Posts Tagged ‘investor relations strategies’

Take Company Public – Investor Relations Solutions – You’re In Shark Infested Waters

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Before you decide to go public allow me to paint a picture for you. You’re on a crowded beach, the water is warm, the waves are calm and you decide to break away from the crowd and confidently swim a little further than everyone else. All is calm; the sun gently warms your back as one stroke after the next takes you further from the beach and closer to the distant horizon. A few minutes later the sun is covered by clouds and like a bomb ‘BAM’ a crack of thunder, lightning lights up the sky and buckets of rain begin to pour from gray clouds. You look back and the entire beach is deserted.

The lifeguard shack is empty and the waves begin to build. You’re trying to swim back to shore but the current violently drags you out further into the ocean. You fight to stay afloat as one wave after the next crashes upon you. Your lungs fill up with water, you’re muscles cramp and just as you’re about to give into your fate, the rain stops and the water becomes calm. You can gather just enough energy to begin to swim back to the beach. All of a sudden you feel a bump on your thigh and then a sharp pain on your foot as you’re drug down into the darkness and as you fight to free yourself you notice that you’ve unknowingly swam into the center of a starving school of sharks and they take turns gnawing off pieces of your flesh.

Your arms, back, legs, neck, face, chest and feet all shredded by the razor sharp teeth of sharks. The blood only attracts more sharks of different colors and shapes. All you can do is kick, punch and scream to keep your limbs intact then suddenly you feel sand beneath your feet, you’ve reached the shoreline and you craw with every ounce of strength you have left toward the abandoned lifeguard shack. Once you’re on land you look out at the ocean and the entire expanse of the water is teaming with sharks. You look down at your body and though in one piece has been ripped to shreds.

This is the most accurate description I can give of what it’s like to try to go public or expand globally without the proper game plan and consultants watching your back and helping you contemplate your chain of moves as you go forward. There is an entire industry out there that is just waiting for you to step off the path and into the shadows so they can get a piece of you. Wasted capital here, wasted capital there, it all adds up.

When taking your company public or planning a product or service expansion into outside geographic proximities why go it alone? Seek out qualified consultants that can navigate you through the shark infested waters so that you can achieve your goals quickly and with as few bumps in the road as possible.

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Investor Relations Consultant – Investor Relations – Investor Relations Strategy

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

I am constantly getting calls from CEOs of public companies whose stock has plummeted to the point of no rebound. When I ask them what promotional or investor relations strategies they have in place to support their per share price goal, there is always silence on the other end of the line. It’s shocking to me that a well pedigreed executive can move up through the corporate ranks from executive to VP and to CEO and not have a clue as to how to run a public company properly.

For executives reading this, you obviously are doing the necessary due diligence required to initiate a strategic plan and keep your volume trading. As a global strategies consultant, typically, by default, I have to take a company public in order for them to meet their growth requirements as designated by their board of directors.

If you are going public on the OTCBB (Over The Counter Bulletin Boards) for example, you’ll want to start general corporate branding pretty heavy when the S1 comments stage is completed. You’ll want to take advantage of viral media such as but not limited to: video, unique article submission, press releases, social and news bookmarking and don’t forget the Linkedin, Myspace, Facebook and Twitter. The collective combination of promotional genres in the above will give you the initial foundation to start your Investor Relations campaign post public.

Keep in mind you want to promote your company in a general fashion as opposed to stepping into a gray area which the SEC would consider outside of securities compliance. Next, about two weeks after your viral crusade has been initiated, phase two would be using traditional tactics for publicity, mainly TV, radio and inter industry periodicals. These promotional mediums should ring with the ‘expert’ theme. You’ll have your publicist solicit the editor, writer, journalist, etc and get you a seat on an expert panel to discuss the hot topics that have to do with your industry. It’s not a company advertisement, it’s better. You are demonstrating your high level of expertise and throughout the gig they are referring to you in name and as the CEO of XYZ Inc.

Now, after your market maker has filed form 211 and FINRA has issued a trading symbol, this is when the real work begins. Don’t hire an investor relations service, hire a full service IR strategies consultant. It may sound like the same thing but believe me, the difference is night and day. A strategist has a massive portfolio of contacts to create your market quick and get your stock trading. You don’t want pump and dump, email/newsletter promoters, if you hire one then you’re a chump and you deserve the failure that you’re sure to experience. You’ll be sucked into the black hole of no return faster than you can say pink sheets (By the way, if you’re going public don’t even waste your time with pink sheets. Serious investors will never buy and hold that Wild West stock).

The basic strategy your consultant will put in place will be a combination of phone room promotion to market makers and investors to announce your stock and give verbal presentations in a non pushy manner (with a phone room you just want to have a friendly voice that gives free information and then tell them to check out the stock and call their broker or you can introduce them to one but don’t hire a boiler room as that’s the kiss of death to any new public entity). Next you want to email announcements to your pre public investor base and industry insiders to get the hype machine going. Get people talking about your stock, potential acquisitions, your new product or service, a new strategic partner you’ve signed with, a new distribution channel, anything, just get them talking about you. You’ll also want to keep your viral and traditional publicity mechanisms in place. Write press releases announcing the above and have your consultant and/or publicist start pushing them to major journals, newspapers and high traffic blogs and websites and always make yourself available for comments and/or questions. With all of your promotional properties you must get in the habit of collecting email addresses and contact info and on a weekly basis a chunk of your advertising budget must go toward snail-mail post card promotion, phone call meet and greets and email updates.

The above is a very basic intro or Investor Relations 101 to help you start putting a strategy together or at the very least it will help you interview investor relations strategies consultants in an intelligent and informed manner.

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