With respect to mergers and acquisitions, what are the steps and priorities you take to integrate the newly acquired product into your overall product marketing strategy?

This one is challenging because I’ve witnessed year long integrations from newly acquired products into the overall strategy, and even then, it wasn’t “fully” absorbed into the main strategy.

First, I would recommend looking at the reasons why this product came under the fold. What was the vision and use cases of how it connects? Sometimes it's for strategic reasons, sometimes it’s to complement the product. Understanding the why will help with the how.

Then, I would analyze the target segment for the newly acquired product and identify any overlaps with the current product portfolio. This will help the rest of marketing understand how this new acquisition fits in with their campaigns and programs.

Product should be a key partner with product marketing to identify the market needs, use cases and solutions to come up with a joint strategy or narrative on how this new product ties into the existing pitch.

I’m so glad to have been asked this question, because I’ve been fortunate enough to lead teams through acquisitions at almost every company I’ve worked at. In order to effectively integrate the newly acquired company into yours, you’ll need to understand what drove the acquisition: was it a strategic, product or acqui-hire? It sounds like your question is referring to a product buy. In that case, you’ll need to develop a deep understanding of the new product itself, as well as the audience, so you can identify overlaps with your current portfolio. Once you’ve understood the target buyer, you can figure out where in your segmentation strategy and messaging this new addition fits in, so that it becomes part of a holistic solution.

There’s of course a human element to this, and in my experience, the integration of company cultures can either make or break the acquisition. Making your newest team members feel as though they are part of your company is critical. Invest time in getting to know each other as individuals so you can build these new relationships on a strong foundation, which will pay dividends in the long-run. 

While it takes significant effort and time, embedding these new employees into existing teams, processes and workflows goes a long way. It also ensures that the two product teams can identify synergies between their areas. Once they’re bought into how their products can work together to better meet the needs of customers, and differentiate the company in market, they’ll be motivated to unblock cross-team dependencies that arise. This is an exciting time because it presents both teams with opportunities to drive more entry points to their products, and tap into a larger addressable market. One team, one dream.

Great question! My advice would be to remember the product stage is likely quite different than your existing product. For the new product, prioritize product market fit PMM tasks during the initial integration roll out. Steps to do this:

• Conduct a TAM analysis with products like Crossbeam to understand overlapping base and eligible customers for GTM.

• Conduct listening tours to understand target audience and personas.

• Build new personas and train + enable the team on target audience.

• Use tiering calculators like this one to prioritize launch activities as integration nears general availability

• Walk through GTM product development process with new stakeholders and establish roles and collaborative motions.

• Set up slack channels or collaborative spaces like Notion to ensure teams are aligned and set up for success

• Align on shared goals that ladder up to company OKRs and present to leadership

• Celebrate!

Remember the Mona Lisa principle (coined at Miro) if the finished piece isn't something you're willing to put your name on, don't ship it.

There are different approaches to mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and their impact on partnerships, and strongly depend on the acquiring company and strategy. Below are a few examples from my experience.

At one company, the rationale for acquiring a business was to gain the customer base and therefore the need to promote an integration was not a priority.

At another company, the rationale for acquiring the business was the synergy of the technology and team, and therefore, the team started out as a stand-alone subsidiary and eventually was integrated into the GTM motions for specific integrations for strategic partners. There was a much greater effort needed as part of the acquisition, but was a natural progression.

Excellent question.

I would start listening to the newly acquired company's customers. Go on a lsitening tour. Understand the buyer and user's pains, challenges, wins, why they love your product, what's missing, how they measure success.

From that, you'll be able to start mapping these new key challenges and value props to the ones already in place.

From that, updating your messaging doc. Your pitch decks. 

Oh - and then the pricing and packaging work starts :) and enablement.

I know - it's a lot 😃