How to Integrate Content Initiatives after an Acquisition

Closing an M&A deal calls for a toast—you’re celebrating the workforce integration of two organizations. Or, in saas.group’s case, you’re now sharing a home with multiple brands.

The first couple of months of transitioning can be disruptive for those involved. But it’s during this time when it’s vital to establish a go-forward plan and a way to unify content operations. 

Foundations to Set

There’s always a lot of excitement looming—and unspoken expectations—but the quickest way to get everyone on the same page is to start with a systematic approach. Setting the following foundations will align content production and get everyone working towards the same goal/s.

Communicate Priorities Up Front

Once onboarding has ended, hold kick-off meetings. This way, everyone gets a chance to ask their questions and clear the air on any uncertainties from the marketing due diligence process.

During this time, the in-house team will explain the general procedures to establish a middle ground supporting collaboration and efficiency. Next, the new (acquired) team will share their existing content strategy and workflows. Together it will be fleshed out from an objective standpoint. However, if nothing was in place before, a strategy will be created from scratch. 

Evaluate Content and Tools

You will want to get an understanding of what has been happening; the type of content being created or distributed, the frequency, the channels used, the challenges, and more. You will need to view the existing boilerplate about the company and its messaging and take a deeper look into bread and butter clients, tools, etc. This information can be helpful before an audit is done, as it gives the in-house team an idea of how the brand sees itself versus what they’re putting out. 

The most important elements of content audit are to identify legacy money-makers (high-converting content) as well as high-traffic content that has the potential to be more. Next, you’ll look at gaps and opportunities for improvement, while analyzing the channels and marketing tactics used. 

When it comes to tools, think long-term. You need to have a clear idea of the content marketing metrics you’re measuring, the goals (or objectives) you’ve set, and the budget you’re working with. The tools you use will need to streamline processes and offer the right features to grow with you. 

Assign Resources Where Skills Lack

The beauty of an M&A integration is that you get more hands on deck. This can be taken literally—multiple resources to execute tasks—or from a skills perspective. In contrast, M&A works differently in every company, saas.group’s specialist marketing team acts as a consultancy. No matter your size or market positioning, we act as an extension of your team and fill the gaps. 

For team collaboration to be as effective as possible, we recommend doing a skills and capacity analysis with the new team. Evaluate strengths and weaknesses, and outsource where you lack. 

Another side to this is learning. When new people enter the mix, it’s a great time to engage with experts and learn from others. Make the most of these connections by facilitating training. 

Implement Data Governance

Managing large volumes of scattered data leads to inaccurate marketing decisions. And with more people touching on data, it can become a nightmare. By centralizing systems, you can prevent people from working in silos, maintain transparency, and monitor compliance. It’s important to enforce security on data access and establish a process that is both flexible and scalable. 

Update and Optimize Workflows

Once you’ve taken steps to communicate with relevant stakeholders, understand past processes, and strategize new ones, it’s time to update workflows. Define and map a production workflow, and discuss ways to automate elements. Identify past bottlenecks and redundancies in projects, and visually document a solution for all teams to be aligned. 

By the end of these discussions, you should be able to build a trackable content workflow. Depending on your needs, it should have a task-based or project-based approach, including the stages of content creation to objectives, roles and accountability, quality control, tools needed to execute a task, content types and distribution channels, etc. 

Wrapping Up

Integrating content initiatives is never plug ‘n play—it depends on the deal structure discussed beforehand. You will always need to be prepared for changes and bumps in the road, but having a foundation will guide you from the starting point. By using these five steps, you’ll be able to hit the ground running and set the tone for collaborative success.