"Create value."

It's the vaguest thought leadership exhortation: repeated endlessly, rarely defined, almost never tied to the levers that actually move a business forward.

But here's the disconnect: for PE sponsors, value creation isn't aspirational. It's the mandate. And marketers pull those same levers every day. We just don't use the same vocabulary.

We've sat in enough rooms with marketing leaders and PE sponsors to see the gap. PE talks margins, multiples, and return. Marketing talks awareness, pipeline, and conversion. Same work. Different language.

PE sponsors structure value creation around three levers. Marketing pulls all three – we just call them something else.

We believe it’s time to fix that.

1. Margin Expansion

Make the same dollar work harder.

This is media efficiency without sacrificing reach. In PE language: protect or grow EBITDA by cutting waste, not cutting growth.

In marketing terms:

• Tie media spend to business KPIs: qualified pipeline, subscription retention, net revenue retention – not vanity metrics like impressions or CTR.

• Build a shared dashboard where finance and marketing see the same picture: spend in, incremental return out.

• Reallocate budget based on contribution, not attribution. Run incrementality tests to separate signal from noise.

One Move: Audit your current measurement stack. If you can't explain how a dollar of spend maps to a dollar of contribution, start there.

2. Revenue Growth

Surface new demand. Lift conversion.

Growth isn't just spending more. It's finding the pockets of untapped value and converting them faster.

In marketing terms:

• Analyze high-LTV cohorts and target them with precision. Don't spray and pray.

• Test pricing, messaging, and offer structures inside campaigns, not just during annual planning cycles. The market will tell you what works faster than a spreadsheet model.

• Shift budget toward channels and segments where incremental CAC is lowest and payback is fastest.

One Move: Identify your top-quartile LTV customers. Map their acquisition path. Double down there first.

3. Multiple Expansion

Strengthen perception and defensibility.

This is the lever marketers rarely talk about. Multiples expand when a business looks harder to replicate, easier to scale, or better positioned in a growing category. This is where brand and positioning intersect with valuation.

In marketing terms:

• Use category and performance trend data to evolve your unique value prop ahead of competitors, not in reaction to them.

• Turn retention, NPS, and engagement metrics into proof points sponsors can use during exit prep or investor storytelling.

• Build brand equity that shows up in pricing power, win rates, and customer LTV—all signals that the business can command a premium.

Move: If your client is heading toward a transaction or fundraise, work backward from the buyer's narrative. What would make this business worth more? Start building those proof points now, not a month before the CIM goes out.

Why This Matters

Marketing leaders often shy away from "value creation" language because it sounds like finance cosplay. But it's the most accurate description of what great marketing does.

The gap isn't the work. It's the framing.

Before we can sell marketing as value creation (not cost center) downstream, we need to translate upstream. Use the language finance uses. Show the levers you're already pulling. Make the connection explicit.

When marketing and finance speak the same language, decisions move faster, budgets defend themselves, and outcomes compound.

One move to make this week: Pick one lever. Translate one metric you're already tracking into the language a CFO or sponsor would recognize. The conversation starts there.