More often than not, marketing and investor relations teams operate independently within a company, each focusing on its goals and activities. However, regular alignment between the two teams can help to strengthen a company’s message while increasing visibility, driving valuation, and expanding sales opportunities. Here are three quick and easy ways investor relations and marketing teams can work together to achieve success.
Crafting A Compelling And Uniform Story
Today’s investor relations teams must deliver a compelling story beyond the financials. Investors want to know about a company’s long-term vision, purpose, core values, and internal culture. But in an era where consumers, investors, and employees demand transparency, a company’s brand values must mirror its corporate values. Marketing and investor relations teams must collaborate to disseminate the message and values across channels.
IR and marketing can also leverage each other to help craft their messaging. While the IRO is responsible for framing and communicating the investment thesis, business milestones and outlook, and overall financial performance of the company, it doesn’t mean the IRO needs to do it alone.
Marketing and Investor Relations Sharing Content And Coverage
Standard IR content includes media releases, event announcements, blogs, and videos. Although content creation traditionally sits with marketing, IR teams increasingly leverage content marketing concepts to complement their efforts and engage investors throughout the “pipeline.” Some are even thinking outside the box, for example, by creating infographics to educate the Street on market trends.
Conversely, marketing teams regularly distribute press releases, among other content, to share exciting news and gain exposure through placements in different publications. While marketing and sales are the primary purposes of these assets, they also present an excellent opportunity to introduce your company to a potential investor or check in with existing shareholders.
Schedule Regular Meetings Between Marketing and Investor Relations Teams
Meeting regularly to review initiatives, collaborate on content, and review ideal placements for mutual benefit will help reduce duplication of efforts while helping to create a library of shared assets that both teams can leverage.
Additionally, both teams can benefit from knowing the other’s critical dates regarding events, launches, and significant milestones to cross-promote content and plan for maximum exposure. For example, aligning a marketing announcement with an investor earnings call could be possible, presenting more exposure opportunities. Similarly, marketing teams can leverage IR content and events to complement their efforts further.
Measuring The Impact Of Your Marketing and Investor Relations Efforts
As IR teams produce an unprecedented volume of content, they must ensure they accurately measure the impact. Channels, including your IR website, social media, and CRM engagement, must be monitored. Amit Sanghvi, Managing Director at Q4 Europe, explains if you know that a channel is generating interest from the right audience, you can double down on it and extract its maximum value. Conversely, if something isn’t working, you can remove it to focus on what works.
Given the limited resources of most IR teams, it’s imperative to understand what’s most effective in engaging their investor base and then adjust course accordingly. Most IR teams can (and should) take a page from the marketing playbook. Consider sitting down with your marketing team to find out where to get these analytics, what metrics to look for, and recommendations on helpful tools.
Conclusion about Marketing and Investor Relations Partnerships
By aligning marketing and investor relations, companies can build a stronger core by breaking down communication barriers, improving information flow, and bolstering efficiency. Perhaps most importantly, they can better communicate their purpose by delivering a consistent voice to their stakeholders, building trust and reliability internally and with the outside world.
For more information on combining the efforts of IR and marketing, check out our webinar recap of Beyond Corporate Access: Building an IR Marketing Strategy.
