Acquisition closes. The brand is confused. The go-to-market motion the founders ran does not scale under a PE playbook. The CMO has 90 days to show the sponsor a direction. The diagnostic produces that direction in 10 business days.
Built for PE portfolio company CMOs. Applies to VP Marketing, Head of Growth, and similar go-to-market leaders at PE-backed companies navigating post-acquisition brand consolidation, GTM rebuild, and unit economics improvement under a defined investment timeline.
Brand architecture assessment, ICP post-acquisition, GTM motion review, paid audit, unit economics analysis. 90-day priorities for sponsor review and internal execution.
Read the scope →SF Marketing Agency partners with PE portfolio companies post-acquisition on brand consolidation, go-to-market rebuild, and unit economics improvement under sponsor timelines. The work addresses the specific commercial challenges of PE-backed context: compressed timelines, sponsor accountability, brand confusion from acquisition, and go-to-market motions that need to shift from founder-led to system-led. Entry is through the $5,000 Marketing Strategy Diagnostic, delivered in 10 business days.
The vertical matters because the buying committee, risk language, proof standard, sales cycle, and trigger event change by category. The strategy has to reflect that reality before channels or creative are chosen.
The page identifies the real decision participants: economic buyer, evaluator, champion, operator, or referral source.
Every market has a different perceived risk: budget waste, operational failure, compliance exposure, partner credibility, or reputation.
The strategy defines which proof the buyer needs before action: numbers, process, clinical depth, technical capability, or commercial outcomes.
The page routes into the right first engagement instead of forcing a generic service conversation.
PE-backed companies span verticals. The commercial challenges in a PE context are distinct from organic growth contexts in four ways: timeline compression, sponsor accountability, acquisition integration, and the transition from founder-led to systematized motion. The methodology applies across tech and traditional portcos.
Software companies post-acquisition where the sponsor wants ARR growth acceleration. Go-to-market needs to shift from founder-led sales to a repeatable motion.
PE-backed fintech companies where the acquisition brought compliance complexity and the go-to-market needs to perform under regulatory constraints.
PE-backed platforms acquiring multiple companies in a fragmented vertical. Brand architecture and go-to-market need to hold across the acquired entities.
PE-backed companies in industrial services, healthcare services, or professional services where digital marketing is new to the operating model.
The PE context adds structural pressures that organic growth companies do not face. These four are the most consistent. Ignoring the PE-specific context produces a strategy that looks correct on paper but is not executable under sponsor timelines.
Organic growth companies can run 18-month brand initiatives. PE portcos with a 4-5 year hold period cannot. Marketing strategy for PE-backed companies must produce measurable pipeline impact within the first two quarters. Everything with a longer payback than that is a nice-to-have in a PE context, not a priority.
Post-acquisition, the acquired company's positioning is in flux. Customers know it was acquired but do not know what changes. Prospects compare the old website with the new messaging and find inconsistency. Sales teams carry multiple narratives. The brand confusion is not an internal communication problem - it is a market-facing positioning problem that suppresses pipeline until it is resolved.
Most PE acquisitions buy companies where a small team ran the commercial motion on relationships, reputation, and personal network. That motion cannot be systematized at scale. The transition to a repeatable go-to-market motion requires redefining the ICP, the messaging, the channels, and the attribution - all of which the relationship-led motion never needed to make explicit.
In a PE context, marketing strategy must be legible at the sponsor level. A CMO who cannot explain their go-to-market motion in terms of pipeline, unit economics, and 90-day priorities to a principal review meeting is in a structurally difficult position. The diagnostic output is written to be read by operators and sponsors both.
PE portco engagements start with brand triage. Before rebuilding a go-to-market, we need to know what brand equity exists from the acquired entity, which elements are worth preserving, and which are liabilities in the new strategic direction. Most post-acquisition marketing errors come from rebuilding the go-to-market before the brand positioning question is answered.
Brand triage for PE portcos is not a brand audit in the traditional sense. It is a specific commercial question: what does the market understand about this company's positioning, and how much of that understanding is an asset versus a constraint in the new sponsor's strategy? The answer determines whether the post-acquisition marketing motion should extend, redirect, or replace the existing brand.
Every PE portco we have partnered with had the same first-week problem: three different go-to-market narratives running simultaneously across the sales team, the website, and the sponsor deck.
After brand triage, the go-to-market rebuild addresses ICP definition (which buyer cohort generates the highest closed ARR at the best unit economics), positioning (what the company says to that cohort and why it wins), channel strategy (where to find that cohort and what acquisition costs to expect), and attribution methodology (how to measure impact in a way that is legible to sponsor review).
The diagnostic output is a document built for two audiences simultaneously: the CMO's team executes from it, and the sponsor principal can read it in 30 minutes and understand the direction. That dual legibility is specific to the PE context and is built into the structure of every PE portco diagnostic.
A PE-backed fintech company had been running paid channels for six months post-acquisition with a ROAS of 0.9x. The marketing team had cycled through agencies. The actual problem was brand confusion created by the acquisition - the new positioning had not been reflected in the ad-to-landing-page experience. Buyers landing on the site found messaging that contradicted the ads.
The diagnostic identified the positioning inconsistency, rebuilt the post-acquisition brand narrative, and aligned paid copy, landing page, and sales collateral to a single claim structure. ROAS reached 3.4x in 90 days. The sponsor's next board update led with the paid performance turnaround as evidence of the value-creation plan working.
A PE-backed SaaS company had a new CMO hired 60 days post-acquisition. The board wanted CAC payback at 18 months. It was running at 28 months. The go-to-market had been founder-led - no documented ICP, no attribution methodology, paid spend distributed across channels without performance logic. The diagnostic compressed the ICP to the cohort with the best unit economics, rebuilt attribution, and sequenced the 90-day go-to-market plan.
Over two quarters, CAC payback dropped 47% to 14.8 months. The CMO had a sponsor-legible document explaining the direction within 10 business days of the engagement start. The board saw measurable improvement in the metrics they were tracking without requiring the CMO to present a verbal narrative each quarter.
A PE roll-up had acquired three B2B SaaS companies in adjacent verticals over 18 months. Each ran its own go-to-market with its own brand, messaging, and channel mix. Cross-sell between the three companies was minimal because sales teams did not have a coherent platform narrative. The sponsor wanted a unified go-to-market that preserved local brand equity while accelerating platform revenue.
The Positioning Sprint produced a platform brand architecture: a unifying category claim that covered all three entities, sub-brand positioning for each entity, and a cross-sell motion that the sales team could run immediately. Platform ARR went from $2M to $5M over 14 months as the unified narrative enabled cross-sell conversations that had previously been impossible.
Brand architecture assessment, ICP definition post-acquisition, GTM motion review, paid acquisition audit, unit economics analysis. 90-day priorities written for sponsor and operator audiences. 90-minute executive session included.
Read the scope →For PE portcos where brand consolidation and positioning are the primary bottleneck. Category narrative, sub-brand architecture, ICP map by buyer role, sales motion definition, and 90-day execution sequencing.
Read the scope →Ongoing strategic oversight through the investment period. Monthly strategy session, quarterly priority updates aligned to sponsor review cycles, direct access for time-sensitive decisions.
Read the scope →For PE portco CMOs whose engagement extends to operator-level strategic decisions beyond marketing - company architecture, succession, board dynamics, operator decision-making - advisory engagements at that level are available with Stan Tscherenkow directly. Marketing strategy engagements remain scoped to the go-to-market layer handled here.
PE-backed companies across tech (SaaS, fintech, software infrastructure), traditional verticals (industrial services, healthcare services, professional services, business services), and roll-up platforms. The common factor is post-acquisition context: a new sponsor, a new strategy, and a marketing function that needs to be rebuilt or redirected under a defined investment timeline.
Post-acquisition brand work has two phases. Phase one is brand triage: identifying which brand equities from the acquired entity are worth preserving and which are liabilities under the new strategy. Phase two is brand architecture: deciding whether the new entity operates under a single brand, a sub-brand structure, or a house of brands. The diagnostic produces this architecture with a sequenced migration plan.
A 20-30 page strategy document covering brand architecture assessment, ICP definition post-acquisition, go-to-market motion assessment, paid acquisition audit, unit economics analysis, and 90-day priorities. Delivered with a 90-minute executive session. The document reads at the level PE principals expect and is built for sponsor review as well as internal execution.
Yes. Some engagements are initiated by the GP value-creation team and the portco CMO is the day-to-day contact. Some are initiated by the CMO directly. Either works. The diagnostic output is designed to be legible at both the sponsor and operating company level.
Roll-up platforms have a brand architecture problem on top of the normal go-to-market problem. Each acquired company may have independent brand equity in its local market. The strategic work maps which local brand equity is worth preserving, defines the platform brand architecture, and sequences the migration from independent brand to platform brand without destroying the referral and reputation equity that justified the acquisition.
The Marketing Strategy Diagnostic at $5,000, delivered in 10 business days. PE portco contexts benefit from the faster diagnostic because sponsor timelines compress decision windows. From there: in-house execution from the strategy document, a scoped project ($10K-$75K), or the Quarterly Strategy Partnership at $4,500/month covering ongoing strategic oversight through the investment period.
Marketing Strategy Diagnostic for PE portfolio companies. $5,000 flat. 10 business days. Brand architecture, ICP definition, GTM rebuild, unit economics, 90-day priorities for sponsor and operator review.