth capital (42%).
A scaleup-ready marketing strategy must therefore connect:
Clear brand positioning
A distinctive creative idea
Scalable lead-generation systems
AI-powered execution
Commercial metrics (CAC, LTV, payback, pipeline velocity)
Investor-ready storytelling
Strategy at this stage is not optional; it is the infrastructure for growth.
2. Nail Your Messaging: Clear, Consistent and Commercial
As companies scale, messaging complexity increases; new products, new markets, bigger teams and higher expectations.
The Review highlights that scaleups span nearly every sector of the UK economy, with high growth in both industrial sectors (42% of scaleups) and creative industries.
Yet the challenge remains:
If customers cannot articulate what you do, why you matter, and how you solve their problem, your growth stalls.
Founders often underestimate the importance of:
A unified message framework
A clear value proposition
Consistency across sales, marketing, product, and investor communications
A story investors can champion
Strong messaging accelerates everything: sales cycles, brand recall, investor confidence, and team alignment.
3. Amplify Your Brand: Creativity as a Growth Engine
Brand is not decoration, it is a scaleup asset.
The 2025 Review shows scaleups are:
Highly productive (£558,349 average turnover per employee)
Twice as innovative as large firms
More internationally driven (7 in 10 see exports as vital)
Significantly more likely to create high-quality jobs (3.9m employees)
Brand remains the multiplier behind these performance indicators.
Brand amplification means:
A distinctive market position
Creative campaigns that cut through
A founder story that builds credibility
Consistent brand assets across channels
An emotional connection that performance marketing alone cannot create
Performance tools can be copied. Creative strategy cannot.
In a world where AI has levelled execution, brand is now one of the last unfair advantages.
4. Build a Lead-Generation Engine That Can Scale Predictably
Early traction is often relationship-driven. Scale requires predictable, measurable, and repeatable acquisition systems.
In 2025, scaleups generated £924bn in turnover growth and employed 1.87m people in the scaling pipeline alone, showing the massive economic weight behind effective growth engines.
A scalable lead-generation ecosystem includes:
ICP clarity
Multi-channel acquisition strategy
Creative that drives both recall and conversion
AI-enabled experimentation (A/B testing, predictive optimisation)
Automated nurture systems
Attribution frameworks aligned to scaleup KPIs
Without a defined system, scaleups fall into the “scattergun trap”: lots of activity, little return, and inconsistent pipeline quality.
5. Build the Right Team; Internally or Through Expert Partners
The Review highlights a critical theme:
Talent and leadership remain two of the top three growth barriers for scaleups and 55% Founders & CEOs cite talent as a major challenge
Scaling companies need:
Creative strategists
Brand leaders
Performance marketers
Data and AI specialists
Strong commercial oversight
Access to NEDs and fractional marketing executives
Many scaleups don’t want to overhire or mis-hire - which is why expert partners and fractional leadership models are increasingly attractive.
OSER’s model: brand, creative, commercial strategy, and AI execution under one roof, is built precisely for this gap.
Why These Five Moves Matter More Than Ever (2025 Insight)
2025 marks a milestone:
For the first time, the UK exceeded 44,000+ scaleups, and is now 3rd in the world for startup-to-scaleup velocity, behind only Sweden and the USA.
But the Review warns the ecosystem is still fragile:
Regional disparities remain
Access to markets and procurement is still limited
Risk appetite among investors remains variable
Many promising businesses risk relocating overseas
This makes strategic marketing, brand strength, and creative differentiation more important than ever.
Scaleups that invest in brand + strategy + creative + AI today will be the ones that define UK economic growth tomorrow.
Becoming the 1 in 200 Starts With Strategy
Scaleup success unlocks:
Predictable cashflow
Market leadership
Strong valuation
Brand acceleration
Internationalisation opportunities
The starting point is simple: Get your brand, strategy and creative foundations right, then deploy them with AI-enabled precision.
At OSER, we specialise in precisely this.
Book a Growth Consultation, and let’s explore how your business can grow differently and scale faster.
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