A decade ago, a PE deal only needed about 5% annual EBITDA growth to hit a solid 2.5x return. Today, per Bain & Company's 2026 Global Private Equity Report, that same return requires roughly 10–12% annual growth. Bain calls it “12 is the new 5” — and it quietly rewrites the job description for every marketing leader inside a portfolio company.
The math stopped being forgiving
For most of the 2010s, PE returns had three engines: cheap debt, rising valuation multiples, and modest earnings growth. One or two firing was enough to carry the deal.
That era is over. Borrowing costs are still sitting around 8–9%, and multiple expansion isn't a reliable tailwind anymore. That leaves one lever doing most of the work: real revenue growth, since cost-cutting alone can't get there. Bain's researchers put it directly — the 3–5% EBITDA bump a cost-cutting program used to deliver simply isn't enough on its own now. Growth has to come from somewhere real: market expansion, pricing, new products, or a genuinely better go-to-market engine.
Why that lands on marketing's desk
Revenue growth isn't a finance-team output — it's the direct result of demand generation, pricing strategy, positioning, and how well a company converts its addressable market into paying customers. All core marketing functions.
That's a real shift in status. Marketing at a portfolio company used to be a support function you'd fund if the budget allowed. Under a “12 is the new 5” model, it's one of the few remaining levers that can actually move the return math. A GP building a value-creation plan today has to ask whether marketing can realistically produce double-digit growth — not whether it looks professional.
What this changes in practice
Diligence gets tougher. Bain describes a move toward “full potential diligence” — pressure-testing a target's growth ceiling before close. Channel dependency, CAC trends, and market-share headroom now belong in the diligence room, not a post-close surprise.
The first 100 days matter more. With growth needing to compound over a five-year hold, there's no runway to spend two quarters figuring out the marketing function. It needs to be operational almost immediately.
Generalist leadership isn't enough. Bain's framing is blunt: winning firms build systems, not slogans. A function running on instinct and a rotating cast of freelancers can't reliably deliver double-digit growth.
The honest objection: isn't this just consultant-speak for “spend more on marketing”?
No. The Bain data isn't an argument for bigger budgets — it's an argument for better-run marketing: clear ownership of the growth number, tighter measurement of what's actually converting, and a leader senior enough to say no to activity that doesn't move EBITDA. Many portfolio companies could hit their growth target with the budget they already have, if someone experienced were actually accountable for the outcome.
What we're hearing from clients right now
“I was talking with the CEO of one of our clients a few weeks ago, and you could see it hit him mid-sentence,” says George Giamadakis, Co-Founder and Director of GSR Global. “His whole plan was built on the old math — steady growth, ride the multiple, exit in five years. The moment his board raised needing double-digit growth for the same return investors used to get from half that, his first question wasn't ‘what do we cut.’ It was ‘where does that growth actually come from in our market.’ That's the question we're hearing in almost every one of these conversations now, and it's the right one — most of these businesses don't have a spending problem, they have a growth-plan problem.”
That reaction is becoming the norm. Boards are recalculating what “on track” looks like mid-hold, and marketing leaders are the ones being asked to explain where the next few points of growth actually come from.
Where a fractional CMO fits
This is exactly the gap a fractional CMO is built to close: senior-enough judgment to stress-test a growth thesis in diligence, embedded early enough to make the first 100 days count, and available without the 12–18 month hiring runway a full-time search usually takes — time most portfolio companies don't have to spare.
When growth math gets twice as hard, the function responsible for growth stops being optional.
GSR Global works with PE operating partners and portfolio-company leadership to build marketing functions that can credibly carry a growth number, from diligence through exit. If your portfolio companies are being asked to hit double-digit growth, it's worth a conversation before the next 100-day plan starts.
Author