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 additionally the way it presents itself to the market.
Mergers may be disruptive. It’s necessary to obviously talk with prospects, staff, 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 consider that we’re due for an M&A rebound. Meaning advertising 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 facets of the transaction, from messaging to CRMs to buyer upsells. Let’s get into it.
GTM Publish-Merger Integration Guidelines
Listed here are seven ideas for advertising a merger:
Outline your new model messaging.
Develop a unified advertising 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 best way 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 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 allow you 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 creating 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 complete go-to-market technique. You might wish to change the way you method sure lead era techniques, corresponding to content material manufacturing or paid promoting. If each advertising departments had been utilizing totally 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 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 establishment. From a advertising perspective, you don’t wish to break what’s working as you determine easy methods to combine. However generally, 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 inside communications methods
Workers ought to be notified instantly 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 propose 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 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 necessary to set the tone that this M&A is not going to 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 massive second! Be sure you’re repurposing and distributing the information throughout your whole channels to seize your viewers’s consideration. Additionally, attain out to current prospects a number of instances concerning the information, as they could miss a one-time electronic mail.
5. Compose updates to firm web sites and social media profiles
Be sure you put together updates of any public-facing firm profiles along with your new mission assertion, firm boilerplate, or different advertising necessities. This contains the big-name socials (LinkedIn, X, TikTok, and so on) in addition to profiles corresponding to Crunchbase or G2. However bear 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 protecting them separate? Will you construct a touchdown web page that describes the advantages of the merger? Plan these actions effectively prematurely, as creating or updating a web site could be 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 crew would.
Understanding the efficiency of the brand new entity will come down to scrub reporting, which is actually laborious 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.
In case 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 information migration (for instance: when you use HubSpot however the acquired firm was operating on Salesforce). Whereas this will likely take some effort upfront, it’ll 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 suitable pricing and packaging methods may also help make sure that present service stays intact whereas offering alternatives to amass new prospects.
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. In case you’re on the lookout for assist with the product and finance sides of the M&A course of, you should definitely obtain our Publish-M&A Integration Bundle for extra professional insights.
