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 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 clients, 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 consultants at PWC consider that we’re due for an M&A rebound. Meaning advertising and marketing 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 can assist you cope with the advertising and marketing points 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 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 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 staff to outline what your organization needs to be, do and say.
We advocate conducting a messaging hierarchy train, which can aid you 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 comes with the most effective practices and experience from each corporations. This will likely contain merging groups, consolidating advertising and marketing tech stacks, and reallocating sources.
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 era techniques, similar to content material manufacturing or paid promoting. If each advertising and marketing departments have been utilizing totally 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 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 persons are working of their establishment. 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 necessary.
3. Put together inner communications methods
Staff ought to be notified straight of the merger or acquisition earlier than they discover out on their very own. Any M&A may convey adjustments to their staff construction, payroll, advantages, and extra.
Think about how you propose to share this information together 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 potential is actually necessary to set the tone that this M&A is not going to be disruptive for them
It is best 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 large second! Be sure 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 could miss a one-time electronic mail.
5. Compose updates to firm web sites and social media profiles
Make sure 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 consists of the big-name socials (LinkedIn, X, TikTok, and so forth) in addition to profiles similar 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 together with your firm web site(s). Are you merging the websites beneath one roof, or conserving 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 an internet 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 staff 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 will probably 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 features, you’ll need to consolidate buyer databases inside your CRM to make sure accuracy and consistency. This will likely contain some cross-platform information migration (for instance: when you use HubSpot however the acquired firm was working on Salesforce). Whereas this may increasingly 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 corporations 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 amass new clients.
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, remember to obtain our Submit-M&A Integration Bundle for extra knowledgeable insights.
