Operating partners and PE sponsors cannot afford to wait 6 months for an internal marketing team to ramp up. We provide immediate, outsourced digital marketing execution for DTC portfolio companies. Recently, we took over a stalled $1.5B PE-backed beauty brand and drove +102% revenue growth in 30 days.
Let us identify the exact revenue leaks in your portfolio company's digital strategy.
When a PE firm acquires a DTC brand, the growth thesis relies on rapid scale. But internal marketing teams often lack the specific, specialized skills required to execute a turnaround.
Hiring an internal VP of Growth, media buyers, and creative strategists takes 3-6 months. Outsourcing to an established agency deploys a full team of specialists on Day 1.
Incumbent agencies or legacy internal teams often run bloated, inefficient ad accounts. Spend goes up, but Contribution Margin drops, threatening the investment thesis.
Operating partners need a single source of truth. When channels are siloed, reporting is fragmented, making it impossible for the board to make agile capital allocation decisions.
Real results from our recent engagement with a PE-backed asset.
Beauty & Personal Care | DTC + Subscription | Private Equity Backed
When this PE-backed beauty brand was handed to us, their Meta account had been over-simplified by a prior agency — collapsed to just 2 campaigns. Revenue had declined ~18% month-over-month in the final pre-engagement month. Their subscription business had recorded three consecutive months of net negative subscriber days. We rebuilt the entire account structure from the ground up to restore EBITDA.
Month-by-Month Performance
| Month | Spend % MoM | Revenue % MoM | Orders % MoM | New Buyers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan (Pre) | Baseline | Baseline | Baseline | 50% |
| Feb (Pre) | +11% | -18% | -17% | 49% |
| Mar — Month 1 Engaged | +23% | +102% | +84% | 25% |
| Apr — Month 2 | +30% | +9% | +20% | 27% |
A comprehensive guide for operating partners evaluating digital agency partners for portfolio companies.
Contents
Following an acquisition, private equity sponsors are under immense pressure to execute their value creation plan. Building an internal digital marketing team capable of scaling a DTC brand requires hiring a VP of Growth, media buyers for Meta and Google, creative strategists, and data analysts. This process takes 3 to 6 months—time that eats directly into the holding period.
Outsourcing to a specialized digital marketing agency provides immediate execution. An elite agency brings a fully formed team on Day 1, equipped with cross-portfolio insights and proven playbooks. This allows the operating partner to focus on supply chain, product, and leadership, while the agency drives top-line revenue and EBITDA expansion.
When transitioning a portfolio company to an outsourced agency, we execute a strict 4-phase roadmap to ensure stability and rapid growth:
Before any media is bought, the agency must conduct a forensic audit of historical data, Google Analytics, and the existing ad account architecture. This identifies immediate revenue leaks—such as audience overlap, broken post-click funnels, or creative fatigue.
The agency restructures the ad accounts to feed the algorithms properly. In our recent beauty brand turnaround, the prior agency had collapsed the Meta account to just 2 campaigns. We expanded it to 60+ campaigns through controlled testing, generating the signal required to stabilize CPAs.
With signal established, budget is shifted to winning creatives and audiences. Clear Top-of-Funnel (prospecting) and Bottom-of-Funnel (retargeting) separation is enforced to ensure the brand is not paying premium acquisition costs for returning customers.
Meta, Google Ads, Email, and SMS are integrated into a single, cohesive revenue engine. This multi-channel synergy is what drives the exponential growth required for a successful exit.
When managing an outsourced agency, operating partners should ignore vanity metrics (clicks, impressions) and focus on board-level KPIs:
If a portfolio company's growth has stalled, an outsourced agency should be able to execute a turnaround within 60 days. The first 14 days are diagnostic, days 15-30 stabilize the bleeding (CPA stabilization), and days 30-60 initiate profitable scale. Our +102% MoM revenue growth for the $1.5B beauty brand was achieved within the first 30 days of engagement.