Succession Plus turns to IDA to perform due diligence on their own business.
““Independent third party auditing around online marketing should be handled in the same way as all other areas of due diligence.””
About Succession Plus
Succession Plus specialises in providing proactive, focused and strategic advice for small to medium business owners to prepare their businesses for an exit strategy. Their Accredited Advisers understand where to make short and long-term improvements in order to help maximise a business’s succession plan and sale outcomes.
Succession Plus’s online presence and website is crucial to their business. Due to the niche, confidential nature of their industry, potential clients spend significant time researching before engaging with a company. Succession Plus employs an external digital agency to manage their website and digital strategy, and also has an internal team assisting in the management of social platforms.
Challenge / Goal
Succession Plus obtained an Independent Digital Audit to gain an understanding of how their overall digital strategy was performing. Succession Plus CEO and Founder, Craig West, explains;
“Marketing was a black box. We were investing in all the typical components, and have a good relationship with our digital agency. But we wanted to see whether we could improve our ROI further and gain independent third-party feedback to further optimise our marketing investment.”
“Engaging in the due diligence process on behalf of our clients is a large component of our work. We wanted to determine whether IDA reports could be implemented to help our clients’ achieve better outcomes when selling their businesses.”
Key Findings / Results
Craig was surprised by the scale, complexity and nuance required for the success of a holistic, multi-channel strategy. He was also surprised by the detrimental impact that even small errors can create. Succession Plus forwarded our report to their external agency, who have already reviewed and implemented many of our actionable recommendations.
When their agency first found out about the IDA audit they were sceptical. However, our report validated their good work, and Succession Plus feels reassured that they remain on track for success. In fact, Succession Plus and their agency both agree that IDA reports should be incorporated into the due diligence checklist of every Succession Plus client.
Craig says, “it’s imperative for any business to understand their ROI and in particular, to anyone gearing up for sale. In our line of work, buyers, lenders and investors are constantly asking us about people’s marketing channels. It’s so important to know where leads and sales are coming from, and structures around digital marketing. Third party auditing reports help to give credibility. It also allows the opportunity to correct errors and optimise their business prior to sale, ultimately giving them the best chance of achieving their desired outcomes.”
Craig observes that Australian businesses generally have a bad habit of being reluctant to spend money on help. Yet, no-one can be an expert in every aspect within their business. There is value in spending money in order to protect the digital marketing investment.
“Even though we use an external digital agency that we trust, the IDA report gave us a lot of comfort knowing that we aren’t wasting our money. That’s value for money.”
