What marketing adds to M&A due diligence: A quick guide for deal teams
Enhancing M&A due diligence
M&A tends to focus on financial, legal, and operational risks. However, M&A deals also carry commercial risks: brand confusion, client attrition, cultural mismatch, and inconsistent communications.
These risks don’t show up on a spreadsheet. But they can derail integration, distort commercial value, or stall the deal altogether.
That’s where marketing adds value.
The real advantage comes when deal leaders collaborate early with a marketing lead who can assess these risks objectively and flag where message clarity, brand positioning, or the customer base may present risks worth deeper interrogation.
What marketing helps in the due diligence
- Brand equity and reputation risk – Assess brand positioning, alignment, sentiment, and any reputational baggage – across all brands involved in the transaction
- Customer base health – Analyse loyalty, churn patterns, revenue concentration
- Commercial relationships and key people risk – Identify who holds customer relationships and how stable they are, especially in B2B or founder-led settings
- Market positioning and overlap – Map brand portfolio. Flag risks of cannibalisation, confusion, or under-differentiation
- Channel, content, and communications mapping – Review digital platforms, messaging consistency, and potential duplication
- Internal comms and cultural alignment – Collaborate with HR to plan Day 0 communications and assess tone and values fit
- Competitor response – Anticipate how competitors may react, and plan messaging to protect positioning
What often gets missed when marketing isn’t involved
- Overlapping or conflicting brand positioning
- Customer confusion about offer or value
- Product or service duplication
- Reactive or delayed internal and external communications
- Gaps in key account continuity
- Disconnected digital channels and underused content assets
- Cultural friction that goes unaddressed
- Martech complexity that slows down integration
Quick-fire due diligence checklist for marketing leaders
- Assess brand sentiment (customers, market, internal)
- Map customer trends – growth, churn, concentration
- Identify account owners and relationship risk
- Review brand architecture and positioning
- Audit messaging and digital channels
- Flag CRM and martech overlap
- Partner with HR on internal alignment
- Pre-test messaging for clarity before Day 0
Marketing has a valuable role in a deal’s due diligence. It’s not about assessing comms or campaigns. It’s about protecting commercial value, reducing risk, and giving the deal team greater clarity, earlier.
Want to go deeper? Read the full version here.
