Just a couple of months ago, with TreasureHunter, we were the new kid on the block when we entered the US market. This was a completely new experience for us as we are already well-established and connected in the European content space. Additionally, our co-founder has strong connections with almost all medium to large publishers from his time back at Amazon.
Now the US!
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We’ll instantly ace it.
At least that’s what we thought.
Our first talks with American asset owners went like this:
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“Never heard of you guys”
“Are you even operating in the States?”
“Hesitant to get in business with you guys overseas”
Ouch.
But today, we’re getting inbound leads on a daily basis and content site owners are actively reaching out to us.
So, what changed? We did
– no ads
– close to no PR
– no content marketing (yet)
What we did instead:
– our M&A team hustled
– we’ve built relationships in the verticals
– we got momentum and acquired more and more sites
After the first couple of acquisitions, word of mouth kicked in.
Every new site under our umbrella added more trust, industry relationships, advertising partners, and so on. Asset owners started to perceive us as skilled, trustworthy buyer and content creators started talking about our strategy. Within half a year, we were able to position ourselves as one of the leading content site operators in the space.
Here are my 5 learnings:
– M&A is all about trust.
– Your standing in the specific vertical might decide if an asset owner will even return your call. The smart way: Build a standing first, then acquire.
– Case studies, testimonials, and word of mouth are going a long way. Convince one and you might have convinced a hundred. Works the other way around as well…
– Don’t try to become the best seller, but the favorite buyer.
– If you’re starting out, keep hustling. M&A is all about execution.
There are no shortcuts.