From Earnings Call to Deal Pipeline:
How CMOs Can Turn Capital-Markets Moments into Campaigns

1. Why the earnings cycle is a missed commercial opportunity

For most issuers, the earnings cycle is one of the most intensive communication efforts of the year. Finance, Investor Relations and the Company Secretary’s office coordinate numbers, guidance, risk language and Q&A preparation. The result is a carefully curated narrative delivered through the earnings call, the results release, the investor presentation and, later, the Annual or Integrated Report. Guidance from investor-relations specialists and market operators consistently describes earnings calls as a critical forum where management explains recent performance, strategy and outlook to investors and analysts.(BNY)

Yet for many organisations, the story ends there. Once the call transcript is published and the presentation is uploaded, the content disappears into an archive of PDFs. The commercial teams responsible for customers, partners and talent rarely receive the benefit of this well-tested narrative. Marketing teams have to improvise campaigns using generic product messaging or sporadic thought leadership, while the most investor-grade material stays confined to IR websites and stock-exchange filings.

For CFOs and Company Secretaries, this is a paradox. The organisation spends substantial time and effort crafting a coherent message for the capital markets, supported by data and Board-approved language. At the same time, the business development and marketing functions invest in separate campaigns that may not fully reflect the strategic messages delivered to investors.

This blog is written from the finance and governance vantage point. Its purpose is to show how earnings cycles and Annual Reports can be converted into a structured marketing engine, and why this matters for valuation, reputation and commercial outcomes. It is also a practical invitation: if you find the arguments persuasive, forward this article to your CMO and suggest a joint session on your “earnings-to-engine” plan for FY26.

“When investor-grade narratives stay confined to filings, commercial teams default to generic messaging. Using earnings-cycle content as a structured marketing engine aligns campaigns with strategy and improves credibility with customers and partners.”

2. Earnings calls and Annual Reports as underused content assets

Investor-relations guidance often recommends that management teams structure earnings calls around strategy, performance, outlook and risk, rather than a recital of numbers.(Irwin) When done properly, this produces a dense set of assets that are inherently credible:

  • A strategic narrative that has been tested with the Board.

  • Segment-wise explanations of drivers, headwinds and differentiators.

  • Crisp responses to analyst questions that surface the most material concerns.

  • A refined set of charts and proof points in the results deck.

  • A formal record of performance and outlook in the Annual or Integrated Report, including MD&A, risk factors and ESG sections.

Communications scholars describe investor relations as a distinct branch of corporate communication, tasked with maintaining relationships with financial stakeholders and intermediaries.(ResearchGate) At the same time, advisory firms and practitioners increasingly argue that investor relations, corporate communications and marketing should be integrated to ensure a consistent corporate narrative across audiences.(edelmansmithfield.com)

In practice, however, many organisations treat these domains as separate silos. Investor content is produced to meet disclosure obligations and satisfy analysts. Marketing content is produced for brand, leads and events. The two universes intersect only occasionally. That separation has three costs:

  1. Narrative inconsistency – customers and partners hear a different story from the one investors hear about growth drivers, capital allocation and risk.

  2. Inefficient content spend – the organisation funds high-quality narrative work for IR, then funds parallel creative work for marketing, rather than repurposing.

  3. Missed commercial leverage – strategic proof points that resonate with investors could also persuade customers, prospective partners and high-calibre employees, yet they are not reused.

MarCom Studio has been designed precisely to close this gap: it creates a predictable top-of-funnel system that uses reports, webinars and other assets to attract qualified prospects, educate them with sequenced content, and convert intent on well-structured landing experiences. The program maps assets to the awareness–consideration–decision journey and tracks each step with tagging and reviews.(Dickenson World –)

To unlock this potential, CFOs and CSs do not need to become marketing experts. They do, however, need to recognise the earnings cycle as a generator of premium content and insist that it feeds a coherent marketing funnel rather than remaining a compliance event.

3. Defining the “earnings-to-engine” workflow

A practical way to think about integration is to imagine the earnings cycle as a multi-stage engine with three phases: Before, During and After the results event.

3.1 Before: align finance, IR and marketing on themes

Several best-practice notes on earnings calls emphasise the importance of early planning, clear objectives and carefully crafted messaging.(IR Impact) That planning effort can easily be expanded to include marketing.

Four actions can be built into the pre-earnings timetable:

  1. Joint theme selection

    • Identify 3–5 themes that will anchor the quarter: for example, disciplined capital allocation, progress on a specific segment, or a distinctive ESG capability.

    • Confirm that these themes are expressed consistently in the press release, investor deck, script and Q&A preparation.

  2. Content hierarchy

    • Translate the themes into a simple hierarchy: one primary narrative and a small set of supporting narratives.

    • Agree which charts, case examples or customer anecdotes best illustrate each narrative.

  3. Marketing brief

    • Provide the CMO with an advance brief summarising the key points, data and quotes that will be available after the call.

    • Clarify any regulatory sensitivities so that future content remains compliant with listing rules and fair-disclosure principles.

  4. Landing infrastructure

    • Ensure that there is a designated section on the corporate or investor website that can host post-results content: a campaign page, a cluster of short articles or a hub aligned with the MarCom Studio funnel design.(Dickenson World –)

This pre-alignment means that, once the numbers are public, the marketing team can move quickly, drawing from an already-approved corpus rather than starting from a blank page.

“As earnings calls concentrate attention and generate high signal content, systematically capturing and repurposing this material turns approved disclosures into a structured pipeline for campaigns, credibility and commercial impact.”

3.2 During: capture the moment

The results day concentrates attention: analysts, journalists, employees and often customers watch the headline numbers and listen to the call. IR and webcast providers confirm that earnings calls serve not only investors but also internal audiences seeking clarity on direction.(BNY)

From a marketing perspective, this is a high-signal event that generates material suitable for multiple channels. The “during” phase is about capturing assets in a way that can be repurposed immediately after the event:

  • Live clipping:

    • Record short segments where the CEO or CFO articulates the strategy, explains a segment’s performance or addresses a concern.

    • Identify 15–30 second excerpts that would work as video snippets for digital channels, subject to legal and compliance review.

  • Chart library:

    • Save key charts in editable formats suitable for social carousels, infographics and one-pagers.

    • Tag each chart by theme (for example, margin resilience, digital adoption, sustainability metrics) in the central MarCom asset library.(Dickenson World –)

  • Quote bank:

    • Maintain a document of notable quotes from the script and the Q&A session, grouped by theme and stakeholder relevance.

    • Flag those that offer clear customer or partner benefits (for example, reduced downtime, improved service quality, cost transparency).

  • Sentiment notes:

    • Capture analyst and media reactions, identifying which messages generated follow-up questions or positive commentary. This feedback is valuable for refining subsequent campaigns.(Growth Equity Interview Guide)

None of these activities requires additional risk-taking. They are simply a more systematic way of archiving material that is already public and approved.

3.3 After: turn disclosures into structured campaigns

Once the market has digested the numbers, the emphasis can shift to structured outreach across the buyer journey. Modern content-marketing frameworks describe the funnel in terms of awareness, consideration and decision stages, sometimes followed by loyalty or advocacy.(Thruuu)

Earnings-derived messages can feed each stage:

  • Awareness

    • Short posts or visual snippets that state the strategic direction and highlight one or two proof points: a growth milestone, a new market entry, or a sustainability achievement.

    • Educational content that explains a structural trend referenced in the MD&A, positioned as thought leadership rather than promotion.(Taboola.com)

  • Consideration

    • Deeper articles, blogs or webinars that elaborate on how the company is solving specific customer problems, drawing directly from segment commentary in the results deck.

    • Sector-focused variants that translate investor narratives into practical benefits for customers in that sector.

  • Decision

    • Case studies and solution briefs that link quantitative results to specific deployments or partnerships.

    • Content aimed at procurement and risk committees, emphasising reliability, governance and long-term commitment, built from the governance and risk sections of the Annual Report.

Repurposing content in this way is consistent with widely recognised content-marketing practice, which advocates transforming core assets such as reports and webinars into multiple formats and channels in order to improve reach and effectiveness, rather than recreating material from scratch.(Content Marketing Institute)

In the MarCom Studio model, these assets are connected through a content calendar and a set of landing experiences, each with clear calls to action and tracking. The result is an “earnings-to-engine” workflow in which each quarter’s narrative feeds a measurable top-of-funnel and mid-funnel program rather than a single disclosure event.(Dickenson World –)

4. Mapping investor content to the buyer funnel

To make this concrete, it is helpful to examine how typical investor artefacts can map to the stages of a marketing funnel.

Table: Example mapping of investor artefacts to funnel stages

Investor artefact Funnel stage Example marketing asset
CEO letter and strategy slides Awareness Short “state of the sector” article on the corporate site; executive LinkedIn post summarising three forward priorities.
Segment commentary in MD&A Consideration Sector-specific explainer pages showing outcomes, with diagrams derived from the results deck.
Case examples from earnings script Consideration / Decision Customer case studies or short video testimonials, framed within the narrative already used for investors.
Capital allocation and balance-sheet discussion Decision One-page “financial strength” brief for procurement and risk teams, emphasising resilience and investment capacity.
ESG/BRSR disclosures and KPIs Awareness / Consideration Sustainability landing page, thematic articles and infographics using existing ESG metrics and frameworks.

Content-strategy sources consistently emphasise that different stages of the funnel require distinct formats and depth: broad educational material at the top, detailed solution and comparison material in the middle, and highly specific, trust-building evidence near the point of decision.(Thruuu) Investor artefacts already span this spectrum. The key is to classify them explicitly and make them available to the CMO within a structured system.

For a CFO or Company Secretary, this mapping delivers comfort on three fronts:

  1. Coherence – the same core messages reach investors, customers, partners, regulators and potential employees.

  2. Efficiency – narrative work funded for IR yields incremental value in business development, recruitment and reputation.

  3. Traceability – the organisation can measure which narratives generate material engagement, using MarCom Studio’s tagging and review process.(Dickenson World –)

“When investor content is classified by funnel stage, disclosures gain commercial utility – delivering consistent messages, improving efficiency and enabling measurable engagement across customers, partners and regulators.”

5. Governance and compliance: aligning IR, Legal and Marketing

One concern often raised by CFOs and CSs is whether such repurposing could introduce regulatory risk. Guidance from exchanges, securities regulators and professional bodies underscores the importance of consistency, fair disclosure and accurate representation of performance.(ResearchGate)

In practice, a disciplined earnings-to-engine system can improve governance rather than weaken it:

  • Single source of truth

    • Investor narrative, Annual Report text and marketing copy draw from the same master repository, under the stewardship of the IR and corporate reporting teams.

    • Any updates triggered by new guidance, restatements or clarifications propagate through the repository and are reflected across channels.

  • Approval workflows

    • Marketing materials derived from investor content follow a streamlined approval path: verification by IR, legal sign-off where required, then release.

    • Because the underlying language has often already been Board-approved, the incremental review burden is manageable.

  • Clear audience targeting

    • Content that contains guidance or forward-looking statements remains in investor-oriented contexts, with appropriate disclaimers.

    • Customer-facing content focuses on structural advantages, use cases and capabilities grounded in historical performance and publicly disclosed strategy.

Investors increasingly expect connected storytelling across channels, and advisory firms argue that integrating investor relations, corporate communications and marketing strengthens both message discipline and stakeholder trust.(edelmansmithfield.com) An earnings-to-engine workflow is simply a practical implementation of that integrated model.

6. A 90-day starting plan for FY26

To move from concept to execution, CFOs and CSs can sponsor a 90-day pilot aligned with an upcoming quarter. A phased outline might look as follows.

Weeks 1–3: Design the model

  • Convene a working session with IR, Corporate Communications and Marketing to explain the goal: convert the next earnings cycle into a structured content program.

  • Select 3–5 strategic themes for the quarter and agree on how they appear in the press release, deck and script.

  • Ask the CMO to nominate one campaign or segment where earnings-derived content would be most relevant.

Weeks 4–6: Build the asset pipeline

  • As the earnings materials are finalised, create a parallel inventory of charts, proof points and quotes tagged by theme and potential funnel stage.

  • Prepare outlines for 3–4 post-results content pieces (for example, a sector insight article, a customer-focused explainer, a short video).

  • Define simple KPIs: website visits to the campaign page, form fills, meeting requests, or engagement from targeted accounts.

Weeks 7–10: Execute and measure

  • Publish a sequence of assets in the two to three weeks following the call, aligned with awareness, consideration and decision stages.

  • Integrate assets into existing email, social and sales-enablement workflows, supported by MarCom Studio’s system for tagging and review.(Dickenson World –)

  • Review performance after 30 and 60 days, focusing on narrative resonance rather than crude volume measures alone.

Weeks 11–13: Consolidate and refine

  • Document what worked and what did not. Which narratives generated interest from customers, partners or talent? Which formats travelled best?

  • Decide whether to expand the model to additional segments, geographies or product lines in the next quarter.

  • Present the pilot outcomes to the Board as part of the MD&A and governance discussion, reinforcing that narrative work now has a measurable commercial and reputational dimension.

This modest pilot can be executed without substantial new budget. The primary investment is coordination time and a commitment to treat the earnings cycle as a strategic content asset rather than a once-off disclosure event.

7. Conclusion: a shared agenda for CFOs, CSs and CMOs

Earnings calls and Annual Reports are among the most carefully constructed narratives any organisation produces. They integrate strategy, performance, risk and governance in a way that has been tested with the Board and scrutinised by investors. At the same time, modern marketing practice places increasing emphasis on coherent, sequenced content that guides prospects through awareness, consideration and decision stages, supported by reliable analytics.(Thruuu)

The gap between these two worlds is no longer sustainable. In an environment where stakeholders expect transparency, consistency and substance, there is considerable value in ensuring that the story told on results day is the same story that customers, partners and prospective employees encounter in campaigns and on digital properties.

For CFOs and Company Secretaries, the question is not whether to “do more marketing”, but whether the organisation is receiving a fair return on the narrative work it already undertakes for the capital markets. An integrated earnings-to-engine model, underpinned by a MarCom Studio approach, provides a disciplined way to realise that return.

If, after reading this, you are not entirely certain how your organisation repurposes its earnings content beyond the IR section of the website, this may be the moment to forward the article to your CMO and propose a short working session. That conversation can be the first step towards a FY26 in which every capital-markets moment is also a structured opportunity to advance the commercial agenda.

Footnotes:

  1. BNY Mellon, “IR Practice Note: The Earnings Conference Call,” 2024. Available at: https://www.bny.com/content/dam/bnymellon/documents/pdf/solutions/ir-practice-notes-earnings-call.pdf (BNY)

  2. Irwin, “The Best Practices for Effective Earnings Calls,” blog article. Available at: https://www.getirwin.com/blog/the-best-practices-for-effective-earnings-calls (Irwin)

  3. Edelman Smithfield, “Creating a Connected Story: How IR and Comms can Collaborate to Create the Connected Story ‘Sweet Spot’,” 2024. Available at: https://www.edelmansmithfield.com/creating-connected-story-how-ir-and-comms-can-collaborate-create-connected-story-sweet-spot (edelmansmithfield.com)

  4. Christian Pieter Hoffmann, “Investor Relations Communication,” in The International Encyclopedia of Strategic Communication, Wiley, 2018. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327879228_Investor_Relations_Communication (ResearchGate)

  5. Mark Sue, “Establishing Investor Relations and Corporate Communications,” LinkedIn article. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/establishing-investor-relations-corporate-mark-sue (LinkedIn)

  6. IR-impact, “Nine Best Practices for Hosting an Effective Earnings Call,” 2023. Available at: https://www.ir-impact.com/2023/10/nine-best-practices-hosting-effective-earnings-call/ (IR Impact)

  7. McKinsey & Company, Werner Rehm, “Three Steps to a More Productive Earnings Call,” 2013. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/three-steps-to-a-more-productive-earnings-call (McKinsey & Company)

  8. Dickenson World, “Marcom Studio,” service description. Available at: https://dickensonworld.com/marcom-studio-1/ (Dickenson World -)

  9. Dickenson World, “Content Marketing – Financial PR,” service overview. Available at: https://dickensonworld.com/services/financial-public-relation/content-marketing/ (Dickenson World -)

  10. Content Marketing Institute, “7 Ways to Repurpose Content and Grow Your Customer Base.” Available at: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/content-marketing-strategy/7-ways-to-repurpose-content-and-grow-your-customer-base (Content Marketing Institute)

  11. WordStream, “8 Content Repurposing Examples from Marketing Experts,” 2025. Available at: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/content-repurposing (WordStream)

  12. Cognism, “Content Repurposing: B2B Strategy, Templates & Examples,” 2025. Available at: https://www.cognism.com/blog/content-repurposing (cognism.com)

  13. thruuu, “Content Marketing Funnel: 24 Examples per Stage of the Buyer Journey,” 2023. Available at: https://thruuu.com/blog/content-marketing-funnel/ (Thruuu)

  14. Amazon Ads, “What is a Marketing Funnel? How They Work, Stages & Explanation,” available at: https://advertising.amazon.com/library/guides/marketing-funnel (Amazon Ads)

  15. Contentsquare, “The Marketing Funnel: Stages, Strategies, & How to Optimize,” 2025. Available at: https://contentsquare.com/guides/marketing-funnel/ (Contentsquare)

  16. Taboola, “Content Marketing Funnel: Awareness to Conversion,” 2025. Available at: https://www.taboola.com/marketing-hub/distribute-content-buyer-journey/ (Taboola.com)

  17. Snov.io, “Awareness, Consideration & Decision: How to Convert at Each Stage,” 2025. Available at: https://snov.io/blog/awareness-consideration-decision-what-to-convert-with-at-each-stage/ (Snov.io)

  18. Pathmonk, “The Consideration Stage: Strategies and Best Types of Content,” 2024. Available at: https://pathmonk.com/the-consideration-stage-strategies-and-types-of-content/ (Buying Journey Optimization | Pathmonk)

  19. Public Media Solution, “Investor Relations in Public Relations: Bridging Business and Investors,” 2025. Available at: https://publicmediasolution.com/blog/investor-relations-in-public-relations-bridging-business-and-investors/ (Public Media Solution – Pr Agency)

Contact Us: To learn more or schedule a consultation, please reach out to us at www.dickensonworld.com
Email:enquiry@dickensonworld.com.

About the Author

Shankhini Saha, the Director of Investor Relations at Dickenson, holds an MPhil with distinction from the University of Cambridge, UK, and a BA magna cum laude from The New School, USA. Specializing in stakeholder engagement across diverse sectors, Shankhini is dedicated to transparent communication and providing strategic insights into clients’ financial performance and growth initiatives. With a proven track record of managing complex investor relations for a diverse portfolio of global clients, she excels in crafting impactful narratives that resonate with investors, analysts, and stakeholders. Shankhini’s leadership in high-profile quarterly results hosting and comprehensive IR campaigns showcases her commitment to creating lasting value for issuers in the global capital market.

From Earnings Call to Deal Pipeline

To download and save this article.

Download PDF

Authored by:

Shankhini Saha
Director, Dickenson World

Visit www.dickensonworld.com to learn more about our services and how we can help streamline your corporate reporting process.