Quick Wins vs Brand: The Scale-Up Marketing Dilemma
- Caroline Warnes
- Sep 1
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 23
After the relief of a successful capital raise, most founders feel the pressure almost immediately. Investors expect signs of traction, and the quickest way to show progress is to chase a few early wins. The usual advice is to put budget into performance activity, which for most B2B scale-ups looks like outbound campaigns, LinkedIn ads and a polished sales deck or brochure to take into key meetings.
Those tactics matter. You do need quick wins. The mistake is treating them as the whole story. When you go too hard on the early quick wins, you're missing the opportunity to build the layer of trust that turns quick wins into a steady, repeatable customer base. Call it your brand, call it narrative: whatever your preferred term, it matters. And that work can't wait until later, it needs to start now. Here's why.
The marketing funnel, without the jargon
Marketers like myself spend a lot of time debating whether the marketing funnel is dead, inverted or replaced by another shape entirely. It's a fun intellectual conversation to have, but for most founders the details don't really matter. What you do need to know is this: at its core, all the funnel is really doing is describing how you build trust with another human being who eventually buys from you. Think of it as a bit of a courtship dance:
Awareness is the first spark of attraction, like a first date.
Consideration is the getting-to-know-you stage, where confidence and trust is built.
Decision is when things heat up and you close the deal.
Jumping straight from awareness to close
There's a lot of pressure to jump straight from awareness to close when you're under pressure. Skip the middle and try to take someone from first contact to signed deal. Sometimes it works, usually if they have a pressing problem and your offer lands at the right moment. Those are the quick wins you want to take.
For most of your audience, it doesn't work that way. You'll see it in the signals they give you: the way they search, the questions they ask, the language they use.
Ready-to-close leads are specific and urgent. They ask about pricing, timelines, or how you compare to a competitor. Send them straight to sales.
Nurture leads are curious but not committed. They ask for education, context or proof. Drop them into a nurture journey where you can build trust over time.
Large technology companies have the latitude to play this differently. I downloaded a report from a well-known CRM recently and within a couple of hours received a call from an SDR probing whether I was ready to buy. (I was not, and the search term I had used, “Latest statistics on AI in B2B marketing”, should have been a clue I was in research mode, not buying mode.)
For them, it's a numbers game. For every five people like me who find the approach intrusive, there may be one who converts. At their scale, that trade-off is worth it.
For a founder or scale-up, the trade-off is riskier. Every relationship matters. A heavy-handed follow-up can damage credibility at the exact stage you are trying to build it. That's why it pays to invest in the trust layer now, so you can capture quick wins while building credibility and consistency with everyone else.
What it looks like in B2B scale-ups
In scale-ups, the urge to jump straight from awareness to close usually shows up as an over-reliance on performance marketing: hammering the top and bottom of the funnel. Outbound sequences, ads, sales decks and demos dominate the focus.
The middle layer, the trust-building stage, is often thin. We're talking about case studies, credible website copy, founder perspective, consistent proof points. The things that show us who you are and what your stand for. For the members of your audience who can't be converted with a quick win, this is what turns awareness into serious consideration.
When that layer is missing, the cracks will start to show sooner or later:
SDRs cycle through expensive lists without progress.
Paid campaigns deliver clicks that bounce away.
Investors hear one story in the room and read another online.
Suddenly, both brand and performance are at risk.
The cost of neglecting brand in scale-up marketing
In the early stages of scaling, it's tempting to adjust your story as you go. Especially if the focus is on performance marketing. A pay-per-click specialist tells you what's working in the moment based on search trends, so you bend the message to match. Someone on your board offers a different take, and you bend again. Or maybe a competitor announces a new feature, and you tweak once more.
Bit by bit, you end up nurturing a Frankenstein story. Each part may have made sense on its own, but together it feels disjointed. And that is felt at the coalface: sales aren't sure what they're supposed to be telling prospects, and investors might start to wonder whether the business itself is still clear on its direction.
Performance activity is important in the early days, but when done without an overarching eye to your brand, it can spread the inconsistency further and faster. Instead of building momentum, you're paying to amplify confusion.
How to build brand and performance together in sprints
The answer is not to slam the brakes on performance marketing for six months while you bankroll a brand overhaul. The better path is to build brand and performance together, in the same sprint cycles you already use for product and sales.
Small adjustments to your story are okay and part of growth. Wholesale overhauls are not. Each campaign or performance activity you run should strengthen the story that lives on your website, in your deck and in your sales material. The signals you get along the way (investor questions, customer objections, campaign data) should feed straight back into the narrative. Rinse and repeat.
Do this consistently, and your quick wins today start compounding into long-term credibility. They stop being one-off conversions and start filling the funnel with prospects who know your story, trust your company and are more likely to buy again.
The role of a steady hand
As a founder, it's hard to know exactly what you need at this stage. You might not be ready to invest in a full-time marketing executive and team. However, you do need someone senior enough to keep brand and performance aligned; someone who can make sure every dollar spent on performance also builds credibility.
That's where fractional models come in. A fractional Chief Content Officer can give you the strategic oversight you need, without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire. I explained more about this model in my recent blog Is a Fractional CCO Just a Freelancer? (hint: it's not).
Closing thought
The good news for founders and scale-ups is that you don't have to choose between quick wins and building in brand. In fact, you can and should do them both together. In my experience, the founders who succeed in scaling up are the ones who build trust while chasing traction.
Quick wins matter; but trust matters more. The growth that lasts comes from investing in both.
Ready to scale up with quick wins that build trust?
If this is the stage you're in, my Founder Marketing Kickstart is built for you. This quick-start engagement reviews the marketing you already have in play, then sets out a clear 90-day plan to tighten your story and focus your efforts where they will have the greatest impact.
