How Fractional Marketing and Smart Strategy Help Business Owners Break Through Growth Plateaus
Many business owners hit a ceiling.
Revenue stalls. Sales feel harder than they should. Marketing activity is happening, but it is not producing the traction the owner expected. The team is busy, but the business is not moving forward with the clarity, confidence, or consistency needed to scale.
In this episode of Full Throttle Business, Kelly Peitz sits down with Sue Weston, CEO of Upstart Group, to unpack what really drives sustainable growth for small and mid-sized businesses.
Sue brings deep marketing leadership experience, including her early career at Microsoft, where she learned how strong strategy, cross-functional teamwork, and customer-focused thinking can shape business growth. In 2010, Sue and her co-founder launched Upstart Group with a clear mission: bring enterprise-level marketing strategy to small and mid-sized companies in a way that is practical, affordable, and executable.
And that word matters: executable.
Because strategy that sits in a drawer does not grow a business.
What Upstart Group Does
Upstart Group serves as a fractional marketing team for growth-minded businesses.
Sue often steps in as a fractional CMO, supported by marketing managers, specialists, and other team members who help clients not only build the strategy but also manage what Sue calls the “get it done” side of marketing.
That includes work like:
Clarifying market fit
Improving messaging
Aligning sales and marketing
Building growth strategies
Supporting demand generation
Managing marketing execution
Helping leadership teams understand what to prioritize next
The goal is not simply to “do marketing.” The goal is to build a clear, repeatable, measurable marketing engine that supports real business growth.
Who Upstart Group Serves
Sue explained that Upstart Group works with a range of businesses, but most clients are established companies with roughly $10 million to $70 million in annual revenue.
Their strongest industry focus areas include:
Technology
Manufacturing
Distribution
Professional services
The best-fit client is usually a CEO or business owner who wants to grow but feels stuck.
Maybe the company has been sitting around $20 million in revenue and wants to reach $30 million. Maybe the owner knows the business has potential, but the next stage of growth is not clear. Maybe sales, marketing, operations, and financial planning are not fully aligned.
That is where Sue sees opportunity.
Growth is rarely solved by one more tactic. It usually requires foundational work.
Why Marketing Cannot Operate in a Silo
One of the strongest takeaways from Sue’s conversation with Kelly is that marketing cannot be separated from the rest of the business.
Too many companies treat marketing as a department that only handles campaigns, websites, social media, or SEO. But Sue looks at marketing from the C-suite perspective.
That means asking bigger questions:
Are sales and marketing aligned?
Are the company’s products positioned correctly?
Is the messaging focused on the customer?
Are operational issues hurting customer experience?
Is pricing aligned with the growth strategy?
Is the company investing in the right things?
Can the business actually deliver on what marketing promises?
This is where many owners miss the mark.
Marketing does not just create leads. Marketing touches the customer experience, sales process, operations, referrals, brand trust, and long-term growth.
Kelly pointed out that referrals are often one of the strongest converting strategies for a business. But referrals do not happen by accident. They are driven by delivery, customer experience, communication, and trust.
If operations are broken, marketing will only amplify the problem.
Strategy Before Tactics
Business owners often ask tactical marketing questions first.
Should we post more on social media?
Should we invest in SEO?
Should we run ads?
Should we update the website?
Should we send more emails?
Those questions matter, but they should not come first.
Sue’s approach starts with strategy.
Before choosing tactics, a business needs to understand:
Who the ideal customer is
What problem the company solves
Why customers buy
What the company wants to be known for
Where the growth opportunities are
What internal gaps could slow progress
What level of investment makes sense
Sue made a powerful point: she is not a fan of spending money just to spend it.
That is a message every business owner needs to hear.
Marketing is not about activity. It is about smart investment tied to clear business outcomes.
The Power of the Fractional CMO Model
For many small and mid-sized businesses, hiring a full-time executive marketing leader may not be realistic yet.
But that does not mean the company does not need executive-level marketing thinking.
This is where the fractional model becomes powerful.
A fractional CMO gives a business access to senior-level marketing leadership without the cost of a full-time executive. Sue described this as a major growth lever for companies where the CEO is still wearing too many hats but does not yet have the internal leadership team needed for the next stage.
The fractional model can help CEOs:
Stop carrying every marketing decision
Build stronger strategy
Create accountability
Align marketing with sales and operations
Right-size execution
Develop internal staff
Make smarter investments
For a business that has outgrown random tactics but is not ready for a full-time CMO, fractional leadership can be the bridge.
When Marketing Should Stop
One of the most valuable stories Sue shared involved a technology company that wanted to grow.
Upstart Group started with customer research and quickly discovered that the company had major operational delivery issues. Rather than pushing forward with marketing, Sue’s team recommended stopping.
Why?
Because more marketing would have created more unhappy customers.
That is leadership.
Sue’s team stepped away from the engagement, stayed in touch, and watched the company spend about a year fixing its operational issues. After those problems were addressed, the company eventually had a successful exit.
This is a key lesson for business owners:
Do not pour leads into a broken delivery system.
Before scaling demand, make sure the business can deliver consistently.
CRM, Data, and the Problem of Silos
Sue and Kelly also discussed CRM systems and lead tracking.
Sue’s perspective was practical: every CRM has pros and cons. The best CRM is the one that fits the company’s needs, can grow with the business, integrates with other systems, and actually gets used by the sales team.
That last point is critical.
If the sales team will not use the CRM because it is too complex or disruptive, it will not help the business.
Sue also highlighted a growing issue inside companies: data silos.
Customer information may live in finance, operations, sales, and customer service systems. When those systems do not communicate, the customer experience suffers.
A customer service person may be speaking with a customer without knowing there is already an issue in finance or operations. That creates friction, confusion, and missed opportunities.
Healthy growth requires clean, useful, accessible data.
Sue Weston’s Entrepreneurial Journey
Sue did not start Upstart Group on a whim.
Before launching the company, she and her co-founder spent months researching the business model. They studied companies doing similar work and considered different paths before deciding to focus on small and mid-sized established businesses.
Sue had worked in large enterprise environments, startups, and smaller companies. She was ready to contribute in a different way.
Like many entrepreneurs, she learned by doing.
Early challenges included:
Defining the right-fit client
Moving away from startup-heavy work
Shifting from a 1099 model to an employee model
Learning how to manage employees
Dividing responsibilities with a business partner
Navigating the company after her business partner retired
Her journey is a reminder that business ownership is not static. The role keeps evolving.
AI as a Current Business Challenge
Sue identified AI as one of the most interesting current challenges in marketing.
There are new tools emerging constantly, and business leaders are trying to understand what to use, what to avoid, and how to protect company information.
Sue sees potential in AI, especially for helping process large amounts of research data, such as customer interviews. But she also emphasized the need to preserve meaning, context, and data security.
For CEOs, the question is not simply, “Should we use AI?”
The better question is:
How can we deploy AI in a way that is useful, responsible, secure, and aligned with our business goals?
Goal Setting and Growth
Sue shared that goal setting is something she continues to work on.
Her current approach is to keep goals focused. She aims for three to five goals at a time, with annual targets supported by quarterly checkpoints.
That is a strong lesson for business owners.
Big goals are useful, but they need structure. A company also needs the strategies, ownership, and accountability to achieve them.
Quarterly goals help turn vision into action.
Leadership, Team Building, and Letting Go
Sue described her natural leadership style as directive, and she has worked to evolve that over time.
Like many business owners, she has had to learn how to give team members not only responsibility but also authority.
That distinction matters.
If a leader gives someone a goal but does not allow them to make decisions, the owner becomes the bottleneck.
Sue also discussed the importance of understanding team members’ natural working styles. Her company uses Kolbe assessments to better understand how people operate, where they thrive, and where they may get stuck.
Kelly connected this to DISC assessments, which ActionCOACH uses to help business owners understand communication styles, behavior, hiring fit, and whether people are in the right seats.
The leadership lesson is simple:
Great teams are not built by accident. They are built through clarity, communication, trust, and alignment.
Final Takeaway: Growth Requires More Than Marketing Activity
This episode is a strong reminder that business growth does not come from random marketing tactics.
It comes from strategy.
It comes from understanding your customer.
It comes from aligning sales, marketing, operations, and finance.
It comes from fixing delivery before scaling demand.
It comes from leadership that empowers the team.
It comes from choosing the right growth levers at the right time.
If your business feels stuck, the answer may not be more activity.
It may be better strategy.
And that is exactly where a strong outside perspective can make all the difference.
Ready to Break Through and Scale?
You do not have to figure out the next stage of growth alone.
Book a Strategy Session with Kelly Peitz and start building a clear plan to move your business from stuck to scaling.
FAQs
What is a fractional CMO?
A fractional CMO is an experienced marketing executive who works with a business on a part-time or contract basis, giving the company senior-level strategy without requiring a full-time executive hire.
When should a business consider a fractional marketing leader?
A business should consider fractional marketing leadership when the owner wants to grow but lacks internal marketing strategy, structure, accountability, or executive-level guidance.
Why do businesses get stuck at a revenue plateau?
Businesses often plateau because sales, marketing, operations, finance, and leadership are not fully aligned for the next stage of growth.
Why is customer research important in marketing?
Customer research helps businesses understand what customers actually value, where the company may be falling short, and how to improve messaging, delivery, and growth strategy.
Should a company invest in marketing before fixing operational issues?
Not always. If delivery or customer experience is broken, more marketing may create more unhappy customers. Operational issues should often be fixed before scaling demand.
