With 2020 thankfully in our rear view mirror, many of us are looking forward to ‘getting back to normal’ in 2021. However despite good news about Covid vaccines, it will take much of the coming year to administer them. Translation: things probably aren’t changing all that much, all that soon.
For emerging food and beverage brands, this means a continuation of many of the business factors that defined the past year: no in-person shows or events, no appreciable field marketing or sampling, no physical meetings, and a whole lot of unpredictability. These factors influence not only day-to-day operations for many founders, but even the process of fundraising, from discovering new investors to building and maintaining healthy relationships, all the way through securing investments.
To mitigate this, the majority of emerging brands have grown even more creative and adapted to the ‘remote’ world, taking advantage of tactics that enable them to stay visible and connected with the investor community. And while nearly everyone is more comfortable with these approaches at this point, it doesn’t mean that everyone uses them with equal success.
The Emerge mentor team from Brandjectory, a community helping emerging brands connect to the right CPG industry investors, shares a few tried and true fundamentals to help ensure emerging brands have an intentional and focused strategy for maintaining an investor network. In their view, when it comes to maintaining healthy investor relationships remotely, there are four things to keep in mind:
- Quality, not just quantity – Communicate important information and eliminate the noise for investors. Sometimes, one well thought-out update can greatly outweigh four or five hasty ones. Take the time to consider the ‘so what’ to the investor behind your most recent news, and then clearly share it with them.
- Not everything has to be rose-colored – Investors know how challenging the current landscape is for emerging brands, so there’s no need to spin everything as a positive, or to never acknowledge the challenges your business is facing. Instead, showing how creatively and effectively your business is responding to hurdles will build a more authentic connection with investors.
- Time is a necessary investment – The exposure and reach that you’re trying to replicate through remote communication efforts may take as much time –or more – than the time you used to spend preparing for and attending in-person shows or meetings. Be ready to invest the time to get the results you need.
- Keep it personal, and be empathetic – When communicating your important information to investors, sometimes a simple note, voicemail or even quick Zoom chat with an established investor relationship can go a long way towards maintaining a healthy network. Look for the right opportunities and make the time to follow through on them. But in doing so, recognize investors are busy too, so a little consideration of their schedule can go a long way to building a strong relationship.
While developing a successful approach to cultivating your investor network isn’t as simple as following these four suggestions, the Brandjectory team hopes these reminders will help to keep your efforts grounded and effective.
These fundamentals are also at the heart of why the Brandjectory community platform was created. The Brandjectory team believes that leading technology and communication tools, like posting your growth story updates, live chats and file sharing, combined with expert guidance about sharing the right information in the optimal framing, can enable brands to be effective and efficient in building authentic, productive investor relationships.
If your business is ready to join a community of trusted investors to support you on your growth journey, you can read more about Brandjectory here.