Who actually does marketing for mid-market portfolio companies
Marketing for portfolio companies of 40 to 200 people is handled by 4 kinds of provider: large consultancies, advisory boutiques, generalist agencies, and freelancers. Each was built for a different size of business, which is why this band is poorly served. What fits is a small senior team that sets the strategy and ships the work.
You have a company with a proven product, 1 or 2 marketers and no CMO. You start looking for help. Within a week you have quotes from a consultancy that costs more than the company's entire marketing budget, an agency that wants a brief nobody has time to write, and two freelancers who came recommended. None of them quite fits, and it is difficult to say why.
The reason is structural. Almost nobody built a marketing business for companies this size.
Key takeaways
- Most marketing providers were built for either much larger businesses or much earlier ones.
- A 40 to 200 person company needs senior strategy and hands-on delivery from the same team.
- Consultancies give you the thinking and hand execution back. Agencies give you delivery and need direction from you.
- The practical test is who does the work, how fast it starts, and how progress gets reported.
- Fix the message before funding more activity, whatever provider you choose.
Why this size of company falls between two markets
The marketing services market has two well-served ends and a thin middle.
At the top, large consultancies and value-creation practices serve businesses with a marketing department, a global footprint, and budgets to match. Their work is genuinely good for that customer. Dropped into a 60-person company, the plan assumes a team that does not exist.
At the bottom, a large supply of freelancers and small agencies serve early-stage companies. They are affordable and quick to start, and they work best when someone in the business already knows what the message should be.
The middle is where an established business sits after an acquisition or a funding round: real customers, real revenue, and a marketing function that never got built. It needs senior judgement and hands doing the work, at a cost that makes sense against the company's actual size. Very few providers are set up that way.
The 4 kinds of provider you will actually meet
When you go looking, these are the options. Each solves part of the problem.
- 1. Large consultancies. Deep experience and board-ready thinking. Priced and sized for businesses several times larger, and execution comes back to you when the engagement ends.
- 2. Advisory boutiques. Closer to your size, often with a sharp diagnosis. Usually advisory only, so the recommendation arrives and the relationship stops there.
- 3. Generalist agencies. Real production capacity, fast once briefed. They work from the brief you give them, so the strategy stays your responsibility.
- 4. Freelancers. Affordable and quick to start. Quality depends on the individual, and coordinating several of them becomes a management job.
Read that list again with your own company in mind. Options 1 and 2 give you thinking without delivery. Options 3 and 4 give you delivery without direction. A company with 1 or 2 marketers needs both halves at once, which is the gap.
What the work actually requires at this size
Before you judge any provider, it helps to be clear about what the job involves. In practice it is 4 things, in this order:
- A current message. After an acquisition or a growth round, the customers a company wins are usually larger than the ones its website describes. That gap has to close before spending goes up.
- Content and search presence. Word of mouth brought the company this far. Turning that into something buyers find on their own is the compounding part.
- Sales support. Case studies and materials for the bigger deals the new message goes after.
- Working systems. A CRM the team can maintain and outbound that does not damage existing relationships.
That is a broad job for one hire and a narrow one for a consultancy. It fits a small senior team.
How to tell whether a provider fits
Whoever you speak to, these 5 questions separate a good fit from an expensive mismatch.
- Who does the work? Ask whether the people in the meeting are the people who deliver, or whether it moves to a junior team afterwards.
- When does something ship? A diagnostic phase before anything happens costs a quarter you may not have.
- Is the strategy included, or is it your job? If the answer is a brief you have to write, the strategy is still yours.
- How is progress reported? Qualified pipeline and conversion tell you the money is working. Activity dashboards tell you a supplier is busy.
- What happens at the end? A good engagement leaves your team running the systems, rather than depending on the provider that built them.
What this looks like in practice
Take a newly acquired Nordic software company we work with: around 60 people, 600+ customers, two marketers, no CMO. The product was genuinely good and most deals arrived by word of mouth. A consultancy plan would have had nobody to run it, and a freelancer would have needed someone in-house to set the direction.
What the company got instead:
- 15 to 20 interviews with the upmarket buyers it was now winning, then a rewritten message built on what those buyers said.
- Content and search work aimed at that message.
- A specialist partner rebuilding the near-empty systems in parallel, then training the team to run them.
- New markets sequenced for later, once the home market was working.
Operators describe the same pattern from their side. "We started getting sales from AI mentions. Google ROAS is running at 6.5x and AI-search citations went up within two weeks. Inbound is now pulling its weight." Jeremy Gocke, CEO, Entropy Survival
FAQ
Who does marketing for mid-market portfolio companies?
Four kinds of provider serve this market: large consultancies, advisory boutiques, generalist agencies, and freelancers. Each was built for a different size of business. For a company of 40 to 200 people with 1 or 2 marketers, the fit is a small senior team that sets the strategy and ships the work rather than handing one of the two back to you.
Why is it hard to find good marketing help at this size?
Because the market is built at the two ends. Consultancies serve businesses with a full marketing department, and the large supply of freelancers and small agencies serves early-stage companies. An established business with a proven product and 1 or 2 marketers sits between the two, and few providers are set up for it.
Should you hire a CMO instead?
Eventually, yes, once there is a function to lead. A search takes a quarter or more, and a senior leader arriving to a company with no team ends up doing hands-on work the role is overqualified for. Get the marketing running first, then hire the leader onto something that already works.
What should the first piece of work be?
The message. Most companies at this stage are winning larger customers than their website describes, so more spending on the old story pays to reach the wrong buyer. Interviews with recent customers, then a rewritten message, then the spending behind it.
How much does marketing for a portfolio company cost?
It varies by provider type, and the useful comparison is what is included. Consultancy and advisory fees are quoted per engagement and usually cover the thinking rather than the delivery. Stride publishes per-company pricing so the economics are clear before any conversation.
Judge the fit, not the label
The category a provider belongs to matters less than the 5 questions above. Ask who does the work, when it starts, whether strategy is included, how progress is reported, and what your team is left with. Fix the message before you fund more activity. No random acts of marketing.
If you want to see how this runs across a portfolio, the value-creation programme for portfolio companies sets out the levers and the sequence.
When you are ready to look at a specific company, book a strategy session. You will leave with a bird's-eye plan, whether or not we work together.
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