(And Why Bringing in a Fractional CMO Might Be the Smartest Move You Make)
Early-stage growth often feels effortless.
You launch. The product lands. Meta is delivering. Customers are raving. ROAS looks strong.
At this point, you are not thinking about brand investment. And you do not need to.
You are growing through:
- A product people love
- Strong word of mouth
- Warm audiences
- Some comms or light PR that amplifies early excitement
But somewhere between £3M and £5M, things change.
ROAS weakens. CAC creeps up. Offers stop working. Performance becomes unpredictable.
This is not just a campaign issue. It is a structural issue.
And most e-commerce brands run into it at the same point.
The Plateau Is Predictable
Most early growth is powered by demand capture, not demand creation.
You are converting warm audiences who are already in-market. That works until it doesn’t.
As Tom Roach puts it:
“Performance marketing only works when there is existing demand to convert.”
Eventually, that demand plateaus.
The growth engine stalls. The model runs out of headroom. This chart, created by Dr. Grace Kite and Tom Roach, tells the story.
Brands ramp up quickly using performance activity. Then growth flatlines.
It only picks up again when brand-building begins, the kind that creates demand, not just converts it.
Five Reasons Brands Get Stuck
1. Performance is doing all the work
In the early days, performance marketing delivered because:
- Audiences are warm
- The product is new
- Customers are sharing it
- There is built-in buzz and intent
But eventually, that pool of intent isn’t growing fast enough. ROAS declines.
So you spend more to try to recover it. Your performance pay increases. ROI continue to drop.
That is when brands start cutting brand investment. You need to keep the lights on, so you double down on what looks measurable.You have bills to pay. But performance weakens further. CAC increases. Cash flow tightens.
You are now spending more to get less. The machine is broken.
2. Brand strategy comes too late
Most e-commerce brands do not invest in their brand until performance starts to struggle.
By then, they are trying to bolt meaning onto something that was never clearly defined.
You rebrand. You run a top-of-funnel campaign. You brief a creative agency.
But there is no clear story. No emotional reason to buy. No mental availability.
As Roach says:
“We don’t buy brands because we remember the ad. We buy them because we remember the brand.”
If your brand was not building memory and meaning before this point, you will struggle to build momentum now.
3. The team is built to execute, not scale
Most £5M e-commerce brands have lean marketing setups:
- A founder still driving growth
- Junior marketers or generalists
- A performance agency
- No one in a senior strategic role
There is no one focused on:
- Brand development
- Customer lifetime value
- Pricing strategy
- Media mix
- Marketing effectiveness
- Scaling channels beyond Meta and Google
You are not missing execution. You are missing strategic leadership.
4. Wholesale is rushed, not planned
Wholesale becomes the next idea.
It promises reach and legitimacy. But done wrong, it breaks your brand.
What usually happens:
- Products are pushed into the wrong stores
- Retailers discount too soon
- There is no control over pricing or positioning
- Direct sales start to drop
- Margins are squeezed
Instead of expanding your brand presence, you end up devaluing it.
Wholesale only works when aligned with your brand, pricing, and product strategy.
It needs structure and intent, not speed.
5. Discounting becomes the default growth lever
When performance weakens, many brands turn to discounts.
It delivers a short-term lift. But it damages the brand in the long term.
You train customers to wait for offers.
You erode the margin.
You lose pricing power.
Eventually, full price becomes unachievable.
Your brand begins to compete on price instead of value.
And once you enter that cycle, it becomes very difficult to reverse.
How to Break Through: A Smarter Path Beyond £5M
Scaling past £5M is not about spending more.
It is about making smarter decisions, grounded in strategy and long-term value.
Here is where to focus:
1. Get the foundations right
Before you scale further, make sure the engine is built for it.
- Brand Strategy
Define your positioning, identity, tone of voice, and distinctive brand assets. - Marketing Strategy
Align your pricing, distribution, and promotion with your product and customer. Make sure it reinforces the brand not undermines it. - Product
Keep delivering quality. Word of mouth and retention still matter. But now they must be intentional and supported.
2. Start investing for scale
You need to move beyond performance-only tactics. That means:
- Go up the funnel
- Accept that top-of-funnel ROAS may look weak
- Build memory, familiarity, and distinctiveness
- Create demand, not just convert it
Top of funnel should not be judged by last-click ROI.
It should be judged by brand health, search volume, and longer-term customer behaviour.
3. Upgrade your measurement
At this stage, you need better answers than Meta’s dashboard can give you.
Tools like:
- Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM)
- Geo-lift testing
- Incrementality experiments
These are no longer just for big corporates.
They are accessible, affordable, and fast to deploy.
4. Bring in senior marketing leadership: without hiring full-time
This is where many founders hesitate.
You know you need strategy, but you do not want to overhire or slow down.
That is exactly where a Fractional CMO adds value. An Outsourced CMO who you can hire tomorrow and get you moving fast.
They help you:
- Build the team, process, and structure to scale
- Shape the brand and media strategy for your next phase
- Align acquisition, retention, and retail under one cohesive plan
- Balance short-term sales with long-term growth
- Avoid common traps and focus only on what matters
If you are in this situation, you are not alone & and you are not behind.
Most e-commerce founders only realise something needs to change once growth starts to stall.
There is a lot to fix. And yes, you will need to move fast.
The good news is you can bring someone in tomorrow.
Someone who has done this before.
Someone who knows the traps and how to move past them quickly.
Final Thought
The £5M plateau is not a failure. It is a signal.
It tells you that what got you here will not get you there.
You can keep chasing performance.
You can throw discounts at the problem.
You can keep testing tactics in search of a breakthrough.
Or you can stop guessing and take control.
- Build strong foundations
- Shift how you measure success
- Start investing with intention
- Bring in leadership that knows how to scale
That is what a Fractional CMO helps you do.
Want to talk about where your brand might be stuck and how to move beyond it?
Let’s connect. Talk to Shanjay, an experienced fractional CMO for E-commerce & online businesses with track record scaling up online brands.
