Able to speed up your post-M&A operations with a go-to-market (GTM) post-merger integration guidelines?
Merging two corporations is a posh course of. Advertising and marketing performs an vital function in making it profitable. Any merger and acquisition (M&A) transaction modifications not solely how an organization operates, but additionally the way it presents itself to the market.
Mergers might be disruptive. It’s vital to obviously talk with prospects, staff, and companions to make sure enterprise continuity. Moreover, you’ll need 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 points of the transaction, from messaging to CRMs to buyer upsells. Let’s get into it.
GTM Publish-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 small business operates. You may create new product worth props, cater to new audiences, and even redefine the imaginative and prescient and mission of your new entity. It’s vital to carry collectively your management group to outline what your organization needs to be, do and say.
We suggest 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 growing a strategic advertising and marketing plan that includes the perfect practices and experience from each corporations. This will likely contain merging groups, consolidating advertising and marketing tech stacks, and reallocating assets.
You’ll need to assess your whole go-to-market technique. Chances are you’ll need to change the way you method sure lead era ways, comparable to content material manufacturing or paid promoting. If each advertising and marketing departments had been utilizing completely different attribution fashions, you’ll should mix or align these. General, you’re deciding how your new-look advertising and marketing division will function.
On this stage, you’ll additionally need 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 need to break what’s working as you determine the way to combine. However generally, 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 vital.
3. Put together inner communications methods
Workers needs to be notified instantly of the merger or acquisition earlier than they discover out on their very own. Any M&A may carry modifications to their group construction, payroll, advantages, and extra.
Take into account how you intend to share this information together with your groups. Use your newly-defined messaging hierarchy to realize 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 may be 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 potential is basically vital to set the tone that this M&A won’t be disruptive for them
It’s 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 huge second! Be sure you’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 occasions in regards to the information, as they could 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 together with your new mission assertion, firm boilerplate, or different advertising and marketing necessities. This contains the big-name socials (LinkedIn, X, TikTok, and so on) 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 of us scheduling blogs upfront, solely to have dates modified on the final minute.
Do the identical together with your firm web site(s). Are you merging the websites underneath one roof, or maintaining them separate? Will you construct a touchdown web page that describes the advantages of the merger? Plan these actions nicely upfront, as creating or updating an internet site generally is 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 group would.
Understanding the efficiency of the brand new entity will come down to wash reporting, which is basically laborious to do in case your GTM tech stack is totally completely different. Having a plan and an architect for this will likely be essential. Right here’s the place collaboration between your GTM and finance personnel is essential.
If you happen to’re opting to merge your GTM capabilities, you’ll need to consolidate buyer databases inside your CRM to make sure accuracy and consistency. This will likely contain some cross-platform knowledge migration (for instance: if you happen to use HubSpot however the acquired firm was operating on Salesforce). Whereas this will likely take some effort upfront, it would assist scale back duplicate knowledge entry in the long run.
7. Determine cross-selling and upselling alternatives
Analyze the product portfolios of the incoming corporations to find alternatives for cross-selling, upselling, and bundling. Touchdown on the suitable pricing and packaging methods may help be certain that present service stays intact whereas offering alternatives to accumulate 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. If you happen to’re searching for assist with the product and finance sides of the M&A course of, be sure you obtain our Publish-M&A Integration Bundle for extra knowledgeable insights.
