Advice

Managing Your Investor Awareness Campaign

Managing an Investor Awarness Campaign for your company can be a daunting challenge in today's marketplace. Regulators are cracking down on unscrupulous stock promoters and bulk email, a small company's least expensive method of reaching investors en masse, has been all but eliminated as a viable option. To make matters more difficult there are an inordinate amount of Investor Awareness firms that not only fail to deliver as contracted but oftentimes disappear altogether, refusing to return phone calls or up front payments. So once you have completed your due diligence and identified a legitimate, professional Investor Awareness Firm how can you as CEO or other officer in charge of Investor Relations manage the efforts of the retained firm and get the most out of your campaign?

Know Your Promoter - Aside from getting complete contact information, never retain an Investor Awareness firm without contacting at least 2 or 3 of their recent clients. Most companies are glad to give references, good or bad, as they know how difficult it is to find dependable firms. In addition you can usually determine whether they handled the campaign alone or were part of a larger campaign involving multiple providers. This will help you determine how effective they really are at getting your story in front of investors.

Pay in Cash - Although you are allowed to pay consulting fees with free trading shares this should be avoided whenever possible. Paying in cash assures there is no further dilution of your stock and there are plenty of examples of companies that have doled out large blocks of stock only to have it come back to haunt them later on. A wise man once said, "Treat your stock like cash and it will be worth cash. Treat your stock like paper and it will be worth paper."
Negotiate Installment Payments - Investor Awareness firms have hard costs to cover but in the case of long term contracts negotiate to have payments made in installments. This eases the strain on company coffers and keeps the firm working for you motivated. If for some reason their services end up not being a match for your company's needs it's also easier to terminate the contract and make a clean break.

Assign a Project Manager/Liason - As CEO don't try to manage an awareness campaign and the firms providing them by yourself. Although it's critical to make ongoing efforts to reach out to new investors let someone else be project manager and deal with the day to day communications with your Investor Awareness firm.

In short do your due diligence when dealing with any firm catering to small cap companies. There are a lot of entities seeking to take advantage of resource strained companies that don't always take the time to do their homework. Fortunately there are also a growing number of reputable firms dedicated to professional service and high ethical standards.