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About The Investor Relations Group

The Investor Relations Group (IRG) is a full-service corporate communications firm that provides investor relations and public relations services to nano-, micro- and small-cap companies, in a budget-conscious way, delivering the equivalent of in-house services typically available only to a large-cap company.

Our History
Dian Griesel founded The Investor Relations Group in October 1996 after conducting a survey of 400 fund managers to determine what makes them invest. During her research, she discovered that it was not market cap, price, liquidity, stage of development or revenue that was the most important factor affecting an investment decision. Without exception, each fund manager told her that it was the management of the company that mattered most. If these financial professionals believed in the ability of management to deliver, no matter how small the company, they were likely to make an investment.

Beginning with publicly traded clients under $500 million in market cap—and most trading below $100 million, with products in very early development—IRG was formed. We built an investor relations department focused on small-cap investors—both family funds and retail brokers, as well as the shareholders of our clients’ peers. We deliver detailed competitive analysis reports and book very targeted one-on-one meetings or teleconferences for clients with fund managers, analysts and brokers who have anywhere from $250,000 to $5 billion under management. These meetings have a long, strong history of increasing trading volume, creating sales of products and services, and introducing new partnership opportunities.

The public relations department at IRG is equally responsible for our clients’ overall success. The media outreach effort is also focused on making our respective corporate officers “thought leaders” within their industry. Accordingly, our senior journalist staff writers ghostwrite industry issue pieces, which our PR staff then places in relevant publications. Media placement highlights secured by IRG’s public relations executives during the past 24 months include cover or feature articles in: The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Newsday, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, TIME, Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Newsweek, Allure, W, Reader’s Digest, Crain’s, Barron’s, PharmaVOICE, and R&D Directions; broadcast segments on CBS’s 60 Minutes, ABC’s 20/20, FOX News, Bill O’Reilly, Tech TV, NY1, Bloomberg TV, and CNBC’s Power Lunch; and thousands of other print, online, radio and broadcast media placements nationwide. Each year, IRG delivers millions of dollars in advertising equivalency for its clients.

Since its inception, IRG’s goal has been to raise the profiles of its respective small publicly traded client companies. We focus our energies on highlighting their disruptive technologies and best-of-breed management teams within the investment community and media-at-large. Over 90% of IRG’s business has resulted from referrals by fund managers, bankers, consultants, advisors, board members or corporate officers. IRG has particular experience with public companies whose market caps are $500 million or less.

Our Philosophy
IRG believes in blurring the lines between investor relations and public relations: A media piece is only valuable if it can be shared with investors or other business partners while being perceived as a positive corporate development. As such, we spend a tremendous amount of time to find the best ways to articulate the key corporate messages. We then make sure that both the investment and media communities are aware of ongoing progress. For example, if a media piece appears in a top trade publication, we make sure that investors who may not read that trade learn about the story nonetheless. This tactic is crucial to building credibility via third-party endorsements.

IRG’s laser focus on daily performance results in: creation of messages that connect, scheduling of pre-qualified road shows, origination of news, transformation of management teams into thought leaders, outreach to traditional and new media, and programs designed and tailored to suit smaller companies. In order to ensure a productive and transparent working relationship with our clients, executive management teams receive a daily work summary at the end of every business day.

Best of Traditional and Cutting-Edge Social Media
IRG believes nothing will ever replace one-on-one meetings with a fund manager, analyst, reporter or producer. Excellent writing and communication skills remain crucial as well. However, the impact of the Internet cannot be ignored. IRG is on the cutting edge of new media tactics that are incorporated into our programs to broaden our reach to investors and the media worldwide. Our website IRGnews.com attracts a rapidly rising number of new visitors every month. Our Twitter feed is in the Top 10% of Twitter feeds as we publish news every 15 minutes. We maintain our own email list that has over 80,000 subscribers who have opted-in to receive our weekly newsletter, Eye on IRGnews.com.

By incorporating the best practices in both traditional and new media corporate communications, IRG delivers results for its portfolio clients.

Our Services:

Investor Relations

Targeted one-on-one investor meetings and conference calls with the top nano-, micro- and small-cap decision-making analysts and portfolio managers of corporate, business and family funds, using our proprietary competitive analysis approach (road shows). We secure a minimum of eight to fifteen-plus pre-qualified meetings per month, for a total of 150 to 200+ unique introductions per year per company.
Access to IRG’s MicroCaptivations Wire of 240,000+ professional investors. Effectively IRG’s in-house, proprietary news service, this is a triple opted-in, fully compliant list of 134,000 registered representatives, 13,000 registered investment advisors, 103,000 buy-side fund managers and analysts. (We use an outside vendor that is fully compliant legally for e-mailings to recipients in all 50 states.) Cost per use is $2,500, with the first wire compliments of IRG.
A Comprehensive Peer (competitive) Analysis Report that provides detailed information about peer group companies including: covering analysts and all reporting institutional investor holdings with full names, titles, addresses and other related contact information once contact is confirmed.
Development of wire-house analyst research coverage and inclusion in peer reports as a comparable company.
Corporate message refinement that is flexible, according to ongoing developments.
A Fact Sheet that is flexible, in terms of ongoing developments.
Investor presentations in PowerPoint/slide formats and PDF.
All written and edited shareholder communications, such as earnings releases, quarterly reports and other developments.
Postcards custom-designed and mailed via traditional mail to brokers every month (600 per month).
“Red-Cell” coaching for investor meetings and conference calls.
Conference call coordination, including scripting, Q&A preparation, and all details for execution, including Webcasting.
Frank feedback collected from all road show meetings in order to help fine-tune corporate messaging.
Annual report production: writing and assisting in the selection and hiring of graphic artists, designers, and printers for the complete management of the publication.
Handling and screening investor inquiries.
Nurturing relationships with current and potential investors.
Mail and request fulfillment processing.
Introductions in the investment banking world.
Help in developing a Board of Directors—particularly “independent” directors.
Annual meetings, organizing as appropriate.
Peer group/industry analysis provided on a regular basis.
Perception audits gathered from the investment community.
Strategic planning and implementation.
IRG establishes your company’s web presence through our award-winning website, IRGnews.com, and through major social networking and multimedia sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, FriendFeed, Vimeo and YouTube.
Access to our contact base for traditional mailings under our MicroCaptivations Fact Only, No Hype newsletter. Cost is $1.25 per piece for a printed, four-page U.S. Postal First Class print/label/mail. IRG databases for traditional mailings include: 100,000+ buy-side fund managers/analysts; 540,000 registered representatives (brokers); 34,000 registered investment advisors; 120,000 high-net worth individuals.

Public Relations

Unique news pieces and media pitches originated and written by our award-winning, well-published editorial staff (approximately 20+ pieces per year)—above and beyond writing normal “material” news announcements.
Ghostwritten/bylined white papers and other high-level trade articles written by our staff PhDs (one minimum per year).
Corporate, product and technology-related stories placed in targeted trade publications to build sales and partnerships.
National and regional trend pieces written and placed in leading magazines and newspapers.
Syndication stories and feature feeds to more than 16,000 newspaper and other print editors nationwide.
Original “feature feed” stories tying your company’s product or service to trends and national/world events.
Comprehensive social media outreach: Leveraging of our strong presence, understanding and growing following across the major social media networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Flickr, FriendFeed, etc.)
Dissemination of your news through your own specialized webpage on our website, IRGnews.com, and through our social networks, Eye on IRGnews.com (our weekly newsletter), RSS feeds and proprietary e-mail lists of uniquely targeted investors and media.
On-camera media training in our studios.
Satellite media tours booked in the Top 20 U.S. markets.
Financial news formats targeted: CNBC, PowerLunch, Cavuto Report, Bloomberg TV, etc.
Multiple three-minute CEO interviews as television-quality production reels for TV/cable and Internet that are produced and edited in our studios.
Background materials (B-roll) production for television, cable and trade events.
Profiles written of CEOs and other top company officers.
Headshots taken at our studios.
Crisis management plans.
Discounted clipping services to document media coverage.