Despite the fanfare that often accompanies acquisitions, the reality is that about 80% fail to achieve their desired objectives.

After all, there’s a lot that can go wrong. Inadequate due diligence. Overvaluation. Poor integration planning and execution. A failure to retain employees from the new company.

And yet, businesses spend more than $2 trillion on acquisitions annually. Why? It’s often unrealistic for a company to build all that’s needed to reach its strategic goals fast enough to remain competitive. An acquisition, however, presents an opportunity to quickly expand a business’s ecosystem, tapping into new relationships, distribution channels, products and innovations.

I lead an entertainment technology company — composed of iconic brands like TiVo and DTS — that has grown our ecosystem through 15 acquisitions in the last decade alone. What has the experience taught me?

The success of an acquisition is about more than the nuts and bolts of the deal itself; you’re not just buying a technology, product or service to tack onto your company offerings. You’re also gaining institutional knowledge and bringing thought leaders on board who could help steer your business.

I believe one of the most critical aspects of an acquisition’s success is too often overlooked: the people. Here’s what I’ve learned about how they can be the difference-makers in the lead-up to and aftermath of a deal.

Related: 5 Reasons Small Businesses Should Consider Mergers and Acquisitions

The “why” has to include the “who”

Sure, pre-deal due diligence involves evaluating the potential profits and risks of an acquisition. But it also requires searching for leaders, along with the systems and cultures they’ve developed, that are likely to contribute to your company’s growth.

In dynamic industries like tech, companies often need to pivot to remain competitive. That means it’s essential to ask this question when evaluating incoming leaders: Whose strategic thinking, leadership skills and decision-making style do you want on your side, even if you end up shifting them to new areas in the future?

We learned the importance of this consideration from an early acquisition. The technology we’d bought eventually became outdated, but that CEO has remained an instrumental member of our leadership suite for more than a decade, and an acquired team under his leadership has transitioned to form the foundation of one the most exciting arms of our business: our connected car platform.

Once you’ve found a company with the resources and people that will likely benefit your business and conditions enable sensible valuations, developing an integration plan before the deal closes is imperative.

We accomplish this by identifying change champions — committed leaders who are strong communicators, open to feedback, adaptable, resilient and collaborative — from both companies to rally our people. Then, we create detailed checklists for the first year or more, often including thousands of line items from assigning desks to implementing training events, all to move us swiftly toward our goals of a fully integrated team and business asset.

Related: How Leaders Can Build Acquisition-Ready Companies

Use it as an opportunity to reimagine culture

Many people see an acquisition as an opportunity to innovate — adding and evolving products and developing strategies for new markets. One thing they often overlook, though, is the chance to innovate company culture. Specifically, to pick and choose the best of both of what the companies are doing to establish a new normal.

Often, the default assumption is that the acquiring company’s culture will remain dominant. But that can sometimes be a mistake.

Many times, bringing two companies together and fusing their resources and operations creates an entirely new company — one that may benefit from a cultural change.

For example, following a merger, we realized our previous corporate values no longer accurately reflected the new company. So we reset them. It wasn’t always easy: It took a long-term project involving employee input throughout. It also required objectivity at the leadership level to stay open to new ways of working and communicating. However, the initiative resulted in a set of values that more meaningfully illustrated our evolved mission and culture and set us on a path toward greater success.

Related: How to Create a High-Performance Organization Through a Successful Merger

Move as quickly and transparently as possible

A deal closing can feel like crossing the finish line for those overseeing it. But when you look over your shoulder, you see that most employees are just lining up at the start. The real marathon begins after the closing: It takes steady work to get the rest of the company across the finish line to reap the anticipated gains of the deal.

We’ve found that approaching this integration process with a focus on urgency, sensitivity and transparency is key to retaining as many employees as possible, along with the crucial institutional knowledge and skills they hold.

This means we work fast to communicate our plan openly and honestly. For instance, within 45 days of a recent acquisition, we got leaders physically in front of 80% of the team. This approach aims to mitigate uncertainty by laying out plans and providing clarity on roles and opportunities. Research shows that transparency can engender trust, so when the answer to a question is, “We don’t know yet,” leaders should prioritize being upfront about that.

We also expressed empathy. Acknowledging that it’s natural to feel anxious about uncertainty and change is important to build morale during a time of transition.

About a third of employees from an acquired company tend to leave within the first year due to uncertainty or culture clashes. But time and time again, we’ve seen that a deliberate process has helped to improve on this trend. While it’s not always possible for all employees to stay on, voluntary turnover within a year of our last two acquisitions was just 15%.

Defining success

There are many ways to define a successful acquisition: meeting financial goals, expanding relationships or staking a hold in new markets. We’ve seen this firsthand. For example, strategic acquisitions have allowed our business to significantly amplify our global footprint of streaming devices and open up new monetization opportunities.

While these elements are critically important, we view success even more broadly. It also means our team feels they’re continuously working toward a worthy goal. And viewing people as vital to the success of an acquisition has helped us to assemble a team prepared and motivated to do just that: deliver innovative, extraordinary experiences to our customers.

Five years from now, 94% of marketers think that links will continue to be a ranking factor in Google algorithms.

However, many companies offering link-building services engage in questionable practices, such as selling links from manipulated or low-quality websites. These links can not only fail to provide value but may also harm the website receiving them. Therefore, it’s essential to exercise caution when hiring an external partner for link building.

So, here are a few key tips to help SaaS businesses get the maximum from their link-building efforts.

Related: 10 Powerful Link-Building Tactics for Boosting Your Website’s SEO

1. Take metrics with a grain of salt

It’s crucial to approach metrics with skepticism. Website owners often inflate numbers like Domain Rating (DR). You might see a DR of 70, but in reality, the website holds little to no authority in Google’s eyes. Of course, that’s not always the case. In reality, Domain Rating correlates with higher rankings

While metrics can be useful, especially when sorting through large lists of websites, don’t rely on them alone. Always look deeper into the site’s real quality.

2. Organic traffic for real keywords is key

Pay attention to the keywords a website ranks for. Ideally, the site you’re getting backlinks from should have organic traffic, which shows Google values it. More importantly, the traffic should come from relevant, industry-specific keywords. Some sites may rank for irrelevant terms like “celebrity news” despite being in a completely different niche — or worse, they may use fake traffic. Always ensure the keywords are a good fit for your business.

3. Get links from real businesses

The best way to determine if a website is worth getting a backlink from is to see if it’s a real business. Many sites exist solely to sell links and are often just link farms. Focus on acquiring links from legitimate businesses, as these are the ones that offer the most value.

4. Use internal links

Let’s face it — quality link building is hard. And if you find it hard to get backlinks to your service or landing pages, start by linking to your blog posts instead. Then, use internal linking across your site to ensure link equity flows throughout your pages. Without proper internal linking, you won’t fully benefit from the backlinks you’re building.

Related: Top 8 Backlink Strategies to Boost Your Traffic

5. Prioritize links to target pages

When building backlinks, your main focus should be on your money-making pages. Links to these pages are critical. If you’re working with an agency, ensure they are targeting specific commercial pages. Even if you’re only getting a couple of links per page per month, if they’re targeted, it’s highly effective.

6. Optimize anchors

Anchor text optimization is essential. From my experience, optimized anchor texts perform very well. If you’re hiring an agency, send them a list of preferred anchor texts along with your target pages, so they can focus on both elements.

7. Focus on do-follow links

There’s ongoing debate about the impact of no-follow links on rankings. While no-follow links have some influence, it’s hard to quantify. Based on my observations, they seem to be about 30-50% as effective as do-follow links. In a LinkedIn poll I conducted, 43% of participants believed no-follow links were 25% or less effective than do-follow. However, keep in mind that many respondents may not have had enough experience, so their opinions are just that — opinions.

8. Get listed on the top of listicle posts

There are countless “comparison” and “alternatives” pages for popular tools, generating significant search volumes. For instance, searches like “Canva alternatives” are common. If your product is in a competitive niche, you want to be featured as the number one option on these pages created by bloggers and websites. Not only will you gain valuable backlinks, but you’ll also get more clicks and recommendations as the top alternative, greatly boosting your link-building efforts.

This also creates a snowball effect. Future writers and bloggers working on alternatives for that specific tool will often reference existing lists. When they see your product featured prominently, they’re more likely to include it in their own lists, further amplifying your exposure and link-building efforts.

9. Outsource to the right company

According to some research, 56% of SaaS marketing departments utilize a combination of in-house and outsourced staff to reach their marketing objectives.

When selecting a company, make sure they specialize in link building for SaaS and deliver high-quality work, as word of mouth and testimonials can be very effective indicators of their reliability.

Related: How to Shake Up a Stale Link Building Strategy

In summary, while links remain vital for SEO, it’s crucial to prioritize quality over quantity. Focus on securing high-quality backlinks that directly target your key pages, using optimized anchor texts to make a meaningful impact. Your link-building strategy should align with your overall branding strategy to maximize effectiveness. By being selective and strategic in your approach, you can build a robust link profile that genuinely enhances your SaaS business’s online presence.

The landscape of ad spending has changed significantly in recent years. We have seen a major shift in marketing campaigns from before the pandemic to now. Everything from graphic styles to personalization has evolved, and so has spending. With more brands in the mix, advertising spending is consistently rising.

The question is, why are some still hesitant to adjust their spending? The simple fact is that budgets must change over time. If your budget doesn’t evolve, you won’t be able to compete with the growing number of brands advertising online.

Let’s break down what you need to know if you plan to keep up in the increasingly competitive advertising landscape.

Related: Is Your Advertising Spend Going to Waste? If You Don’t Fully Understand This Metric, It Might Be

Supply and demand dictate spending

Let’s begin with the current situation. Advertising rates are increasing, which means you’ll need to increase your budget to attract the quality of traffic you want. The cost of effective online advertising is determined by supply and demand. When more companies vie for the same ad placement, the price for that placement goes up.

What are the reasons for this recent rise? Firstly, the pandemic fueled a surge in e-commerce as consumers shifted from brick-and-mortar stores to online retailers. However, this boom has been met with challenges. When the world shut down, brands significantly decreased — or even halted altogether — their marketing costs. Now that the economy has picked back up, competition has returned with a vengeance. The dominance of Google Ads and Facebook Ads has also created a double-edged sword for advertisers. While these platforms offer massive reach and targeting capabilities, their popularity has driven up advertising costs. This is due to a classic case of supply and demand. With more businesses vying for the same ad space on these platforms, bidding wars erupt, inflating the cost per click or impression. This trend is further amplified by limitations on data tracking, making it harder for advertisers to pinpoint their ideal audience. The result? Steeper costs for businesses to reach their prospects online. Additionally, the increased popularity of online shopping has attracted more advertisers, driving up competition for consumer attention and inflating the cost of advertising space. These factors are creating a complex landscape for e-commerce businesses, demanding innovative strategies to navigate the new realities of the online marketplace. That, combined with a growing population of advertisers, as well as many brands having moved their marketing online due to remote culture, means costs are, and will only continue, climbing.

Take advantage of technology and automation

Although many business owners decide to take the DIY approach due to cost, the opportunity cost of not knowing how to properly target an audience, use tools to improve your outcomes, and reduce your per-click and per-impression costs is typically far more expensive than working with an expert. One way to produce highly relevant ads is to take advantage of today’s technology. Artificial intelligence can learn more about each subset of your audience than you likely ever could imagine. Moreover, the best AI marketing tools make it easy to use your data to create highly relevant advertisements. So, if you’re still combing through spreadsheets, hoping to find a trend, it’s time to upgrade your technology.

Smart marketing tools and marketing automation are your biggest allies in navigating this challenge. Automation can take the reins on managing your ad spend, constantly searching for the best inventory based on past performance, as well as ongoing ad rates and top-performing channels. Identifying and prioritizing these top-performing channels ensures your budget is directed toward the most impactful avenues. Marketing tools can further serve as cost-cutting allies by pinpointing the most precise targeting options, taking the guesswork out of online advertising and giving you time and energy to take back to other areas of your business. This laser focus eliminates wasted ad spend and time, ensuring your message reaches the exact audience you desire and ultimately reduces your overall ad spend.

Related: 4 Marketing Budget Hacks That Will Boost Your Business in 2024

Plan in advance for disrupted seasons

The holidays may be far away, but from an ad fund standpoint, it’s something you’ll want to be prepared for long before they’re right around the corner. Brands can adhere to various holiday seasons, some may want to up their ad spend tremendously during this time and others may want to reevaluate it. Beyond the holidays, other seasonal events can significantly impact advertising costs. Events like major sporting competitions (e.g., the Olympics, FIFA World Cup), award shows, and even back-to-school season can see increased competition and higher ad rates. These periods of time play a significant role in driving up the cost of advertisements. It’s no secret that consumers like to spend more money during the holiday season compared to their typical spending behavior. As such, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve for your yearly holidays and to note that those periods are when advertisers are most interested in attracting their target audience. That means demand for advertising typically sees significant increases on an annual basis, but keeping an eye out for this and planning ahead will keep you at the forefront. It’s important to make these periods and planning part of your overall marketing strategy.

Over the years, marketers have watched demand climb during the holiday season and seemingly fall after the holiday season. However, that seasonal drop seems to be shrinking each year. Ultimately, marketers seem to be anticipating the drop in demand following the holiday season, and as such, many are saving meaningful amounts of money for this period. This causes an increase in demand that rivals the holiday increase, which in turn means you should continue to consider adding more to your ad fund during these times. Having a marketing automation partner can help set you up for success by automating the process for you.

The bottom line

The bottom line is that the marketing industry has a history of fast-paced evolution, and that evolution isn’t likely to end anytime soon. As more and more advertisers join the fray, demand will likely continue to grow, leading to inflated advertising prices. Make sure your brand is keeping ahead of the competition by planning for the future and potential shifts in advertising.