What PE Firms Should Be Demanding
If you’re involved in private equity, you already know how critical it is to hit growth targets quickly. But too often, marketing is left underdeveloped or reactive within portfolio companies. A strong commercial playbook exists for sales and product, but what about marketing?
Marketing deserves the same rigour. Without a structured approach, you risk leaving growth opportunities untapped. That’s where a marketing playbook comes in. It’s a practical, actionable plan that sets the foundation for scale. For private equity firms, asking the right questions and demanding better marketing structure early on can drive value across the investment cycle.
So what should you expect from a marketing playbook?
It should start with positioning. Not just a generic brand statement or a tagline, but a clear articulation of who the company is for, what problem it solves, and why it’s different. This isn’t about theory. You want clarity that helps a sales team sell faster, a product team prioritise better, and a marketing team focus campaigns on high-intent buyers. If you ask ten people at the company who their target customer is and you get ten different answers, there’s a problem.
Understanding Marketing Performance
Next is understanding current marketing performance. Too often, we see companies spending on paid ads, content or worse, hugely expensive events, without knowing what’s working. The playbook should include a simple funnel model: what are the channels, what’s the cost per lead, how do leads convert to pipeline, and how does that pipeline close into revenue? It doesn’t need to be complex, but it needs to exist. You need data to make decisions.
Once performance is visible, the playbook should outline a roadmap. What are the top opportunities to improve lead quality, reduce acquisition cost or shorten the sales cycle? For example, one portfolio company we worked with was investing heavily in LinkedIn ads, but their website had poor conversion rates and their forms weren’t integrated properly with their CRM. Fixing the basics delivered better results than increasing spend.
It’s important the playbook covers internal capabilities. Does the company have the right skills in-house? Are there experienced marketers who can operate at a strategic level, or is the team mostly junior? Can they execute campaigns across multiple channels or are they reliant on agencies for everything? A good playbook highlights these gaps and offers options to fill them.
Marketing Roles: Who does what?
You should also look for clarity on roles and responsibilities. One issue we see regularly is confusion about who owns what. Marketing, sales, and product all touch the customer journey, but without coordination, the experience breaks. A marketing playbook can clarify who is accountable for lead generation, content creation, website performance and reporting.
Don’t overlook tooling and tech stack. Many portfolio companies have inherited legacy platforms or disjointed systems. A useful playbook audits what’s in place, identifies redundancies and recommends improvements. For instance, a marketing automation platform that doesn’t sync properly with the CRM can lead to missed opportunities and bad data. Fixing that saves time and improves reporting accuracy.
It’s all about Brand
The playbook should also touch on brand. This doesn’t always mean investing in a big rebrand (although at Remora. That’s something we love doing), but asking whether the current brand is fit for purpose. Does the website speak to the right audience? Is the tone consistent across touchpoints? Does the company look credible enough to win in enterprise deals? At Remora, we’ve seen minor brand adjustments lead to major changes in how a company is perceived by partners and prospects.
You should expect to see a short- and medium-term content strategy. Not just what to post on LinkedIn, but a clear plan for how to educate and convert buyers through the funnel. One of our clients increased their inbound pipeline by 4x by focusing on fewer, higher-quality pieces of content that spoke directly to buyer pain points. A good playbook doesn’t just list topics, it defines purpose, audience and outcome for every piece.
Another area to examine is measurement. What KPIs are being tracked? Are marketing and sales aligned on definitions like MQL and SQL? Without alignment, marketing can’t be held accountable, and sales will stop trusting the leads. The playbook should establish a shared language and reporting rhythm between teams.
We speak your language
At Remora, our founders, and many of our team, come from a private equity background. Over a number of years, we developed and refined our own marketing playbooks inside real operating environments. These weren’t built in isolation. They were tested, adapted and proven across a wide range of B2B companies, then scaled to support commercial growth and exit readiness. That experience now shapes how we help firms and their portfolio companies bring structure, focus and impact to marketing.
For PE firms, this isn’t just about ticking a box during onboarding. A marketing playbook supports smarter investment decisions. It helps identify which companies need external support, where to allocate resources, and how to forecast growth with more confidence. It also reduces key-person risk by documenting knowledge and providing a repeatable framework.
Critical question time
Ask yourself this: if you replaced the CMO or marketing lead in one of your portfolio companies today, how long would it take for the new person to figure out what’s working, what’s broken and where to focus? A good playbook gives them a head start.
If you’re not currently asking for a marketing playbook post-acquisition, it’s time to start. It’s not just about operational efficiency, it’s about protecting your investment.
You expect financial discipline, product roadmaps and sales forecasts. Marketing should be no different.
