Supporting business acquisitions is a much smoother process when digital assets are fully documented and verified during the due diligence and closing process. Unfortunately, this is often not the case.
Domain registrations, Google business listings, website hosting access, design files, and social media accounts are all valuable parts of a business purchase, but it’s easy to lose sight of them compared to more visible valuations of inventory, machinery, property, contracts and leases.
The digital assets will quickly become important, however, when the website cannot be updated, no one has the logo or cut sheet files, and social media accounts grow stale.
Our suggestion: Use checklists to identify digital assets, verify access and confirm the ownership transfer. Assigning monetary values, priorities, and penalties for failing to turn over ownership can keep these items in the foreground.
This is an area where having a marketing firm with experience and expertise in acquisitions can help. Firms like R2R Marketing have checklists and processes to identify the assets, and the experience to help transition the accounts to new ownership, new hosting services, etc. The right marketing firm can also provide talking points for employees at both companies, messages to customers, and guidance on when and how to update your online presence across all channels.
