Private Equity Portfolio Companies
Marketing that shows up in your multiples.
Most PE firms buy companies with strong operations and weak marketing. The thesis is right — there is real upside in fixing the go-to-market. But the typical playbook of hiring a VP of Marketing at each portco does not scale when you have 8 or 12 companies in the portfolio. A fractional CMO gives you senior marketing leadership across the portfolio at a fraction of what individual hires would cost, and they start producing results in weeks instead of the 6 months it takes a new full-time hire to get oriented.
The Marketing Problem in PE
No Marketing Leadership at the Portco Level
Most portfolio companies between $10M and $80M in revenue have never had a real marketing leader. Marketing is being run by the founder, a sales-focused VP, or a junior person with no strategic direction. The result is scattered tactics — a little SEO here, some Google Ads there, a trade show booth — with no coherent strategy tying it together.
Inconsistent Reporting Across the Portfolio
Every portco tracks marketing differently. Some do not track it at all. When the operating partner asks "what is marketing producing?" they get a different format and a different definition of success from every company. There is no way to compare performance, allocate resources intelligently, or identify which companies need the most help.
The Full-Time Hire Does Not Pencil Out
A competent CMO costs $250K-$350K in total comp. For a $15M revenue portco, that is a significant bet — especially when you are not sure what kind of marketing leader you need yet. Hiring the wrong person and replacing them 12 months later is a $500K mistake when you factor in lost time and opportunity cost.
Value Creation Plans Ignore Marketing
Most 100-day plans focus on operations, finance, and sales. Marketing gets a line item that says "improve marketing" with no specifics. By the time someone gets around to it, 12-18 months of the hold period have already passed.
How We Work With PE Firms
We embed fractional CMOs at the portfolio company level and coordinate strategy at the fund level. Same playbook, customized execution, consistent reporting.
Portfolio-Wide Marketing Audit
We assess marketing maturity across every portco — what is working, what is wasting money, where the biggest opportunities are. You get a prioritized roadmap for each company and a clear picture of where to invest first. We did this for a 6-company home services portfolio and identified $340K in annual ad spend that was producing zero attributable revenue.
Fractional CMO Deployment
Each portfolio company gets a fractional CMO who builds and executes a marketing strategy tailored to that business. They attend leadership meetings, manage agencies and staff, own the budget, and report on pipeline and revenue — not vanity metrics. Typical engagement is 2-3 days per week per portco.
Standardized Reporting & Dashboards
Every portco reports marketing performance the same way — CAC, pipeline value, marketing-sourced revenue, ROMI. The operating partner gets a single dashboard that shows marketing performance across the entire portfolio, making it easy to spot problems and allocate resources.
Playbook Development
For platform acquisitions doing tuck-ins, we build repeatable marketing playbooks — brand integration, website migration, local SEO setup, ad account consolidation — so each new acquisition gets up to speed in weeks instead of months.
The Numbers
Wasted ad spend identified in first audit
Lower cost vs. full-time CMO hires
To first pipeline impact per portco
Dashboard for the whole portfolio
Fix Marketing Across Your Portfolio
We will audit one portfolio company for free and show you exactly what marketing is producing, what it is wasting, and what a 90-day plan looks like. No pitch deck. Just the numbers.