Most any agency or in-house marketer experienced in navigating complexities servicing brands with substantial investor stakeholders knows the countless challenges they’ll face.
Over several years, AIMCLEAR has honed an invaluable subspecialty, focused on growing such brands beholden to investors. Whether venture capital plays, angel investors, or those in the midst of strategic M&A, AIMCLEAR is uniquely positioned to support the specific needs of internal client stakeholders, as well as the often confusing (and seemingly conflicting) objectives of VCs/investors.
With widespread MBA-level business experience baked into our marketing team, we’ve refined the ability to support investor-backed companies. The resulting case studies articulate the type of results investors and clients demand. Today, AIMCLEAR frequently earns repeat business via CMOs who have been through VC fires with us multiple times. At the same time, in-house teams learning the ropes the hard way also turn to our team as a guiding hand. We’ve been there. We know the gauntlet and how to guide clients to success for their stakeholders and business.
Key is the ability to engage on a level that transcends marketing, placing various teams at the larger brand seat of decision makers as a trusted long-term partner.
Today, we’re pleased to preview an 8-article series of blog posts “Master Marketing in the High-Pressure World of Investor-Backed Firms – AIMCLEAR‘s Definitive Guide.” Aimed squarely at supporting investor-backed brands, my colleague Marty Weintraub and I will explore commonalities, data, and anonymized anecdotes.
From understanding investor expectations to installing client-side, sanity-supporting strategies, this series will provide marketers the knowledge and tools needed to achieve success. The information is essential for all levels, from in-the-trenches practitioners riding the investor-backed Tilt-a-Whirl to CMOs and C-Suite leaders operating under fire 24/7.
Topically, here’s what you can expect over the coming weeks.
Post 1: Understanding the Challenges Inherent for Investor-Backed Companies
Investor-backed companies often prioritize quick returns and rapid growth. We’ll explore how to align marketing strategies to meet these immediate demands while balancing long-term goals. Expect actionable tips on crafting campaigns that demonstrate quick ROI and satisfy investor scrutiny.
When marketing strategies do not align with investor expectations, there can be a disconnect leading to dissatisfaction among investors, which blows back on in-house marketers at all levels. Fast, seemingly inexplicable pivots prevent marketers from executing long-term strategies and brand building, leading to disjointed results. Ultimately, such businesses can suffer reduced funding, increased pressure, even more unrealistic KPIs, and potentially strained relationships with stakeholders – often to the detriment of the company’s growth goals.
Post 2: Adapting to Wholesale HR Changes, Including C-Suite/Leaders
Investors have minds of their own. They often have deep relationships with in-house and external marketing teams. Sometimes, investment consultants can be out of touch with the operational logistics, as they are glued to spreadsheets. Frequent brand leadership changes can disrupt marketing continuity. Even considering successfully high ROAS and outstanding integrated CPAs (paid/organic/search/psychographic, etc.), investors are known to clean out a brand’s entire team, including leadership – up to the C-suite.
AIMCLEAR has a notable record retaining clients for generations after tumultuous turnovers within investor-backed brands. This particular post will guide you with proven methods to build strong relationships with incoming leaders, helping to ensure seamless transitions while fostering stability in marketing operations.
Post 3: Embracing Transparency
Transparency is crucial in building trust with investors and stakeholders. Conversely, a lack of transparency can create a perception of dishonesty or incompetence, potentially resulting in reduced investor confidence, reduced support for marketing, and negative impacts on the company’s reputation and funding.
We’ll discuss the power of respectful “call out the 800-pound gorilla” transparency bilaterally in marketing efforts, sharing successes and challenges to secure ongoing support and foster stronger relationships.
Post 4: Managing Unrealistic Investor Goals and Requests (aka Demands)
Investors often set ambitious, sometimes unrealistic goals. Learn how to manage these expectations by presenting data-backed, realistic scenarios alongside feasible alternative strategies to bridge the gap between investor demands and market realities. A brand may be seeking a lucrative flip. Marketers are dealing with dynamic channel and marketplace flux. This article will help investor-backed brands navigate such cross currents.
Similarly, marketers may present transformational, multi-step strategic ideas to achieve goals. The brand says, “Booyah” but doesn’t execute. Their investors scream for fast conversions RIGHT NOW! Yet they often don’t realize those quick conversions have a finite cap. Precious few have the strategic forethought to set aside a small percentage of their double- and triple-digit marketing budgets for testing.
We’ll explore shepherding stakeholders toward lower cost, sandboxed multi-step testing to build replicable models. When scaled, such proven models often have a predictable capacity to crush those short-term wins that investors myopically crave. We’ll explore how to manage unrealistic investor demands to help avoid unmet expectations and knee-jerk decisions that foment negative outcomes.
Post 5: Letting Data Talk (Not Emotions)
Setting KPIs solely based on a predictive playbook can force-impose potentially unattainable objectives. Campaigns are less likely to deliver on unrealistic expectations, leading to decreased investor confidence and missed opportunities for growth. We’ll share anecdotes from the field in which our AIMCLEAR teammates reframed intense investor demands to attain solid-gold results, using indisputable data to back alternative decisions for the win.
We’ll provide actionable tips on maintaining robust communication threads, regularly providing data to update investors on progress, and maintaining transparency surrounding challenges and successes. We’ll underscore the importance of data-backed operational insights to understand business objectives/timelines. Then we’ll explore how agencies can work more efficiently in the agency-client flow.
Data is the language both investors and marketers speak, making assertions grounded in data a common vocabulary of confluence. Similarly, taking a no BS approach earns trust. We’ll cover specialized, executive reporting concepts and dashboards, framing marketing and marketplace data to support in-house teams and their investors by squaring sometimes-harsh realities with business plans focused on exit-percentages. Ultimately, the focus will be on campaign decisions more likely to drive realistic impact to propel outcomes.
Post 6: Gaining a Holistic Business Understanding
When a marketing team lacks a holistic understanding of a brand’s business model, misalignment can easily develop between a brand’s marketing and business goals. Great agency/brand partnerships avoid inefficient use of resources and missed strategic opportunities. Marketers need to know the investor-backed company’s actual financial plans, growth targets, and exit strategies to meet the demands of investors.
Agency and client alike also must learn to react to financial restructuring mid-stream, as PE and VC types continually seek to extract cash and improve efficiency.
This particular post will put meat on the bone, teaching markets to ask (respectfully) bold questions to clarify investor’s needs and the environment in which they’re operating. Demands vary whether investors want quick turnaround at XXX% return after financial optimization, or they have a 3-year plan for world domination, or if the goal is going public. We’ll detail the importance of a comprehensive understanding of business objectives to ensure cohesive and effective marketing efforts.
Post 7: Handling High-Pressure Phases
Marketing pressure in investor-backed companies can fluctuate dramatically. Investors expect CEOs to push hard on CFOs who lean even harder on CMOs who ratchet the bolts down tight on their brand’s internal marketers and agency partner(s). Ask anyone who’s been there – it’s a meat grinder at times. Failing to handle high-pressure phases can result in mutual burnout, hasty decisions, and suboptimal marketing outcomes.
Overly emotional responses and agency team misinterpretations of what’s happening can negatively impact campaigns’ performance, reduce investor confidence, and hinder long-term growth outcomes. We’ll share time-tested (and therapeutic) techniques and how to embrace emotional clients when pressure reaches critical mass.
Post 8: Marketing Through a Venture Cap Storm: Bringing it All Together
The series will conclude with a user-friendly guide that summarizes key findings and helps marketers and investors better understand what they are up against. With such information in hand, better decisions can be made from start-to-finish, with clearer communication, a better focus on desired outcomes, and (hopefully) fewer sleepless nights. Knowing the VC/investor-backed landscape is essential for anyone marketing a growth-oriented organization.
Always remember – where there’s potential growth, there are investors eager to jump in!
We’re pleased to embark on this journey with you, providing some of AIMCLEAR’s accumulated knowledge and tips for crush marketing goals for investor-backed companies. Stay tuned for detailed posts on each of the above-mentioned critical topics.
