Corporate innovation can come from many directions; including acquisition. That’s why so many companies have set up innovation hubs to serve as internal research and development units. However, trying to fuel innovation from within can be time-consuming and costly. Plus, it’s not guaranteed to work, even if you have a dream team of adaptable thinkers, because of the accelerating market dynamics in almost every industry.
A much faster way to innovate — especially when speed is essential — is through the acquisition process. And Siteimprove’s recent acquisition of content strategy and intelligence platform MarketMuse is a perfect example of how to innovate rapidly without waiting for employees within an inside incubator to have “Eureka!” moments (which doesn’t always happen because disruptive innovation can be hard.)
A faster track to innovation
If you’re not familiar with Siteimprove or MarketMuse, you might not understand how relevant this acquisition is, particularly in the dynamic martech space. To start, let’s run through Siteimprove’s history and capabilities and then roll into MarketMuse’s attributes.
Now celebrating its 21st year, Siteimprove does what its name suggests: The company helps clients make improvements to their websites. Siteimprove is the most comprehensive Marketing Performance platform, trusted by over 7000 leading organizations worldwide, purpose-built to enhance their MarTech stack. Through the perfect combination of digital accessibility, analytics, unified search, and campaign management, Siteimprove empowers marketers and accessibility experts alike to optimize reach, reputation, revenue and returns, from one place.
There’s just been one snag: SEO performance depends heavily on having the right content in place. Yet it can be hard for marketers to figure out what type of content they should produce from quarter to quarter. Consequently, their SEO may underperform because it’s being measured after they’ve already created and published content that’s not quite right for modern visitors (or search engines and AI).
In other words, a lot of what goes into SEO ROI happens during the content creation process, not during the evaluation process. This is where MarketMuse comes into the picture.
Filling in the SEO gaps
Since its inception, MarketMuse has set itself apart as a market leader in the area of leveraging AI to fuel content development. It’s received a plethora of awards and accolades for its suite of AI content strategy and SEO-focused planning tools.
MarketMuse’s system scans a client’s website to determine its current content setup. From there, the system scours competitors’ websites for related content. At the same time, MarketMuse’s AI-powered tool measures the client’s content against not just competitors’ content but keywords and keyword clusters.
Ultimately, MarketMuse sends back data-backed suggestions for future content designed to be appropriate (and timely) for both humans and search engines. In essence, MarketMuse shows marketers what to write, why to write it, and how to build a more cohesive content plan — all in a few minutes.
Without a doubt, MarketMuse sets the stage for impressive SEO results by making recommendations for top-of-funnel content. It’s the piece that Siteimprove was missing, and Siteimprove had the wherewithal to realize it and take action to acquire MarketMuse.
In a recent release, Shane Paladin, CEO of Siteimprove, outlined the strategy behind the acquisition, noting that “our joint capabilities improve the entire content lifecycle and marketing funnel: aligning the marketing team in one platform unifying SEO, digital accessibility, ads, content strategy, and marketing performance analytics. This is our way of helping marketers ensure that in this next chapter of information gathering, search and content efforts always work together to meaningfully engage their audiences and drive business success.”
Fiscally responsible innovation
Are acquisitions like Siteimprove’s absorption of MarketMuse too expensive for the average company or startup to consider? Not necessarily. Certainly, money is being moved during the transaction; that’s the way that acquisitions go. However, “buying” innovation can be a practical, economical solution.
For instance, consider how much the marketing landscape has changed in just the past couple of years. The AI explosion has caused a ripple effect throughout the Martech world. From ChatGPT’s first release in December 2022 to Google’s increasingly heavy use of AI in search, change is truly the only constant in the online universe.
The launch of ChatGPT continues to have deep implications for the martech community. Specifically, AI lessens the need for marketers to have specialized expertise in certain areas such as SEO, and marketers are expected to achieve more with fewer resources.
Marketers understand this, too, which is why they are scrambling to stay in front of the learning curve. As such, they’re open to working with AI-driven software and systems that are innovative and can help them stay on top.
With its purchase of MarketMuse, Siteimprove is tackling the industry-wide trend of consolidation by offering a comprehensive solution that integrates SEO, content planning, and marketing performance.
Innovating wisely through acquisitions
This isn’t to say that you should immediately rush off and find a company to acquire if your internal innovation lab isn’t producing fruit. On the other hand, you shouldn’t be opposed to the possibility, either. (Check out one of Due.com’s recent acquisition stories.) You just need to take the time to learn from winning acquisition stories so you can inform your next moves during your innovation process.
Why does the Siteimprove-MarketMuse acquisition seem like it’s destined to work well? The transaction followed some best (and financially wise) practices. And those practices are worth keeping in mind for your own company’s innovation and growth.
1. Siteimprove’s portfolio has been strategically diversified.
When it comes to innovation-driven acquisitions, diversification can be an asset. But, it can also be a liability if it’s not approached carefully. Siteimprove has been able to diversify its revenue stream because it is filling gaps with MarketMuse’s AI-powered content strategy tools. Filling those gaps has been of major importance to Paladin and the rest of his executive team. With MarketMuse, Siteimprove can close those gaps through its diversified services menu. As a result, clients seeking more mature — and trending — SEO solutions have a one-stop place to go.
2. Siteimprove is keeping client retention in mind.
The combined Siteimprove-MarketMuse entity is structured to keep clients satisfied and served along the digital marketing continuum. Customers aren’t left to their own devices at any point in the sales funnel process. On the contrary, customers receive thorough support with an end-to-end solution.
From a financial perspective, this is a golden opportunity for Siteimprove. Customers who have a great experience with a vendor are less likely to leave. This helps improve not just the company’s retention rates but its customer lifetime value (CLV), too. The higher CLV rises, the more recurrent (and predictable) revenue flows into a company. To be sure, Siteimprove saw a huge need for a solution that would be “sticky” for its clientele. The goal is for this acquisition to leverage both companies’ combined capabilities and elevate the customer experience.
3. Siteimprove will still integrate with major content marketing systems.
When clients find it easy to use your products and services, they’re more likely to keep coming back. Therefore, if you’re going to acquire another company as a method of innovation, you have to make certain that you’re not adding any client-facing friction points during the acquisition.
Siteimprove has made sure to remove any potential roadblocks by acquiring a like-minded partner that has developed a system that can embed effortlessly into major content marketing platforms/content marketing systems (CMP/CMS). This removes any barriers to entry for marketers who don’t want to invest in different systems. After all, they don’t have to do more with less. Instead, they can just pay less for more and still leapfrog the competition.
4. Siteimprove is tapping into the brainpower that drove MarketMuse to the top of the leaderboard.
Acquisitions don’t always allow for the acquired company’s employees to become part of the acquiring entity. Yet in the case of innovation-via-acquisition, it’s wise to consider keeping the acquired company’s top talent on board.
As part of its acquisition of MarketMuse, Siteimprove is keeping the AI-powered SEO and content optimization company’s people. This includes executive team members, too. As Jeff Coyle, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of MarketMuse explains, “This acquisition accelerates our mission to bridge the gap between SEO and content. As a part of Siteimprove, we now have an exciting opportunity to welcome the new era of search by delivering a market first solution that ensures SEO best practices are embedded throughout the content lifecycle, not just applied after content’s published.”
Time will show how this acquisition plays out. For now, though, Siteimprove and MarketMuse are setting their new entity up to offer much more than the sum of their parts to clients. And that’s a sign of a thoughtful innovation-through-acquisition move that’s set up for success.
