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 position 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 will be disruptive. It’s essential to obviously talk with prospects, workers, 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. Meaning 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 will help you take care of the advertising and marketing features 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 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 best way your corporation 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 essential to deliver collectively your management staff to outline what your organization needs to be, do and say.
We suggest conducting a messaging hierarchy train, which is able to allow you 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 growing a strategic advertising and marketing plan that includes the very best practices and experience from each firms. This will likely contain merging groups, consolidating advertising and marketing tech stacks, and reallocating assets.
You’ll need to assess your complete go-to-market technique. It’s possible you’ll need to change the way you method sure lead technology techniques, comparable to content material manufacturing or paid promoting. If each advertising and marketing departments have been utilizing totally different attribution fashions, you’ll must 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 saying 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 established order. From a advertising and marketing perspective, you don’t need to break what’s working as you determine tips on how 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 inner communications methods
Workers ought to be notified immediately of the merger or acquisition earlier than they discover out on their very own. Any M&A might deliver modifications to their staff construction, payroll, advantages, and extra.
Think about how you intend to share this information along 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 attainable is actually essential to set the tone that this M&A won’t be disruptive for them
You need 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! Ensure you’re repurposing and distributing the information throughout your entire channels to seize your viewers’s consideration. Additionally, attain out to present 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
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 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 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 underneath one roof, or retaining 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 an internet 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 staff would.
Understanding the efficiency of the brand new entity will come down to scrub reporting, which is actually arduous to do in case your GTM tech stack is totally totally 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.
When you’re opting to merge your GTM features, 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 working on Salesforce). Whereas this may increasingly take some effort upfront, it is going to assist scale 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 fitting pricing and packaging methods may also help make sure that present service stays intact whereas offering alternatives to accumulate 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 features of your merge. When you’re on the lookout for assist with the product and finance sides of the M&A course of, be sure you obtain our Submit-M&A Integration Bundle for extra knowledgeable insights.
