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 specialists at PWC imagine that we’re due for an M&A rebound. Which means advertising and marketing leaders ought to keep able to take care of the complexities of an M&A integration course of.
This GTM post-merger integration guidelines is designed that can assist you take care of the advertising and marketing facets of the transaction, from messaging to CRMs to buyer upsells. Let’s get into it.
GTM Put up-Merger Integration Guidelines
Listed below 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 inner 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 enterprise 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 deliver collectively your management workforce to outline what your organization needs 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 along with your advertising and marketing technique. Work on creating a strategic advertising and marketing plan that comes with the perfect practices and experience from each firms. This may occasionally contain merging groups, consolidating advertising and marketing tech stacks, and reallocating assets.
You’ll wish to assess your total go-to-market technique. You could wish to change the way you strategy sure lead technology ways, comparable 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. General, 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 saying the information of the merger.
This ties into establishing an implementation timeline. Normally after an M&A, there’s a grace interval the place issues aren’t built-in and individuals are working of their established order. 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 powerful technique, plan, and timeline to execute is essential.
3. Put together inner communications methods
Staff ought to be notified immediately of the merger or acquisition earlier than they discover out on their very own. Any M&A may deliver adjustments to their workforce construction, payroll, advantages, and extra.
Contemplate how you intend to share this information along 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 is not going to be disruptive for them
You must plan on some mixture of crafting a standard press launch, pitching the story to media shops, writing emails to prospects, and prepping social media content material.
This can be a massive second! Be sure to’re repurposing and distributing the information throughout your whole channels to seize your viewers’s consideration. Additionally, attain out to present prospects a number of instances in regards to the information, as they may miss a one-time e-mail.
5. Compose updates to firm web sites and social media profiles
Remember to put together updates of any public-facing firm profiles along with your new mission assertion, firm boilerplate, or different advertising and marketing necessities. This contains the big-name socials (LinkedIn, X, TikTok, and so forth) in addition to profiles comparable to Crunchbase or G2. However keep in mind: don’t replace something publicly till your launch date. I’ve seen errors from people scheduling blogs prematurely, solely to have dates modified on the final minute.
Do the identical along with your firm web site(s). Are you merging the websites beneath one roof, or retaining them separate? Will you construct a touchdown web page that describes the advantages of the merger? Plan these actions properly prematurely, as creating or updating a web site is usually a lengthy course of.
6. Consolidate GTM tech stacks
In the course of the M&A course of, GTM groups have to mix their tech stacks simply as a product workforce would.
Understanding the efficiency of the brand new entity will come down to wash reporting, which is admittedly onerous to do in case your GTM tech stack is totally completely different. Having a plan and an architect for this can be essential. Right here’s the place collaboration between your GTM and finance personnel is vital.
Should you’re opting to merge your GTM features, you’ll wish to consolidate buyer databases inside your CRM to make sure accuracy and consistency. This may occasionally contain some cross-platform knowledge migration (for instance: in case you use HubSpot however the acquired firm was working on Salesforce). Whereas this will likely take some effort upfront, it’ll assist cut back duplicate knowledge 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 also help be sure that present service stays intact whereas offering alternatives to amass new prospects.
Navigating an M&A integration course of is usually difficult, however we hope this advertising and marketing post-merger integration guidelines helps simplify the GTM facets of your merge. Should you’re on the lookout for assist with the product and finance sides of the M&A course of, you should definitely obtain our Put up-M&A Integration Bundle for extra knowledgeable insights.
