Business Mergers: Your Digital Task List
- Jacob Bennett
- Reading time: 6 minutes
When two brands merge, updating ad assets might feel like the most visible piece of the puzzle. But it’s also the easiest. The real challenge lies in everything that sits underneath – the goals, structure, audiences, platforms, and data that hold your marketing ecosystem together.
Here’s what digital marketing teams need to focus on to ensure a smooth transition when their business is going through a merger.
Before diving into campaign updates, step back and clarify the why. What is the intended outcome of this merger? Expanded product lines, new markets, cost efficiencies, or a unified customer experience? Each of these will shape how your paid strategy evolves.
Understanding the long-term vision ensures your digital marketing efforts support the new business direction rather than simply reacting to surface-level brand changes.
One of the most common (and avoidable) sources of delay during a merger is confusion over who signs off on what. Create a clear approval flow as early as possible.
Document responsibilities for strategy, creative, budget, and reporting across both legacy brands and the new entity. A simple org chart or flow diagram will save weeks of back-and-forth later, ensuring campaigns don’t stall in limbo. The hour you spend on this alignment will pay for itself many times over.
When two brands coexist during a transition period, it’s common for both to keep running campaigns. Often to overlapping or even competing audiences. Without coordination, you could end up bidding against yourself.
Audit your targeting, exclusions, and messaging to avoid overlap. If audiences are merging, use data-driven segmentation to identify where they differ most. This will help you to tailor creative and spend appropriately.
A brand merger often brings significant CRM restructuring. Combining customer databases, redefining lifecycle stages, and segmenting legacy users. Since CRM data drives your paid activity, marketing and CRM teams need to move in lockstep.
If the CRM is being rebuilt or migrated, adapt your campaign strategy to match. Update lead routing, conversion tracking, and audience lists to reflect the new business reality.
As part of this alignment, you’ll need to understand any changes to the sales pipeline too. It’s an unfortunate common occurrence that Lead Gen activity falls short due to poor integration with the new and updated sales pipeline, even if the quality is good at an ad level.’ For example, country leads being sent to the wrong team because workflows haven’t been updated.
If domains are changing, plan ahead. A new URL can trigger ad disapprovals, reset ad rank history, and disrupt tracking. Conduct a full audit of your conversion measurement setup and re-verify all tracking pixels, tags, and goals once the new domain is live.
Not all ad platforms handle brand transitions gracefully. LinkedIn, for example, doesn’t offer seamless page migrations between ad accounts. Review every platform you operate in to determine what needs to change, what can stay, and what should be retired.
Be sure to document all associated assets (datasets, creatives, billing information, and user access), before changes go live to avoid losing valuable data.
A merger is more often than not a sizeable shift in how your marketing ecosystem functions. By focusing on structure, systems, and strategy early, digital marketing teams can turn what could be months of disruption into a coordinated, high-performing transition.
Here’s what digital marketing teams need to focus on to ensure a smooth transition when their business is going through a merger.
1. Start With the Goal
Before diving into campaign updates, step back and clarify the why. What is the intended outcome of this merger? Expanded product lines, new markets, cost efficiencies, or a unified customer experience? Each of these will shape how your paid strategy evolves.
Understanding the long-term vision ensures your digital marketing efforts support the new business direction rather than simply reacting to surface-level brand changes.
2. Establish Ownership Early
One of the most common (and avoidable) sources of delay during a merger is confusion over who signs off on what. Create a clear approval flow as early as possible.
Document responsibilities for strategy, creative, budget, and reporting across both legacy brands and the new entity. A simple org chart or flow diagram will save weeks of back-and-forth later, ensuring campaigns don’t stall in limbo. The hour you spend on this alignment will pay for itself many times over.
3. Reassess Your Audience Strategy
When two brands coexist during a transition period, it’s common for both to keep running campaigns. Often to overlapping or even competing audiences. Without coordination, you could end up bidding against yourself.
Audit your targeting, exclusions, and messaging to avoid overlap. If audiences are merging, use data-driven segmentation to identify where they differ most. This will help you to tailor creative and spend appropriately.
4. Align Paid Media With CRM Changes
A brand merger often brings significant CRM restructuring. Combining customer databases, redefining lifecycle stages, and segmenting legacy users. Since CRM data drives your paid activity, marketing and CRM teams need to move in lockstep.
If the CRM is being rebuilt or migrated, adapt your campaign strategy to match. Update lead routing, conversion tracking, and audience lists to reflect the new business reality.
As part of this alignment, you’ll need to understand any changes to the sales pipeline too. It’s an unfortunate common occurrence that Lead Gen activity falls short due to poor integration with the new and updated sales pipeline, even if the quality is good at an ad level.’ For example, country leads being sent to the wrong team because workflows haven’t been updated.
5. Review Domains and Tracking
If domains are changing, plan ahead. A new URL can trigger ad disapprovals, reset ad rank history, and disrupt tracking. Conduct a full audit of your conversion measurement setup and re-verify all tracking pixels, tags, and goals once the new domain is live.
6. Audit Platforms and Ad Accounts
Not all ad platforms handle brand transitions gracefully. LinkedIn, for example, doesn’t offer seamless page migrations between ad accounts. Review every platform you operate in to determine what needs to change, what can stay, and what should be retired.
Be sure to document all associated assets (datasets, creatives, billing information, and user access), before changes go live to avoid losing valuable data.
Final Thought
A merger is more often than not a sizeable shift in how your marketing ecosystem functions. By focusing on structure, systems, and strategy early, digital marketing teams can turn what could be months of disruption into a coordinated, high-performing transition.
