Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Merge marketing teams on day one
Merging Marketing Fast
When Unbounce acquired Insightly, the marketing team integrated immediately. One social media person began posting for both brands, one content marketing team started learning the other brand, and the designers did the same. The first three months were extremely difficult, and after that the team moved smoothly.
Customer support, product, and sales kept working side by side as two separate divisions, and more than a year after the acquisition some of those teams were still struggling to integrate. Putting off the merger only delays the repercussions.
Two Marketing Styles
The two marketing philosophies clashed at first. Unbounce, as the category leader, took an academic approach built on the idea that what it says goes. Insightly's team punched up at much bigger competitors, working to be clever, quick, and new while it stole a little market share. Each group learned a new marketing tactic by working on the other brand.
Building Trust
Telling the team everything possible builds trust through the uncertainty, because after a merger some people become redundant and others take on far more work, and nobody can predict which side of that line a given person lands on.
Why do so many acquisitions fall short?
Merger research commonly points to clashing cultures, unclear roles, and customers lost during the transition. People in the combined company often do not know who owns which decisions for months. In a 2011 Harvard Business Review article, Clayton Christensen and coauthors wrote that estimates of acquisition failure rates range from 70 to 90 percent.
Why do leaders and challengers market so differently?
A category leader has a position to hold, so it leans on authority and credibility. A challenger has little to protect and everything to gain, so it picks fights with the leader and moves quickly. Al Ries and Jack Trout described these roles as defender and attacker in their 1986 book Marketing Warfare.
More from Embracing Marketing Mistakes
