When Scaleup Growth Slows (But Nothing Is Necessarily ‘Broken’)
- Laura Derbyshire
- 17 hours ago
- 4 min read
Why performance tweaks stop working and scaleup growth slows after £5m–£30m ARR
There’s a particular moment in a scaleup’s life that no one really prepares you for.
It looks a little like this: revenue is solid, the product works, customers like you, the team is busy, the dashboards all look fine...
And yet. growth feels slower somehow. It's slightly less responsive, and paid channels require more budget to deliver the same return you're used to. Sales cycles stretch, and whilst the pipeline looks healthy, conversions wobble, and you start to have conversations around “How can we optimise the funnel?”
Which is totally understandable, but unfortunately, it is often the wrong move. Because at this stage, growth rarely slows because something is broken. It slows because the business has quietly outgrown the version of itself that got you here in the first place.
The awkward truth about £5m–£30m growth
Most companies tend to stall in their growth because they keep doing what worked for too long.
What got you to £1m–£3m was speed, momentum and opportunism, but what got you to £5m–£10m was most likely execution, hustle and doubling down on what worked. What gets you beyond that is clarity, and as we've seen time and time again, that’s where things usually start to wobble.
By the time a scaleup reaches this stage, a few things tend arise:
The original positioning is starting to be outgrown
The market has moved, but the story hasn’t
Different teams have different ideas about “who we’re for”
Marketing is optimising activity only and not future direction
Leadership is busy running the business, not re-examining it
Why performance tweaks stop working
When growth slows, the instinct is almost always tactical:
Let’s test new ads.
Let’s try another channel.
Let’s hire a growth person.
Let’s change the website headline.
Sometimes that helps (although usually only briefly). But often it just creates more noise.
Because performance marketing is a multiplier, not a fix. It amplifies what’s already there. If the underlying strategy, positioning or narrative is unclear or needs adjusting, then optimisation just accelerates confusion.
This is why scaleups can be spending more on marketing while feeling less confident about growth; the problem is alignment.
Growth plateaus are usually clarity problems
At this stage, growth slows when:
The business is trying to appeal to too many audiences
The value proposition has become generic
The leadership team hasn’t realigned since the last growth spurt
The brand no longer reflects where the business is heading
Everyone is busy, but no one is quite sure what matters most
It’s a transition failure -> the company has moved on, but the thinking hasn’t caught up.
The quiet cost of not stopping to think
The faster a business grows, the less time leaders feel they have to step back (which is exactly what they need to do).
Without deliberate moments of clarity, scaleups drift into:
Reactive decision-making
Conflicting priorities
Over-reliance on metrics without meaning
Endless execution with diminishing returns
From the outside, everything looks fine, but from the inside, growth feels harder than it should.
This is often when we experience founders, CEOs and investors saying things like:
“We’re doing loads, but it’s not landing.”
“Marketing is busy, but impact feels diluted.”
“We should be growing faster than this.”
What to do first when growth plateaus
Well, first of all, don't do a knee-jerk reaction rebrand or a channel overhaul, or think all will be solved by signing up for yet another AI tool.
The first move is almost always clarity.
That means stepping back and answering some simple but often unanswered questions:
What market are we really playing in now?
What have we outgrown?
Where are we trying to be everything to everyone?
What does success actually look like in the next 12–24 months?
What should we stop doing?
It’s about focus, trade-offs and leadership alignment, not a load of slides - you should be able to articulate what your growth plan is on one slide, in the same way I might explain it to my Mum or my 9-year-old niece.
This is also where many scaleups benefit from an external perspective, because they’re too close to the machine they’re running.
Where brand, strategy and leadership meet
At scaleup stage, a clear brand strategy is needed as it:
Sharpens decision-making
Improves marketing efficiency
Strengthens sales confidence
Signals maturity to investors
Makes growth feel lighter again
When brand, strategy, and execution pull in the same direction, performance starts working with the business, not against it. This is why growth plateaus are often solved by realignment, not reinvention.
The role of senior marketing leadership
This is also why many scaleups turn to senior marketing leadership, often before they’re ready to hire full-time.
A fractional CMO, for example, isn’t there to “do more marketing”. They’re there to:
Reconnect growth to strategy
Align teams around a clear direction
Decide what matters and what doesn’t
Bring external pattern recognition
Act as a thinking partner to founders and CEOs
At this stage, leadership matters more than activity and judgment matters more than speed.
Nothing is broken, you’re just at the next chapter
If growth has slowed and you can’t quite explain why, that’s not a failure; it’s a signal that the business is ready for its next level of thinking.
In our experience, companies that break through this phase pause, clarify, and decide on their strategy, leading to their growth resuming as they work smarter.
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FAQs: Scaleup Growth Plateaus
Why does scaleup growth slow after early success?
Because the business has outgrown its original positioning, channels, or operating model. What worked to reach £3–£5m often can’t carry a company to £20m+ without clearer focus, narrative, and leadership alignment.
Is slowing growth a marketing problem or a strategy problem?
Usually both. Growth stalls when strategy, brand, sales, and marketing drift out of alignment. Optimising channels rarely fixes this without first clarifying direction.
What should founders do first when growth plateaus?
Step back from execution and create clarity: what market you’re really playing in, how you’re different, and what you’re saying no to. This is often where external strategic input is most helpful.
Can a fractional CMO help with a growth plateau?
Yes, particularly when growth has stalled due to a lack of leadership, focus, or cross-team integration. A fractional CMO brings a senior perspective without the cost of a full-time hire.
