Growth Due Diligence
Pre-acquisition review of a target's marketing engine: channel concentration risk, CAC trends, tracking integrity, and how much of the growth story is real versus bought.
Private equity growth advisory
The growth seat your
portfolio is missing
Your portfolio companies are operationally sound — but nobody at the table owns growth. A full-time CMO at every company doesn't pencil, so marketing gets delegated to vendors no one is qualified to evaluate. Impaxium fills that seat across the portfolio.
2 exitsIncluding a PE sale at 18× EBITDA
$46M+Annual ad budgets managed
50%ROI delivered at eight-figure spend
0Junior staff between you and the work
The track record of the operator in the seat — someone who has built the growth story buyers paid a premium for.
The gap
Operationally sound. Commercially under-led.
It's the most common shape in the lower middle market: a portfolio company with solid operations, real customers, and a marketing function that's either a junior hire, an unsupervised agency, or the founder's leftover instincts. The fund sees the spend in the board pack — nobody can say what it's actually producing, whether CAC is sustainable, or how the growth story will read at exit.
Portfolio Marketing Audits
A straight answer on what each company's spend is producing — account structure, measurement accuracy, agency performance, and the fixes ranked by impact.
Unit-Economics Framework
One consistent CAC, LTV, and payback methodology across every company, so the board compares growth on equal terms instead of each company's homemade math.
Vendor & Team Oversight
Someone qualified to manage the agencies, hold internal teams to targets, and know when a vendor's report is performance and when it's theater.
Board-Level Reporting
Quarterly growth reviews in the language of operators and investors — spend, CAC, payback, and pipeline — not impressions and engagement rates.
Fractional CMO Seat
Senior growth leadership embedded in a portfolio company that's between hires or below the headcount line — setting strategy and running the function hands-on.
Engagement models
Three ways the seat gets filled
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Portfolio Advisory
Ongoing engagement across the portfolio: audits, the shared unit-economics standard, vendor oversight, and quarterly board reporting. One growth resource, every company covered.
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Fractional CMO
Embedded with a single portfolio company that needs senior growth leadership now — owning strategy, channels, and the team until the company grows into a full-time hire.
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Diligence Sprint
Deal-cycle engagement on an acquisition target: a focused review of the marketing engine and growth durability, delivered in time to inform the model and the price.
Common questions
How funds usually ask about this
How is this different from hiring an agency at each portfolio company?
An agency executes a channel; this seat decides whether that channel, that agency, and that spend deserve to exist. Execution agencies optimize what they're handed. The advisory seat sits on your side of the table — setting the strategy, the standards, and the accountability that execution partners operate inside.
Do you replace the agencies and teams already in place?
No — at least not by default. Good vendors and teams get clearer targets and better measurement, which usually makes them perform better. Underperformers become visible quickly once everyone is graded against the same unit economics, and the fund decides what to do with that information.
Where do engagements usually start?
With a portfolio audit. Before any strategy conversation, we establish what's actually true: what each company spends, what it produces, whether the tracking can be trusted, and where the largest gaps are. The audit findings then define the shape of the ongoing engagement.
Get started
Start with a portfolio conversation
Tell us about the portfolio — or the deal in motion — and we'll come back with how we'd approach it. Typical response within one business day.
No obligation, no sales sequence. Your information is never shared.