You’ve spent countless years and dollars building your business. You know the ups and downs of hiring employees, launching products, and exploiting markets. You also know the pain of self-funding, going without pay and having to fire underperformers. But worst of all, you know the pain of failure.
But as a business leader, you also know to put failure in the rearview mirror and push on. For people like you, and every successful business leader in history, success means you learn from failure… and you keep building and creating. Growth, no matter what.
But, with so much time, money and energy spent developing your company and its products, it’s easy to forget just how important investor relations and public relations can be for you.
Of course, business building should be your primary focus, but to grow in the long-term, you must employ effective IR/PR. This is especially true if you’re a small, publicly traded company with little exposure to big market players.
Properly executed investor relations and public relations campaigns can help your company find new investors, keep current investors happy and vested, and fund the new, big, and exciting ideas you have.
Simply put, investor relations and public relations are your passive pathway to growth.
You see, the investing world is always looking for new ideas. They want to invest. But unless you’re conducting effective IR/PR campaigns, they’ll never know about you.
Instead, they’ll focus their capital on companies that push their way into the front of the line.
Companies that are effective with their IR/PR get more funding, have a happier, expanding investor base and, importantly, can grow much faster.
So, in order for your company to be noticed, you’ll need to insure you’re an expert at these six critical components of investor relations and public relations.
#6: Gain a deep understanding of the perception of your company. You and your employees may see your company in a certain light. But by knowing how investors and the general public feel, you’re able to understand the best way to market not only your products to them, but your stock shares as well. By performing a perception audit, you’ll have better insights into what the investing world thinks of you… and how you can pivot, if needed.
#5: Adhere to a firm schedule. The investing public wants you to succeed. However, they need to see you’re on schedule with key performances, corporate governance goals and product development. You should publish your schedules and stick firmly to them. Having target dates for earnings releases, conferences, shareholder meetings and product launches helps to quell any investor concern and makes you look well organized and confident in your operations.
#4: Prepare ahead of time for bad news. You already know the growth challenges your company faces. However, being transparent about bad news is key to communicating with your current and prospective investors. Bad news is often overlooked, so long as it’s not hidden. Whether it’s a poor earnings report, a missed deadline or loss of a key client, you must be well prepared to confront, and convert any naysayers. Phenomenal PR can turn bad news into a sunshine day.
#3: You need an effective, clear, and user-friendly website. Current and prospective investors, the moment they hear anything about you, will visit your website. If it’s not modern, mobile optimized, professional and clean, you’re going to leave a bad taste in their mouths, no matter why they visited. Your site should include your investor deck, IR pages and contacts, full and accurate bios of your leadership team, details about your equity/stock structure, your ticker symbol and exchange and a list of any analysts that cover your stock. Most importantly, you MUST, in a very clear and concise manner, show what it is that your company does, and what separates it from the competition.
#2: A captivating and compelling story. The most important factor that affects the success or failure of your IR campaigns is how your story is told. An elevator pitch of your business will not attract investors. A boring, long-winded, unfocused, and non-topical version won’t work either. You must have an effective story that bolsters your credibility, captivates your audience and makes an investment in your company look like a potential no-brainer. Importantly, your story must be told with the investor in mind. They want to know one simple question you must answer before a single dollar is invested… What’s in it for me? Answer this with your story and in all marketing materials and the capital will flow.
#1: Make the world aware. Once you have a well written, compelling, and captivating story nailed down, you need to get it in front of investors, analysts, fund managers and prospective investors. Millions of people want to hear from you. They want to see what you have to offer them, investment wise and they’re looking to put their money somewhere with promise. In order for your company to be the landing spot for this capital, you’ll need to exploit every marketing and messaging channel you can. And If it takes screaming from the mountaintops to get their attention, do it.
If you become and expert at these six critical investor relations and public relations campaign points, you have a much higher likelihood of keeping and growing your investor base, increasing funding, launching new products, and expanding your market share.
But we understand switching focus from business development to IR/PR is incredibly difficult. Your business already relies on you to run it, and losing this focus could be devastating.
It’s why it’s such a wise move to hire an IR/PR firm that’s an expert in the field. A strong IR/PR firm can tackle this aspect of growth, making it passive from your perspective, while you concentrate on the business.
You’re an expert in what you do…
We’re an expert in what we do.
Bring your investor relations and public relations to the next level with Virtua Brands.
Our team of copywriters, designers, media buyers and financial networkers has over 50 years of experience in the financial markets and marketing business.
We’ve created and launched over 100 IR/PR programs, getting compelling, captivating stories in front of over 100 million investors.
We’ll grow your investor base; help increase your funding and take your company to the next level.
All you need to do is call, the rest is up to us.