Only Talking to 5%: Why Performance-Only Marketing Is Preventing Scaleups From Growing

Most founders and CEOs are surprised when they hear this: companies that rely solely on performance marketing are only speaking to around 5% of their potential market.

That 5% represents the people who are already actively looking to buy. The ones searching. Comparing. Ready to convert.

If you’re a scaleup focused purely on bottom- of-funnel tactics, you’re essentially fighting for the same small pool of already-warm buyers as everyone else. And that’s where the real problem begins.

The Performance Plateau Is Real

Research from WARC shows that brands that over-index on performance eventually hit what’s now widely called the performance plateau: results stop improving. CAC rises. Channels fatigue. Conversions slow.

You spend more. You get less.

From the outside, it looks like a media or creative problem. But internally, the root issue is reach. You can’t scale what is already too small.

The truth is simple: performance marketing stops working when you stop growing the pool of people who even know you exist.

The 95% You've Been Missing

If 5% of your audience is ready to buy today, then 95% is not.

But that 95% is where your future pipeline, future revenue, and future profitability come from. These people may not be actively searching, but they’re absolutely influenceable. They still learn. They still absorb. They still form opinions.

This is where brand advertising matters.

Brand builds memory. Memory builds preference. Preference drives future conversion.

And when you strengthen future demand, your performance marketing starts working harder in the present. CAC improves. Conversion rates lift. The whole system compounds.

This isn’t “fluffy marketing”. It’s demand creation.

Why Scaleups Need to Rethink the Mix

A scaleup that wants sustained growth cannot depend on short-term optimisation alone. You can optimise your final 5% endlessly, but it won’t unlock long-term profitability. What scaleups need is:

• Brand advertising to increase reach, mental availability, and future demand.

• Performance marketing to convert the demand once it exists.

• Strategic sequencing so both work together instead of competing for budget.

Brand is not the opposite of performance; it’s the multiplier.

Big-Brand Thinking, Applied to Scaleups

To deepen this thinking inside OSER, we collaborate with Diego Chicharro, former Head of Brand Effectiveness at Publicis. Diego brings global brand-effectiveness expertise into the scaleup world, helping leadership teams understand how to:

• Balance short-term and long-term marketing investment.

• Build mental availability in markets where no one knows you yet.

• Use brand to lower acquisition costs over time.

• Create the conditions for growth far beyond the 5% already in-market.

His work reframes how scaleups think about marketing maturity. It turns brand from a “nice to have” into an essential growth lever.

You can watch our short interview where we unpack the “5% in-market” myth and what it truly means for scaleup growth. I’ll link it below.

The Shift That Pays Off

Scaleups who make the shift from performance-only to performance-plus-brand consistently see:

• Greater efficiency in paid channels

• More predictable pipeline

• Stronger pricing power

• Greater brand salience in market

• Long-term profitability unlocked

Because you’re no longer just catching demand. You’re creating it.

And once you do that, you’re no longer fighting for 5%. You’re leading the 95%.

View me chatting to Brand Effectiveness expert Diego Chicharro via YouTube Shorts here.