Marketing Tips When Taking Over An Existing Business
Taking over an existing business can often make marketing easier. Unlike launching a startup, you get to lead a ready-made brand organization with established customers and a recognized brand. Most of the ingredients like a website and social media pages should already be in place.
But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to worry about marketing at all. In fact, some businesses may be doing things wrong that need to be corrected. If you want the business to grow, you also need to build upon its brand and introduce new marketing strategies. On top of this, older brands may eventually benefit from some rebranding to breathe new life into them.
Below I’ll explore a few marketing tips for those taking over an existing business, including how to carry out a marketing audit and how/when to rebrand.
Table of Contents
Carry out a marketing audit
A marketing audit should be carried out during the initial stage of buying a business - ideally before you’ve signed anything. This is an overall analysis of a company’s brand and digital presence to determine how successful its marketing efforts are and what improvements need to be made,
Ideally, you want to be taking over a company that has mostly positive reviews, relatively good search engine rankings, a functioning website and engaged social media pages. Be wary of red flags like negative reviews, public scandals or blacklisted websites - it will be a challenge to fix these issues, and any business with these issues should be priced lower to reflect this.
Things to analyse within your marketing audit include:
Website: Assess the quality of the company website including the site speed, navigation and overall effectiveness of conversion.
SEO: Check how well the company ranks for different search terms and check all the results are positive. You should also look at Google reviews at this point.
Content: Review existing content across all channels for clarity, consistency and relevance.
Brand: Makes sure that brand elements like the company name, logo, brand colors and tone of voice are effective, current and consistent.
Competition: Scope out any competitors and compare their website, search rankings, content and brand.
Do a SWOT analysis of each of these marketing components. This involves detailing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. From here you can build a structured plan on how to market the business going forwards.
Get to know existing customers
It’s important to not neglect existing customers when taking over a business. Communicate with your customers in order to get to know what it is they love about the company, so that you can try to preserve this. At the same time, work out what they think needs improving.
You may be able to speak to customers in person if you run a business where you regularly meet your customers face to face. Alternatively, you can use these tactics to get to know your existing customers.
Customer surveys: You can ask customers questions via surveys - these could be sent via email or conducted over the phone.
Focus groups: It may be possible to assemble a focus group of customers. You can then ask questions and see how everyone responds collectively.
Social media: Use social media to communicate with your customers by asking questions to your followers directly. Make sure to also look out for social media mentions - some people may complain via social media, and it’s important to see what they are saying.
Online reviews: Check out what customers are saying in online reviews. Take not of regular praises and recurring criticisms.
Assess past strategies
You may have lots of ideas for new marketing strategies, but it’s important to make sure that they haven’t already been done before. For example, you don’t want to pour money into an advertising angle, only to find that it was already carried out unsuccessfully a year ago.
Take a look through the company’s social media channels, past email campaigns and past advertising campaigns to get an idea of what has worked and what hasn’t. You then know what to replicate and what to abandon.
Know when and how to rebrand
Certain companies may need rebranding to shake previous controversies. Others may simply be getting dated - if you think a visibly old-fashioned logo or slogan is putting off new customers, don’t be afraid to change it. You should also consider whether elements related to the previous owner need to be changed such as phone numbers on social media pages or website homepages telling customers to ‘contact Paul’.
A successful rebrand will require maintaining consistency across all channels. For example, if you design a new logo, you need to make sure that this new logo is added to all mediums including social media pages, your website, flyers, email signatures and adverts. Consider making an announcement to existing customers to make them aware of any brand changes - especially if you are altering the company name. In fact, it could be worth warning customers in advance so that they don’t start unsubscribing from mailing lists once they start seeing promotions from an unfamiliar company in their inbox.
Consider brand protections
From the beginning, it’s important to check whether there are any brand protections in place that may be an obstacle. For example, some sellers may include a license back clause when selling their business, which allows them to continue using certain brand elements post-sale - something that could disrupt your efforts if you’re not careful. In other cases, a seller may include quality control clauses to preserve the legacy of a brand, such as not allowing the logo or brand name to be altered.
Understand how much control you have over the brand, and whether you need to negotiate certain terms with the seller. Once you’ve acquired the company, consider whether putting in place some of your own protections may be necessary. This could include trademarking the brand if it’s not already trademarked to prevent others stealing your logo or brand name. This could be worth doing after a rebrand when you are happy with the company brand.
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