Unearth the skeletons in the closet

Today, no business owner can afford to overlook its company’s digital competence. Getting digital right can often be transformative; getting it wrong on the other hand may not only mean underperformance but can also be catastrophic to the company’s growth potential and value of the business when looking for new owners/investors.

Our vendor due diligence and auditing services will equip you with the transparency and insights you require to make sure you have confidence in the digital proposition of your business, it can also find any hidden issues covered up by past work.

We carry out the following activities to support you with this:

• Digital Due Diligence Audits
• Digital Marketing Data Analysis
• Digital Business Growth Analysis
• Brand Equity Analysis

Through these services we will raise any red flags and identify areas which might scare buyers off, whilst quantifying the potential upsides and downsides. Our experts will make actionable recommendations with attributed levels of priority, which can be address by us or your internal teams before the sale – or by the new owner’s, post sale.

We will also identify how all recommendations can be targeted and measured, ensuring you can see the big picture and understand what improvements need to be made to achieve your asking price.

Digital Business Growth Analysis

Knowledge about the potential for digital business growth is essential before putting a value against your business or assets. The greater the potential and more robust the digital growth strategy, the more attractive your business will be prospective investors.

We look at business’s digital marketing channels and assess their potential. Are the right channels being used? Are they being used effectively? Should new channels be adopted? What is the potential for growing sales via each channel?

We look at customer behaviour: how often do they buy? What is the lifetime value of each customer? What is the balance of returning customers versus new customers, and how can this balance be changed to unlock potential?

We also look at the customer journey, where customers come from and at what stage they buy, or drop away, so we can assess what changes need to be made to help drive customers towards their purchase.

We look at what competitors are doing and benchmark the business against them for transparency and openness.

Brand Equity Analysis

Essential to any investment decision is understanding the prospect’s online reputation.

We carry out detailed brand equity analysis to discover exactly what clients and potential buyers think of the brand, which will include:

• What value is in the online brand equity?
• Is the business well regarded?
• What do people post about it on third party review sites?
• Have brand equity strategies been successfully deployed, via PR campaigns?
• Are people ‘viewing not doing’ on social media?

Our brand equity audit also looks at competitors and how your business is perceived in the marketplace in comparison to rivals.

What are the most common issues found in VDD?

The beauty of the Vendor Due Diligence process is its tailored scope for each opportunity. That said, we do tend to find some common issues, which are easily addressed with the right strategy and experts to implement;

• Under-utilisation of customer data and segmentation to build relationships on a personal level with prospective customers, or re-engage past-purchasers
• Lack of audience-led strategies in paid social and paid search campaigns
• Poorly-handled historic website migrations that are still hurting brands to the present day
• Neglected on-page SEO strategies to map to customer need-states
• Lack of awareness-led strategies to grow the prospective customer pool
• Lack of new channel testing.