Uniting Marketing and Revenue to Accelerate Growth

Marketing leaders in private equity-backed businesses face a unique challenge: demonstrating tangible commercial impact while building brand equity that drives valuation.

tml Partners recently brought together senior CMOs, CROs, and CGOs for a roundtable discussion to explore how marketing can be a true engine of enterprise value in sponsor-backed environments, aligning with other commercial functions and speaking the language of investors.

Key Findings:

• Commercial Impact First: Marketing leaders in investor-backed businesses must move beyond traditional brand metrics to prioritise commercial performance indicators such as CAC, NRR, and time-to-close, aligning their work directly with EBITDA growth and valuation.

• Balancing ROI and Brand Equity: While delivering quick wins remains vital, leaders are equally focused on building long-term brand equity that strengthens investor confidence and contributes to a premium exit valuation.

• Investor-Ready Storytelling: Marketing functions are increasingly required to communicate their value through a financial lens – telling a compelling, data-backed story of growth, efficiency, and market opportunity to key investor stakeholders.

• Culture as a Growth Enabler: High-performing marketing teams thrive in cultures that promote agility, collaboration, and innovation. Internal alignment across marketing, sales and product functions is critical for scaling value.

• Marketing as a Strategic Asset: When fully integrated into the commercial strategy, marketing ceases to be a cost centre and becomes a pivotal growth engine- positioned at the heart of investor value creation.