Able to speed up your post-M&A operations with a go-to-market (GTM) post-merger integration guidelines?
Merging two firms is a fancy course of. Advertising and marketing performs an necessary position 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 might be disruptive. It’s necessary to obviously talk with clients, workers, and companions to make sure enterprise continuity. Moreover, you’ll wish to make sure you’ve created a cohesive advertising 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 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 facets of the transaction, from messaging to CRMs to buyer upsells. Let’s get into it.
GTM Submit-Merger Integration Guidelines
Listed below are seven ideas for advertising a merger:
- Outline your new model messaging.
- Develop a unified advertising 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 necessary to convey collectively your management crew to outline what your organization needs to be, do and say.
We advocate conducting a messaging hierarchy train, which is able to provide help to produce a model messaging framework that everybody can align on.
2. Develop a unified advertising plan and timeline
Now it’s time to marry your product imaginative and prescient along with your advertising technique. Work on growing a strategic advertising plan that includes one of the best practices and experience from each firms. This may occasionally contain merging groups, consolidating advertising tech stacks, and reallocating sources.
You’ll wish to assess your whole go-to-market technique. Chances are you’ll wish to change the way you strategy sure lead technology ways, reminiscent of content material manufacturing or paid promoting. If each advertising 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 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 persons are working of their established order. From a advertising perspective, you don’t wish to break what’s working as you determine how you can combine. However typically, leaders enable this to go on for too lengthy, and the integration course of is stunted. Having a robust technique, plan, and timeline to execute is necessary.
3. Put together inner communications methods
Staff must be notified immediately of the merger or acquisition earlier than they discover out on their very own. Any M&A may convey adjustments to their crew 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 clients really feel uncared for. Throughout any M&A, there may be going to be change however you don’t need your clients to really feel that early on. Sharing the information with them as early and as humanly as doable is basically necessary to set the tone that this M&A won’t be disruptive for them
You need to plan on some mixture of crafting a standard press launch, pitching the story to media retailers, writing emails to clients, and prepping social media content material.
This can be a huge second! Ensure you’re repurposing and distributing the information throughout all your channels to seize your viewers’s consideration. Additionally, attain out to present clients a number of occasions 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 necessities. This consists of the big-name socials (LinkedIn, X, TikTok, and so forth) in addition to profiles reminiscent of Crunchbase or G2. However bear 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 below 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
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 basically arduous 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.
If you happen to’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 information migration (for instance: in case you use HubSpot however the acquired firm was operating on Salesforce). Whereas this may occasionally 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 be sure that present service stays intact whereas offering alternatives to accumulate new clients.
Navigating an M&A integration course of is often difficult, however we hope this advertising post-merger integration guidelines helps simplify the GTM facets of your merge. If you happen to’re searching for assist with the product and finance sides of the M&A course of, make sure you obtain our Submit-M&A Integration Bundle for extra skilled insights.