Hey Brendan, maybe you could tell me a little more about what you're trying to accomplish, and your question about execution?

Yeah, good call on this forum. I recently partnered with a guy to launch our own on-demand CFO service. We have 4 clients and are keeping the lights on, so we have received some validation that we can get clients, but we need to do a marketing push to get our name out there and make enough to sustain the partnership. I have been reaching out to my network of angel investors and small-tier private equity players in Boston to try and get some work with their portfolio companies. Several of these players have asked for a PDF brochure to be e-mailed to them so that they can forward to their network...I want to use this brochure as an opportunity to brand ourselves as younger and more tech-savvy than the average CFO firm...

So am looking for some advice in terms of how and who to hire to design such a document...should it be an e-brochure...can we make it so we can post it in twitter to say congratulations to founders that just raised seed capital...this was my marketing idea

To sum of our macro problem: we are trying to be younger and hipper than the typical "hang-a-shingle old white dude" cfo firm in the suburbs. We think that emerging growth companies (not necessarily start-ups) are interested in having flexible CFO advice given by somebody that relates to a web 2.0 world, and is not just an old-school accountant. HERE IS THE PROBLEM: We are having a hard time getting our marketing collateral to reflect this image. As much as we use some good technology and follow start-up trends, we aren't at all well-versed in digital marketing and how to do it right...in fact, our website makes us look almost exactly the opposite of who we want to be...hopefully you see where I'm coming from

Yeah, I like Branch, because you can continue a twitter discussion in a similarly public forum, but it allows more space for nuanced ideas and discussion.

Let me see if I can summarize: You need to create some marketing materials to pass around digitally (also physically?), that convey to potential clients that you specialize in high-growth consumer web technology companies, and that you share their culture. Your concern is that your current web presence doesn't reflect this culture, and so you want to take the marketing materials (and perhaps also the website?) in a different direction.

Does that sound about right?

Yep, you are on target. We are trying to build out a robust sales pipeline and systematically tackle it over the next 6 months to build off of our initial base of clients. You also have nailed our marketing challenge, which essentially is that we are not far enough along in what are exact positioning will be to spend the money to build out a killer website at this point, AND we are not technical enough or have the time to spare to constantly iterate the content on our website.

So we just want to develop some good marketing material to blast out digitally to our CRM contacts via e-mail, into directed LinkedIn groups, and even tweet the material to founders that just raised seed capital through a link.

Our 3 channels we are targeting are as follows:
1) Founders that just raised Seed or A Round -- Problem they have: early investors now evaluating them; want to make good impression; want to put $ into product and not culturally dilute the team with a finance guy at this point...Solution: Hire us as on-demand CFOs to do budgeting/all quickbooks billing and invoicing

2) Angel investors and family offices -- Problem: These people may seek a communications medium and level of oversight by trusted finance professionals to give them an added level of monitoring to their active early stage portfolio investments...Solution: same as above, introduction comes from them, maybe they share in cost?

3) Small PE Funds - Similar as #2 (later stage)

To clarify on a few questions that I missed of yours: not necessarily just high-growth consumer web, doing some life-science stuff right now as well...also, if the company is completely e-commerce, we might not have the skill to deal with the technology involved..the typical SaaS concept works for us though.

On marketing material, I think we will start out with just digital material. This all started because some old private equity guy wanted me to e-mail him a PDF about our services that he could forward on to his friends.

Does something like AdvisorDeck [getadvisordeck.com get at solving this problem? In terms of a PDF, your approach is probably to hire a designer to create a one-sheet for you, though you'll need to do the copywriting yourself, or hire a copywriter as well. Another approach for something to pass around could be an infographic relating to the challenges your potential clients are facing. That's likely to be more expensive (in both research time and design time) but will probably have more impact and potential for re-sharing.

Finally, although you don't feel settled enough to build out a full website, you will want to make sure that what you do have is high quality and consistent. Nothing is worse than getting a prospect interested enough to look you up only to be turned off by a subpar web presence. It doesn't have to be in-depth (a couple pages is fine) but it should be polished.

Thanks, Teague. AdvisorDeck is a great find..stay tuned for some of our initial marketing material on LinkedIn and other sites...feedback definitely appreciated

My pleasure. Keep me posted!