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Private equity acquisition is a complex undertaking with countless moving parts. Your company’s funds, time, and reputation are all on the line, and as new products emerge and marketing capabilities expand thanks to advancing digital intelligence, it’s more important than ever that you know the commitment you’re making.
Commercial due diligence offers invaluable clarity into your acquisition, from helping you determine whether or not it’s worth the investment to understanding how to maximize its opportunities for long-term growth. Today, more and more private equity firms are choosing to outsource these services — and they’re quickly seeing all the benefits that it provides.
What is Commercial Due Diligence?
A commercial due diligence is a critical deep dive into a businesses’ current position and future potential. Typically led by an executive marketing consultant (or a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer), this internal review involves assessing everything from a company’s ability to attract and retain customers, its market positioning and digital presence versus its competitors, how it defines its brand positioning and value proposition, and a number of other key elements that allow a business to identify opportunities to accelerate growth and value creation.
Here’s what you can expect from an effective commercial due diligence:
Outsourced commercial due diligence services typically involve a fractional CMO supported by digital specialists brought in through an agreement customized to the needs of the company. Their scope is specifically process-driven to help frame your portfolio company’s scale up, while ensuring you have the proper guardrails and strategic oversight to meet your long-term growth needs.
In the case of private equity firms, a commercial due diligence can offer invaluable clarity into the long-term potential of their investment through the support of highly experienced subject matter experts with practical advice and support to execute, ensuring the most meaningful results and greatest ROI.
This process will focus on fully understanding the target acquisition’s opportunities to determine whether there is potential for significant growth to create shareholder value. In many cases, commercial due diligence consultancy is usually employed after the private equity firm has conducted enough initial due diligence that it is willing to invest the time and resources to gain more transparency and confidence into whether it is a good investment opportunity in the long-run. And it can either be done pre or post-acquisition.
In order to best understand the costs associated with a commercial due diligence, it’s important to know your options — and what you’re getting. For example, &Marketing offers a flexible engagement through a retainer or “on-demand” model with various activities scoped on an ad-hoc basis. These retainers are typically for an initial project that is defined based on the specific target company’s needs (strategy, research, digital ads, SEO, email marketing, social media, etc). They can also be done as a “percentage of full time” on a weekly basis and paid monthly with a typical 3-6-month minimum engagement.
Here is a breakdown of a commercial due diligence framework/checklist and the associated costs
Market Position Analysis
Customer Insights Collection
a. Why they purchased
b. The products/services’ strengths & weaknesses
c. Level of customer satisfaction & the likelihood they’ll continue to purchase or use products/services
d. The reason past customers chose to leave
Determine retention rates among customers over the last 12 to 18 months. (Note: many start-ups may have lower retention rates as they home in on higher potential target groups. For quick turnover consumer products, the metric here is repeat rate, which should be at least 50%)
Digital Marketing Strategy Positioning
Marketing Capabilities Review
Performing a commercial due diligence can be time consuming and resource intensive if you try to tackle it internally without the right resources, bandwidth, or expertise to do it properly. This is why more and more private equity firms are relying on outsourced fractional CMOs and marketing teams to handle the commercial due diligence of their portfolio companies on their behalf.
While some commercial due diligence experts will leave the execution of your marketing strategy to your portfolio company or a third party, there are full service digital agencies that provide the executive leadership and marketing team to see the entire process through from pre-acquisition advisory to practical execution. This approach not only leaves you with a single point of responsibility throughout the process, but also decreases the risks of issues and unapproved changes to ensure the overall effectiveness of the investment.
To learn more about the benefits of outsourcing your portfolio company’s commercial due diligence consulting to ensure you’re harnessing the best solutions for long-term success, contact the digital marketing experts at &Marketing today.
As the Founder & CEO of &Marketing (www.and-marketing.com), Raj and his team strive to provide growing businesses unparalleled marketing strategy and execution services. Raj has more than two decades of experience in B2B and B2C marketing, sales, & strategy. He has led nearly 100 high-profile marketing strategy projects for Global 100, mid-sized clients, and SMBs, plus over a decade with General Electric and General Mills. He is a sought-after advisor and facilitator, with experience across five continents. He is known for bringing the best of ‘big company’ marketing and strategy to smaller companies without the baggage, his bias for practical implementation, and his unrelenting customer focus.
Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’ growth goals?
We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a coordinated marketing approach might help take your organization to the next level.
Sometimes marketers obsess over maintaining a glass-half-full viewpoint in their content, believing it’s always better to show the customer positive benefits rather than “focusing on the negative.” While it’s true that you don’t want to stress out your audience, both B2C and B2B shoppers are savvier than ever. When your brand avoids acknowledging the real-world problems your audiences face, you risk being seen as out of touch and artificial.
When you face reality head-on (without dwelling or sounding defeatist), your brand earns more authenticity among those looking for a solution. They’re more likely to give you their time when they can see that you understand their challenges.
If brands want to cut through the noise to capture their audience’s attention, empathize with their struggles, and differentiate themselves, it’s time to get more comfortable with a little negativity.
It may feel counterintuitive to risk stirring up negative feelings in your audience by drawing on negative experiences. But when done correctly, it can help with reader retention and engagement by creating a shared experience and tapping into emotion to make the reader feel seen and understood. For example, an electronic lock brand may reference the frustration of losing your keys or getting locked out, a common negative experience that most people understand and can bond with the brand over.
When incorporating the StoryBrand framework into their strategy, marketers must understand that “every story is about somebody who is trying to solve a problem, so when we identify our customers’ problems, they recognize us as a brand that understands them.” (Donald Miller, Building a StoryBrand)
If we want our audience to pay attention, we have to position ourselves as offering a product or service they can easily use to solve that problem. To do that, we have to clearly identify and articulate that problem so they can see that we understand what they’re dealing with. StoryBrand marketers turn that problem into a personified villain so we can tell the audience a story about themselves as a hero, overcoming the villain using our products and services. Stories are only compelling because they include a struggle, a challenge to overcome. If we limit ourselves to only discussing the positive, we can’t create as effective a story.
A great example is a Rug Doctor campaign that showed people “steaming mad at dirt,” angry at their soiled rug. While most people aren’t enraged by a dirty rug, they certainly don’t like it, and this makes for a more interesting story than simply offering the benefit of a clean rug — the audience’s aversion to dirt is more powerful than their appreciation of cleanliness. Starting with a clean rug doesn’t make for an interesting story, because there’s no problem for the hero to solve. A clean rug is a nice benefit but a poor attention-grabber.
Personifying the audience’s central problem as a villain is vital in marketing storytelling. For example, the medication brand Mucinex has done a great job of personifying mucus as nasty little monsters living in your sinuses — and positioning their product as your best defense against the invader.
Refer to the title of this blog as an example of a negative headline: Is Fear of Negativity Holding Your Marketing Team Back? This headline introduces doubt and the potential that the reader may be doing something wrong — but there is also the implied promise of a solution. The important thing to remember when using this tactic is to provide solid content that offers a solution or a way to improve.
Take a stand for something your brand believes in. This might involve something controversial, possibly a social or political issue, but it doesn’t have to be that serious. You could have what constitutes a ‘hot take’ in your industry but is low-stakes for those outside your audience — like an audio/video company stating that the industry should have chosen the Beta video format over VHS. Some may disagree with you, but it could be worth it if it gets people talking and associating your brand with a specific position on the topic, especially if you have the data and experience to back it up.
A little self-deprecation and self-awareness can go a long way. For example, Domino’s Pizza acknowledged that many customers thought their crust tasted like cardboard and pledged to improve the recipe. This helped to humanize the brand while proving to customers that they not only listen to their feedback but also take it seriously enough to take action.
Referencing negative experiences or audience problems is essential, but requires practice and diligence to ensure it’s done effectively. Here are a few tips to help you maintain balance and avoid alienating the audience:
From learning how to effectively use negativity in advertising and marketing to building a content marketing calendar and measuring its ROI — and more — we can help! Contact &Marketing today. If you want to DIY your brand’s messaging, download our narrative marketing outline as a guide.
Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’ growth goals?
We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a coordinated marketing approach might help take your organization to the next level.
Having a strong online presence has become a crucial part of growing any business. However, if your business isn’t showing up in Google search results related to what you offer, it’s time to do some troubleshooting. There are five common reasons why your business might not be ranking well on Google. The good news? You can address nearly all of these issues by leveraging strong SEO or optimizing your Google My Business profile.
One common reason why your company doesn’t show up on Google search results is that you haven’t claimed your business on Google at all. By claiming your business, you can ensure it appears in search results and provides accurate information to potential customers. To add your business to Google, follow these simple steps:
That’s it, easy right?
Creating great content is important, but optimizing it for search engines is equally crucial. If your content lacks proper SEO optimization, it may not rank well in Google search results. To get found on Google with SEO, consider the following tips:
Google reviews play a significant role in building trust and credibility for your business. If you have either bad or no Google reviews, it can negatively impact your search ranking. Here are some tips to handle Google reviews effectively:
Backlinks, which are links from other websites to yours, are like votes of confidence for your website. They can improve your website’s authority and boost its visibility in search results.Think of them as the link version of getting verified on social media. If your website lacks citations or backlinks, it might struggle to rank well on Google—especially for highly competitive search terms. Here are some strategies to build a strong backlink profile:
If your website isn’t indexed by Google, it won’t appear in search results. Ensuring your website is properly indexed is crucial for visibility. Here’s how to index your website on Google:
Improving your business’s Google search ranking has many components, but staying on top of all of them is essential for attracting more customers and increasing your online visibility. By claiming your business on Google, optimizing your content, managing Google reviews, building a strong backlink profile, and ensuring your website is properly indexed, you can make massive strides toward helping your company show up on Google so more of the right people can find you!
Not sure where to start? Our SEO audit can identify your biggest opportunities so you can prioritize.
Marketing Manager Dexter Burgess takes the lead on implementing new tactics and promoting change through data-driven strategies. Dex works hard at client relations through consistent communication and positive feedback, never settling until the customer is understood and happy.
Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’ growth goals?
We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a coordinated marketing approach might help take your organization to the next level.
One of the most powerful tools in advertising and marketing can also be one of the most simple: repetition. It’s not uncommon for clients to push back against repetition. They want to avoid appearing lazy or redundant by recycling messaging, which makes sense at first glance.
However, when you examine the value of repetition in advertising and marketing more closely, you discover some interesting facts about how this tool can be used effectively and how it influences your audience.
Keep reading to discover why repetition is important in marketing and how it impacts your audience.
Repetition in advertising and marketing involves repeating a message multiple times to your audience across various channels and even in the different areas within those channels. For example, a website should revisit consistent and similar messaging across pages. Social media posts should follow consistent thematic elements so users can more easily spot your posts in their busy feeds. Email subscribers should know what to expect from your content when it arrives in their inbox. Repetition is part of presenting a consistent brand image, ideal for driving brand awareness and loyalty.
Especially for products that involve a substantial investment, the purchasing process involves a lot of investigation and discovery for consumers to feel confident they are making an informed choice. If you think back to your school days, you’ll recall that repetition is essential to the educational process. For example, when you memorized multiplication tables or studied flashcards for an exam. Each time you saw the information, it became easier to recall.
The “rule of seven” is a classic marketing concept that asserts people need to see a message at least seven times before they take notice and will remember it. While the number seven may not be a literal “magic number,” there’s no doubt that repetition is critical for making sales. As buyers’ journeys become more complex, every customer who clicks through your website should encounter a consistent message echoing across the different sections.
In the next section, we’ll explore the many ways this consistent, repeated message influences the audience.
There are five primary ways repetition in advertising and marketing impacts your audience.
People appreciate knowing what to expect, so repetition and consistency can boost your reputation with your audience. With the constant stream of marketing messages put in front of today’s shoppers, it’s increasingly essential for them to develop a feeling of trust and familiarity with a brand before (and after) making a purchase. Trust with consumers is built by offering a consistent message because consistency conveys reliability and dependability. With consistency and repetition, your audience will feel they know who you are and what you care about.
Repeated exposure to a message that invokes an emotional response can strengthen its impact, embedding that emotion in consumers’ memories so they associate it with your brand. If you can elicit positive feelings with your messaging and echo those emotions throughout channels and materials, your audience will begin automatically thinking of it. For example, when people think of Nike, many think of inspiration, determination, and strength.
Advertising and marketing often have to encapsulate complex ideas. The more your audience sees your messaging, the easier it will become to understand the content and its implications. You could compare this to a student preparing a history paper: the more familiar they become with the facts and events of the time period, the easier it becomes to make connections and formulate original thoughts and theories.
Buyers’ journeys get more complex every year, with new advertising and marketing channels appearing as technology evolves. You never know where your audience will first encounter your message, so repetition and consistency allow you greater control over that critical first impression.
We’re all incredibly busy these days, so even when a consumer wants to take action, it’s easy for them to be distracted away from doing so. Repetition of calls to action (CTAs) can be a great way to remind them to take action, especially as they explore your content and learn more about your brand and product.
From learning how to use repetition in advertising and marketing to Search Engine Optimization to building a content marketing calendar and measuring its ROI — and more — we can help! Contact &Marketing today. If you want to DIY your brand’s messaging, download our narrative marketing outline as a guide.
Content Specialist Kim Steinmetz helps brands and thought leaders discover and develop their unique voice and tone while establishing authority on a topic through compelling messaging and copywriting. An accomplished writer and marketer with over a decade of experience, Kim is well-versed in both B2C and B2B content.
Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’ growth goals?
We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a coordinated marketing approach might help take your organization to the next level.
In the ever-evolving world of marketing, it can be hard to keep up. But when you’re investing your time and money into a new company, you don’t have the luxury of ‘figuring it out as you go.’ Today’s complex digital ecosystem poses new challenges and opportunities that require fresh, independent perspectives and data-driven decisions. And in order to create a strategy that connects, engages, and inspires the right audiences in the right places, you need to put in the work initially.
That’s where an outsourced private equity marketing team comes in — equipping you with a team of experts led by a seasoned executive to own the creation and execution of your entire strategy. Curious how it works? Here’s everything you need to know about developing and deploying a private equity marketing strategy that will ensure a successful future for your portfolio company.
Private equity marketing is more than just having a digital presence; it’s translating a deep understanding of your portfolio company’s customers, your competition, and your market into an actionable plan that positions you for faster growth and long-term success. So whether a private equity firm is looking for pre-acquisition advisory or post-acquisition planning, it all starts with a digital deep dive to uncover the truth behind the numbers and get clarity into the investment. Without it, your long-term private equity marketing strategy will be built on a precarious foundation.
Once that strategy is built, the next step is execution. This means preparing all the necessary marketing materials, creating digital assets and deploying on predetermined platforms, monitoring performance, and reporting on all established KPIs. Having a private equity digital marketing team that is not only expertin the necessary platforms and tools, but also understands how to build content that informs, inspires, and excites makes all the difference. These experts will blend bold creativity with sharp practicality to ensure the best results from your campaign, offering full transparency and guidance into the results to help you make effective adjustments along the way.
Finally, having a full team that brings these two phases together – strategy & execution – seamlessly is another major component to a successful private equity marketing strategy. This is why more and more firms are relying on outsourced marketing services that provide both a Fractional CMO to lead their digital due diligence and a team of digital marketing experts to see it through to fruition. This dynamic eliminates the risk involved in adding another point of responsibility which requires additional handoffs and external communication.
While pursuing a new acquisition, there are a handful of common problems that private equity firms may face:
Outsourced private equity marketing services offer a more flexible and efficient way to get your portfolio company on the right track, so that when it is ready to hire full-time people, it will have solid processes in-place. An experienced agency will help make the transition a lot more seamless by developing the right organizational structure and hiring the right people for long-term success.
Here’s what you should look for in a private equity digital marketing team:
To learn more about the benefits of outsourcing your private equity marketing services, or how &Marketing can help take your private equity digital marketing strategy to the next level, contact us today.
As the Founder & CEO of &Marketing (www.and-marketing.com), Raj and his team strive to provide growing businesses unparalleled marketing strategy and execution services. Raj has more than two decades of experience in B2B and B2C marketing, sales, & strategy. He has led nearly 100 high-profile marketing strategy projects for Global 100, mid-sized clients, and SMBs, plus over a decade with General Electric and General Mills. He is a sought-after advisor and facilitator, with experience across five continents. He is known for bringing the best of ‘big company’ marketing and strategy to smaller companies without the baggage, his bias for practical implementation, and his unrelenting customer focus.
Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’ growth goals?
We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a coordinated marketing approach might help take your organization to the next level.
We’re happy to announce that &Marketing is officially certified as an MBE (Minority Business Enterprise) through the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC)!
These certifications are increasingly essential for credibility and validation in today’s business climate. Additionally, many organizations have Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion procurement requirements (or preferences). There are a variety of benefits of working with an MBE, so let’s break those down.
An MBE certification means the business is primarily owned by an individual who is a minority and has applied for and received a minority-owned business certificate from the NMSDC. Minority group members are United States citizens who are Asian-Indian, Native American, Black, Asian-Pacific, and Hispanic. Ownership by minority individuals means the minority individuals own at least 51% or, in the case of a publicly owned business, one or more such individuals own at least 51% of the stock.
Partnering with a certified MBE offers many benefits and opportunities, like allowing you to tap into new perspectives and fresh takes. It can also help your business grow and help your company culture evolve toward more diversity and inclusion. Here are some more specifics about the benefits of working with an MBE:
The U.S. government offers many state and federal tax incentives, breaks, and rebates to organizations that partner with MBEs. In addition, MBEs themselves are eligible for tax liability reduction for projects funded by state and federal grants and loans.
In addition to maximizing your profit margin through tax incentives, you can expand your client base to a larger demographic. With 23 affiliate nationwide regional councils and over 1,450 corporate members like Goldman Sachs, Coca-Cola, and FedEx, the NMSDC helps connect over 12,000 certified MBEs to an extensive network of corporate members looking to meet diversity spend requirements. NMSDC certification for programs designed to help eliminate barriers to participation in public-sector contracts is accepted by 17 states and 25 cities. Most states have specific targets and set aside contracts just for MBEs.
Many NMSDC and MBE-related events and conferences also bring other MBEs and larger organizations together around the U.S. to help both expand their networks. In addition, many MBEs are well-connected to other local businesses and can access training programs, mentorship programs, and workshops that allow them to bring more innovative strategies and cost savings measures to your business.
Partnering with an MBE helps you foster diversity and support minority communities. It allows your organization to build a more diverse clientele. It brings insight that can help you offer that clientele even more value. MBEs offer innovation that can help you stand out from your competitors, and they can help your business with brand recognition and community outreach so you can help strengthen the community you do business in.
If you have an opportunity that requires MBE certification, don’t hesitate to contact us! We are excited to use our unique viewpoint to help organizations meet their diversity spending requirements, support more diverse communities, drive more revenue, and innovate in their industry. To learn more about how we can help you drive long-term success, contact &Marketing today.
As the Founder & CEO of &Marketing (www.and-marketing.com), Raj and his team strive to provide growing businesses unparalleled marketing strategy and execution services. Raj has more than two decades of experience in B2B and B2C marketing, sales, & strategy. He has led nearly 100 high-profile marketing strategy projects for Global 100, mid-sized clients, and SMBs, plus over a decade with General Electric and General Mills. He is a sought-after advisor and facilitator, with experience across five continents. He is known for bringing the best of ‘big company’ marketing and strategy to smaller companies without the baggage, his bias for practical implementation, and his unrelenting customer focus.
Content Specialist Kim Steinmetz helps brands and thought leaders discover and develop their unique voice and tone while establishing authority on a topic through compelling messaging and copywriting. An accomplished writer and marketer with over a decade of experience, Kim is well-versed in both B2C and B2B content.
Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’ growth goals?
We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a coordinated marketing approach might help take your organization to the next level.
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