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As the most important audience for many companies, it is important that investors are enthusiastic about the company’s marketing efforts. Given that investors have different levels of marketing acumen and belief in effective marketing, marketing teams need to customize how they work with investors.
That said, there are some effective tactics to ensure investor confidence in your marketing program.
Related: 5 Tips to Customize Your Pitch for Every Investor
Research the market and build your marketing based on the results
An intelligent marketing program starts with market intelligence. Quantitative and qualitative research creates a strong foundation for demonstrating to investors that the strategy and execution put together by your marketing team will deliver optimal results.
In addition to formal market research, marketing teams informally consult with target customers, technology and distribution partners, media, industry analysts, and market influencers to understand dynamics such as new activities, trends, and potential new competitors. You also need to build and continually update your understanding of.
Involve investors in marketing
Investors often have significant followings of their own on social media and are considered thought leaders and industry experts in the venture capital and technology communities. These links often provide significant benefits to companies as they seek to enter new markets, attract talent, establish partnerships, and pursue similar goals. An easy way to involve investors and leverage their networks is to include them in your company’s social media programs, especially considering cross-promotion on her LinkedIn.
One effective approach is to ask investors to post on social channels when a company announces or closes a funding round, senior executive appointment, product or related announcement. We often pre-draft our investor posts to minimize the investor’s time commitment and ensure the post is delivered.
Many investors, especially VC and PE firms, create marketing programs that highlight the companies in which they invest. Marketing teams should aggressively pursue these opportunities, as they act as free publicity and can deepen ties with investors.
Related: Ask these 3 questions to decide where to spend your marketing dollars
Research competitors and identify best practices
To demonstrate to investors that your marketing team is exploring all avenues to support your company’s growth, you should regularly perform a thorough analysis of your competitors’ marketing efforts and common best practices. there is. This review should include a deep dive to learn as much detail as possible about your competitors’ products, future product strategies, market expansion plans, etc. Of course, everything is done through ethical means.
Teams should also study the marketing approaches of companies in other industries and consider applying related activities to their own company. Companies in certain industries, such as food and beverage products, tend to be very sophisticated marketers because they seek to influence highly competitive and fickle consumers. Marketers across a wide range of industries can learn valuable lessons from their colleagues at consumer product companies and report their findings to investors.
Measure the ROI of all your marketing efforts
By setting key performance indicators (KPIs) and managing metrics on an ongoing basis, you can quantitatively demonstrate both the effectiveness and ROI of your marketing programs to investors. Of course, some marketing elements, such as advertising and digital marketing, are much easier to quantify than activities such as media relations.
But even activities that are hard to measure in terms of generating leads or driving sales require marketers to get creative and develop some metrics. For example, while it is nearly impossible to prove that media coverage boosted sales, it is possible to link media coverage to an increase in his website and social media activity and show a correlation. .
Related: 10 things to do before connecting with investors
Connect marketing with lead generation, not just brand awareness
Many investors think of marketing as a function of increasing brand awareness rather than generating leads and sales, but marketing can serve both roles. The degree of contribution to business development varies depending on the products and services sold. If a consumer is planning to purchase a printer for their home, seeing an online ad with a discount coupon or reading a positive review in a reputable media could encourage a sale. It will be very expensive. If a CIO is researching intrusion detection software for his cybersecurity stack to protect his company’s critical data assets, marketing may pique his CIO’s interest and encourage him to contact him. But that doesn’t mean it will lead to sales.
As with many activities within a company, if your marketing team plans ahead, conducts basic research, measures results, and anticipates the questions investors might ask, you can help investors understand your marketing program. It becomes much easier to demonstrate the effectiveness of Anticipating and addressing investor questions makes it easier to work with them even when marketing challenges arise.
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