Is Your Business (and Portfolio Companies) Truly Ready for 2025?

Hey, it’s David

I had a candid chat with my friend Chris Muccio recently. The topic? Deal generation and how businesses are staying ahead (or falling behind) in today’s digital landscape.

I’ll be honest: that conversation was a bit of a wake-up call.

I realized I’m still more comfortable doing business using “yesterday’s approach” for marketing strategies, but I don’t want to let the digital world pass me by.

If you’re like me, and I know many of you are, you’re still trying to grow your business the old-fashioned way:

• Lunch meetings and rounds of golf.

• Wine tastings and fine dining.

• Referrals from existing clients.

Referrals especially have been a cornerstone of how I’ve grown my business and I’ll never waver from the belief in the value of relationships.

But lately, I’ve grown wary of spending $3,000 on cross-country conferences or $30 on a single glass of orange juice at a prospect breakfast, only to walk away with… uncertainty.

Meanwhile, younger competitors are out there playing a completely different game: one that’s digital-first, scalable, and doesn’t involve overpriced OJ.

To get a better picture of just how far behind many of us might be, Chris and I ran a little experiment. We evaluated nearly 100 PEGs in my network, looking at their digital marketing readiness.

The results? Let’s just say they were sobering:

• 76% of the businesses he analyzed FAILED his “digital readiness” assessment

• Their average domain rank was 19, which means very few of them would appear in a typical Google search of people who might be searching for their services

• Only 3.6% of the businesses are using paid traffic for lead generation – across the B2B space this is closer to 80%!

• 74% don’t use Facebook and 66% don’t use X (formerly Twitter) – but even those who do, aren’t posting regularly enough to get engagement and attract leads

• 63% of those Chris analyzed aren’t actively using LinkedIn - and all 100% of them received 0 engagement on this underutilized business platform.

Chris put it bluntly: “Prospects today search for businesses online first.” They check your presence, reviews, and social media engagement long before reaching out. If they don’t find you, or if what they find isn’t compelling, you’ve already lost before you tried to set up your first meeting.

Here’s the big question: If someone searched for your business online today, what would they see? Would they find your firm compelling?

We are currently working on publishing a full report of our findings, but until then you can see the Executive Summary we built by clicking below. Take a moment to do so and start to figure out where your firm stands in the digital world.

The first step to staying competitive in 2025 is understanding where you are today.

Are you enjoying the content we’re sharing from BoardSpire?

I’d love to hear from you, so I’d appreciate your feedback in this quick poll:

Thank you!

David