Whenever major changes for businesses are on the horizon, marketing tends to be the first thing cut. Entering a recession? Cut the marketing budget. Facing a pandemic? Cut the marketing budget. Selling your business? Cut the marketing budget.

We’ve explained before, particularly when facing a recession and dealing with a pandemic, that these are the worst times to consider cutting your marketing budget. The same is true when you’re planning to sell your business.

On paper, yes, the money you save by eliminating your marketing department could make your business look more valuable. In reality, however, the benefits you receive from marketing while your business is for sale far outweigh that potential valuation bump you might receive from cutting the budget.

Improve Business Valuation

Rather than making your business look more valuable by cutting marketing, you can actually improve the business valuation by increasing your marketing. How?

First, continuing to increase and diversify the customer base through lead generation campaigns will lead to more sales. More sales equals a track record of continuous growth. That growth adds more value to your business.

By developing new business opportunities with existing customers, you can build more revenue. Cross-sell, upsell, provide exclusive offers to your most loyal buyers—all of these can lead to more revenue while demonstrating client stability.

Finally, you’ll continue to build brand loyalty with brand advocates that will follow the company regardless of ownership. That kind of customer base is hard to put a price on, but you can bet that price is higher than a company that terminates marketing before selling.

Elevate Company Perception

A brand refresh or refinement isn’t a bad idea when you’re planning to sell or exit your business. This gives you chance to verify that your company is still in alignment with your mission, your customers’ needs, and your market.

Ask yourself these things:

  • Does your brand look old and tired?
  • Does your brand and messaging align with what you provide for your clients/customers?
  • Are your brand and offerings highly relevant in the areas you serve, or are you seen as out of touch?
  • Are you perceived as a modern and relevant brand or old and stagnant?

The stronger your brand is when you’re ready to sell, the stronger potential buyers’ perceptions will be. And the stronger that perception is, the more valuable your brand will be.

So, what will marketers do to make sure perception of your company is elevated?

After a thorough brand examination to determine if a refresh or rebrand is needed, your marketing team can move forward with the activities necessary to strengthen public perception of your company.

With a stronger brand perception, the marketing activities and offerings your company engages in will help to create a new sense of excitement and buzz around your brand. This could emerge as a redesigned website, a stronger and more relatable brand voice, changes in your social media posts, and public relations campaigns that put your brand in front of new potential buyers.

That buzz then leads to new customers, even more revenue, and stronger confidence in your brand as a whole.

Validate Company Worth

So, now you have a stronger brand, active marketing campaigns running, new customers making purchases on a regular basis, and increased revenue—all helping to drive up the value of your company.

Without marketing, none of this would have been possible. Not only will your marketing create more worth for your brand, it will also validate that worth when someone interested in buying your company comes to look around.

If you’re planning to sell or exit your business in the near future, now is the time to really invest in your marketing. If you don’t have C-suite leadership in place to develop and execute the branding and marketing you need to make the most out of your company sale, reach out. A Fractional CMO can do all of the above and possibly help lower your marketing budget.

We’ve prepared a downloadable infographic with all of this information so you can reference it whenever you need to. Just click here. No contact information is needed to access the document.