Able to speed up your post-M&A operations with a go-to-market (GTM) post-merger integration guidelines?
Merging two firms is a posh course of. Advertising performs an essential function in making it profitable. Any merger and acquisition (M&A) transaction adjustments not solely how an organization operates, but in addition the way it presents itself to the market.
Mergers may be disruptive. It’s essential to obviously talk with prospects, workers, and companions to make sure enterprise continuity. Moreover, you’ll wish to make sure you’ve created a cohesive advertising and marketing plan that covers attribution, tech stacks, and pricing.
Regardless of uncertainty within the M&A markets over the previous couple of years, the consultants at PWC consider that we’re due for an M&A rebound. Meaning advertising and marketing leaders ought to keep able to cope with the complexities of an M&A integration course of.
This GTM post-merger integration guidelines is designed that will help you cope with the advertising and marketing points of the transaction, from messaging to CRMs to buyer upsells. Let’s get into it.
GTM Submit-Merger Integration Guidelines
Listed here are seven ideas for advertising and marketing a merger:
Outline your new model messaging.
Develop a unified advertising and marketing plan and timeline.
Put together inside communications methods.
Talk the information to your viewers.
Compose updates to firm web sites and social media profiles.
Consolidate GTM tech stacks.
Determine cross-selling and upselling alternatives.
1. Outline your new model messaging
Oftentimes, buying a brand new firm will change the way in which your small business operates. You would possibly create new product worth props, cater to new audiences, and even redefine the imaginative and prescient and mission of your new entity. It’s essential to convey collectively your management crew to outline what your organization desires to be, do and say.
We advocate conducting a messaging hierarchy train, which can provide help to produce a model messaging framework that everybody can align on.
2. Develop a unified advertising and marketing plan and timeline
Now it’s time to marry your product imaginative and prescient together with your advertising and marketing technique. Work on creating a strategic advertising and marketing plan that includes the most effective practices and experience from each firms. This may increasingly contain merging groups, consolidating advertising and marketing tech stacks, and reallocating assets.
You’ll wish to assess your complete go-to-market technique. It’s possible you’ll wish to change the way you method sure lead technology techniques, equivalent to content material manufacturing or paid promoting. If each advertising and marketing departments had been utilizing completely different attribution fashions, you’ll need to mix or align these. Total, you’re deciding how your new-look advertising and marketing division will function.
On this stage, you’ll additionally wish to set a date for asserting the information of the merger.
This ties into establishing an implementation timeline. Often after an M&A, there’s a grace interval the place issues aren’t built-in and individuals are working of their establishment. From a advertising and marketing perspective, you don’t wish to break what’s working as you determine the best way to combine. However typically, leaders permit this to go on for too lengthy, and the integration course of is stunted. Having a robust technique, plan, and timeline to execute is essential.
3. Put together inside communications methods
Staff must be notified immediately of the merger or acquisition earlier than they discover out on their very own. Any M&A might convey adjustments to their crew construction, payroll, advantages, and extra.
Contemplate how you intend to share this information together with your groups. Use your newly-defined messaging hierarchy to attain consistency.
4. Talk the information to your viewers
The worst factor you are able to do in an acquisition is have your prospects really feel uncared for. Throughout any M&A, there’s going to be change however you don’t need your prospects to really feel that early on. Sharing the information with them as early and as humanly as attainable is admittedly essential to set the tone that this M&A won’t be disruptive for them
It is best to plan on some mixture of crafting a conventional press launch, pitching the story to media shops, writing emails to prospects, and prepping social media content material.
It is a massive second! Ensure you’re repurposing and distributing the information throughout your entire channels to seize your viewers’s consideration. Additionally, attain out to current prospects a number of instances concerning the information, as they may miss a one-time e-mail.
5. Compose updates to firm web sites and social media profiles
You’ll want to put together updates of any public-facing firm profiles together with your new mission assertion, firm boilerplate, or different advertising and marketing necessities. This consists of the big-name socials (LinkedIn, X, TikTok, and so forth) in addition to profiles equivalent to Crunchbase or G2. However keep in mind: don’t replace something publicly till your launch date. I’ve seen errors from of us scheduling blogs prematurely, solely to have dates modified on the final minute.
Do the identical together with your firm web site(s). Are you merging the websites below one roof, or preserving them separate? Will you construct a touchdown web page that describes the advantages of the merger? Plan these actions nicely prematurely, as creating or updating a web site is usually a lengthy course of.
6. Consolidate GTM tech stacks
Through the M&A course of, GTM groups have to mix their tech stacks simply as a product crew would.
Understanding the efficiency of the brand new entity will come down to scrub reporting, which is admittedly laborious to do in case your GTM tech stack is totally completely different. Having a plan and an architect for this might be essential. Right here’s the place collaboration between your GTM and finance personnel is vital.
In the event you’re opting to merge your GTM capabilities, you’ll wish to consolidate buyer databases inside your CRM to make sure accuracy and consistency. This may increasingly contain some cross-platform information migration (for instance: for those who use HubSpot however the acquired firm was operating on Salesforce). Whereas this will take some effort upfront, it would assist scale back duplicate information entry in the long run.
7. Determine cross-selling and upselling alternatives
Analyze the product portfolios of the incoming firms to find alternatives for cross-selling, upselling, and bundling. Touchdown on the proper pricing and packaging methods may help make sure that present service stays intact whereas offering alternatives to amass new prospects.
Navigating an M&A integration course of is often tough, however we hope this advertising and marketing post-merger integration guidelines helps simplify the GTM points of your merge. In the event you’re on the lookout for assist with the product and finance sides of the M&A course of, remember to obtain our Submit-M&A Integration Bundle for extra professional insights.
