This blog post is part three in our series, “Master Marketing in the High-Pressure World of Investor-Backed Firms: AIMCLEAR’s Definitive Guide.” This part focuses on the human resources turmoil that often takes place when new investors acquire a business.
Strap in. The investors are here.
They often have minds of their own. When taking over a recently purchased or soon-to-be divested company, money people can bring deep relationships with third-party professionals whom the investors believe can improve financial performance in any circumstance.
It’s not uncommon for investors to clean house, ushering in a new stable of leaders and doers, ranging from the C-suite to junior tacticians. Wholesale HR changes can occur even if marketing performance is optimized and growing.
In such cases, investors can demand financial outcomes to achieve their business plans, even if those goals are not always reasonably attainable. In a short amount of time, unrealistic pressure on marketing teams impacts staff and third parties, even those already crushing their assignments. Sometimes, investors or their consultants can be out of touch with marketing logistics, as they turn to their spreadsheets as the guide. Frequent brand leadership changes can disrupt or derail marketing continuity.
AIMCLEAR has a record of retaining clients through such tumultuous turnovers within investor-backed brands. Based on hard-earned experience, here are some proven, nurturing approaches to building strong relationships with incoming client teams, helping to foster more seamless transitions while nurturing stable and expanding marketing results.
Transcend marketing to become true business consultants
Success with investor-backed firms often requires looking beyond the marketing tactics that an agency controls to consider broader approaches to operations, lead-handling, sales efficiency and even internal communication.
Changes in client-side teams may offer opportunities to pitch solutions that previously limited additional growth—even those not always within agency responsibilities or even visibilities. The previous administration may have overlooked internal conditions truly needing overhauls. We’ve found that incoming stakeholders may be more willing to shake loose budgets to prioritize missing or lacking essentials, all with the goal of achieving higher revenue and profits. In other words, they’ll go in and fix the things that should have been fixed before.
Many companies are not fully buttoned down in the mechanics of processing and converting sales inquiries to final conversions after the marketers do their jobs. The same holds true in B2C, B2B and B2B2C customer processing operations.
For example, the B2C e-commerce retail firm may not successfully incent new customers to become repeat customers. Retargeting campaigns may require greater segmentation with a philosophical twist outside the client’s beliefs. B2B companies often have trouble scoring leads internally or processing leads that are warm or cold. B2B2C companies may not yet understand that gaining a B2B client that will continually recommend a retail product justifies a much greater CPA. After all, one conversion might mean many more, such as a dentist selling or recommending a favored electric toothbrush brand.
Encourage the client’s evolution
AIMCLEAR often must tell a client the hard truth: We’re sending them fabulous traffic, selling products, generating leads and achieving metered success. But we, as the marketing agency of record, have not been allowed to impact product bundles, internal lead-processing, pricing, optimization based on average lifetime value, margin and more.
HR changes in a client now with investors are sometimes fabulous opportunities to suggest a range of new tactics including focusing on recurrent sales, such as auto-ship and secret shopper inquiries, to evaluate prospect-handling. This can provide marketers with previously secretive financial data, allowing us to become not only marketers but trusted strategic business consultants.
It’s hard for an agency to communicate with a client when the client can’t communicate with itself. In many companies, internal communication has room for improvement, to say the least. It’s not uncommon for the left hand to not know what the right hand is doing. Liabilities include wasting time navigating internal politics, excessive investment in account management, contradicting priorities and unclear marching orders. When the client-side team changes, AIMCLEAR often helps slay the 800-pound gorilla and impact the flow of information among the client’s internal marketers, leadership and our agency.
Succeeding with investor-backed firms isn’t just about marketing. It’s about understanding and influencing the broader operation. When shifts occur within client teams, seizing the opportunity to offer growth-oriented solutions can make all the difference. This broader view can make the marketing agency more valuable and increase the likelihood of retaining the client through leadership transitions.
Demonstrate your corporate knowledge
A benefit of a client replacing its entire internal team is that the marketing agency may have a greater understanding of corporate history than almost anyone still working at the company. We offer to help onboard new client teams, which has helped maintain coherence, enhance and build relationships and, ultimately, retain customers.
Marketing agencies are usually aware of day-to-day dynamics among their clients, previous internal teams, vendor relationships, wins, losses, experiments, lost opportunities, tests not undertaken and opportunities bubbling beneath the surface. This information, if highlighted, can benefit incoming leaders. We share what we know, push ideas believed to be right and say out loud that we’re holders of priceless corporate knowledge.
Here are some communication tips to earn respect and trust from new business owners—at least the healthy ones. If these tips don’t work, then the chances of winning are slim, so agencies have little to lose by offering them.
- Practice radical transparency: When dealing with incoming leaders, be completely open about the current state of marketing. This includes identifying successes, challenges and gaps. Transparency fosters trust and can help build strong relationships with new leaders. To foster success, we suggest vetting with leaders what will be communicated to rank-and-file marketers.
- Proactively build relationships: Immediately engage with the new leaders to understand their goals and timelines. Position the agency as a partner in achieving those goals, even if they differ from previous objectives. Offer to help onboard new team members. This can extend the relationship and demonstrate the agency’s value.
- Adapt marketing to business objectives: Focus on aligning marketing with investor-driven business objectives. Understand the short-term goals and the pressures facing new leaders, and adjust marketing efforts accordingly. This flexibility brings continuity to marketing.
- Offer holistic strategic business consulting: Extend beyond traditional marketing roles and offer insights or solutions related to operational efficiencies, sales processes and other internal dynamics. This can make the agency indispensable in a transition.
- Manage expectations and offer alternatives: When faced with impossible goals from investors, don’t just say no. Instead, provide a detailed analysis of the gap between expectations and realities. Propose alternative solutions that could help meet the business objectives within realistic limits.
- Don’t assume knowledge: Don’t let new employees’ titles mislead you.
Investors have minds of their own. After all, they now have money tied up or are about to sell a business that your agency has helped market. They can be passionate, hands-on, driven by needs and even prone to micromanaging. Transcend the marketing role and offer sophisticated business input based on deep corporate knowledge. Support the business’ evolution, even considering what may seem to be uninformed or unreasonable demands.
Remember that investors invest and divest. They’ll likely be part of other companies in the future. You can be the outside experts brought in as fixers. Relationships you build now can be auditions for future engagements. Distinguish yourself with sophistication and kindness, always wielding truth as your secret weapon. Be the “easy button” for their next big play.
