M&A Targets: 5 Ways to Acquire Attention of Your Ideal Clients 

Over the past few years, we’ve seen businesses (both large and small) continue to rapidly pursue M&A targets.

While there are many reasons to pursue growth through acquisition, we’re going to cover an underrated and often overlooked M&A strategy: acquiring media assets.

I hope to stretch your thinking about what’s possible and help you think creatively about media assets you can inexpensively acquire.

M&A Targets: Why Focus on Media?

Instead of relying on rented media (which can be full of risks) to bring traffic to your business, you can own the traffic by acquiring a site or blog that’s already getting attention from your ideal target market.

Here are just a handful of advantages to owning media:

• Instead of relying on others to bring you potential prospects (with restrictions and expensive advertising costs), you are now in control.

• You have complete control over the traffic and messaging. This means that you can ensure that your message is aligned with your brand – you’re not at the whims of a third party. If you rent, you’re at the mercy of the site or platform you’re paying to use, and if they decide to change its algorithms, your traffic can drop precipitously overnight.

• Instead of building an audience from scratch, you can tap into the efforts of others who have spent years assembling a large group of your perfect prospects.

• Owning media opens up a tremendous amount of possibilities for exposure and additional revenue streams.

• Once you own a media asset, you can use it to drive traffic to other assets you own, like your website or blog. This gives you a chance to convert that traffic into leads and customers. 

• In many cases, owning media effectively gives you a free traffic source to bring in highly qualified prospects. As Openview Partners says: “media companies have cracked the code on attracting a large and highly engaged audience for very little cost.”

5 Types of Media Assets for Your Ideal Clients

To make this actionable for your business, we want to think about media sources that target our ideal client or customer.

During this brainstorming phase, we want to cast a wide net and consider anyone who aggregates the attention of who we want to reach.

Here are the questions I want you think about:

1. Who am I trying to reach? Who is my ideal client or customer?
2. Who has aggregated the eyeballs and attention of these people?
3. Where are these people hanging out and spending time?
4. What type of content is my target market consuming? Are they reading articles, watching videos, or listening to podcasts?

Any traffic asset that fits this criteria would be an acquisition worth considering.

Some prime examples are:

-Industry specific trade publications

-Facebook or LinkedIn groups focusing on your industry

-Local media outlets in the areas where your ideal clients or customers live

-Podcasts that focus on topics that your ideal clients or customers are interested in

-Meetups and networking groups where your target market spends their time

To give you more ideas, here are 5 categories of media assets to consider:

1. Social Media

• LinkedIn groups
• Facebook pages and groups
• YouTube channels
• Instagram accounts
• Pinterest accounts

All of these can be a fantastic way to get in front of a hyper-targeted and relevant audience. Look for high engagement (lots of likes, comments, and shares on posts) and continued membership growth.

2. Lists

• Email lists
• Customer lists
• Supplier lists
• Affiliate lists
• Opt-in/Subscriber lists
• Newsletter lists

Mailing lists might seem a bit old-school, but they can still be incredibly valuable. If you can acquire a list of people who have already raised their hand and said they’re interested in hearing from you, that’s an excellent starting point.

Look for permission-based (opt-in or subscribers only) lists with high open and click-through rates. These are people who are already engaged and interested in the topics you’re planning to communicate about.

3. Groups: Live and Virtual

• Networking groups
• Local meetups
• Associations
• Membership programs (paid or free)
• Masterminds

Groups are another great way to tap into a captive and engaged audience.

Paid groups are usually more exclusive and have higher quality members (with high customer lifetime value), but free groups can still be valuable depending on your goals.

Local groups can be great for networking and building relationships in person, while virtual groups offer more convenience and flexibility.

4. Shows and Events: Live and Virtual

• Expos
• TV shows
• Radio
• Live events
• Online webinars and virtual summits
• In-person workshops and seminars
• Podcasts
• Industry conferences and trade shows

Events are an excellent way to get in front of a large number of potential customers and clients. If you can acquire an event that’s already established and has a track record of success, that’s a perfect scenario.

Look for events that are popular in your industry and have high attendance rates. The more focused and targeted the event is, the better.

5. Websites

For this category, think about any sort of content ranking highly on Google or YouTube.

If these assets are optimized for SEO (search engine optimization), they are likely ranking well in search engines and driving significant traffic. Think about assets like:

• Blogs
• Resource Guides
• Whitepapers
• Tools
• Browser Extensions

If you can find a content library that’s relevant to your target market, that’s an excellent acquisition target. Not only will you get the attention of the people who are already consuming this content, but you’ll also have a ready-made source of high-quality content to repurpose and republish.

Look for popular content that’s been shared extensively and has generated a lot of engagement.

When evaluating these types of assets, keep an eye out for publications and blogs that have been around for a while and have a consistent flow of content being published.

A few things to think about:

• Look for sites or blogs with a similar target market: You want to make sure that the media asset you’re acquiring is reaching the same type of people that you want to reach with your business.
• Pay attention to engagement metrics: It’s not enough for a site or blog to simply have a large audience. You also want to make sure that the audience is loyal and engaged with the content. Look for things like high average time on site, comments, and social shares as indicators of engagement.
• Make sure the site or blog has a healthy traffic mix: You don’t want to acquire a media asset that is solely dependent on one traffic source. Look for a mix of organic, social, and email traffic to ensure that the asset will continue to perform even if there are changes in any one of those traffic sources.
• Consider the overall health of the site or blog: In addition to looking at traffic metrics, you also want to make sure that the site or blog is technically sound and has a solid reputation. You can do this by checking things like the site’s backlink profile, domain authority, and Alexa rank. I’d recommend using tools like Ahrefs or SimilarWeb as well, as they’ll help you narrow down which sites to go after.

How to Approach an Acquisition Target

Once you narrow down which media assets you’d like to target, I’d recommend taking a soft approach.

You’ll have better luck pursuing these strategies after getting a conversation going and building rapport instead of immediately revealing your intent to acquire.

Here are a few things you can do to get the conversation started:

• Reach out and introduce yourself: Start by sending an email or connecting with the asset owner on social media. If they’re local, you could even meet for coffee. The goal here is just to start building a relationship.
• Engage with the content: Once you’ve made initial contact, start engaging with the asset’s content. Share it on social media, leave comments on blog posts, and send emails with your thoughts. This will help you get on the asset owner’s radar and start to build trust.
• Provide value: In addition to engaging with the content, look for ways to provide value to the asset owner. This could be anything from offering to guest blog, to helping with social media promotion, or even providing feedback on their content.

By taking this patient approach, you’ll be in a much better position to successfully pursue an acquisition. The key is to build a relationship and establish trust before you ever mention the idea of an acquisition.

How to Acquiring a Media Asset

Once you’ve built rapport with the asset owner and they’re open to the idea of an acquisition, it’s time to start talking numbers.

During this phase, you’ll want to ask how much revenue the asset generated within a few time periods: the last month, last quarter, and last year.

As a general rule of thumb, you can expect to pay between 2-5 times the monthly net profit of the asset. So if the asset is generating $1,000/month in profit, you’d be looking to offer somewhere between $2,000-$5,000.

If they have not generated revenue (you’ll find many have not), this gives you significant negotiating leverage.

Of course, there are a lot of factors that can affect how much you ultimately pay. Things like traffic, growth potential, and the overall health of the site will all play a role in determining the final price.

You might have to negotiate a little bit but typically you’ll find the majority of media asset deals to be very affordable and quick to close.

Best of all, once you acquire, you can make these assets quickly pay for themselves.

All of these methods will help you get the attention of your ideal clients, and once you have their attention, you can quickly turn a profit.

A few ideas of how you could monetize:

• Sponsorships and advertising: complementary businesses looking to get in front of your audience
• Sell courses or training programs
• Create a paid continuity or membership program
• Sell additional products or services
• Joint ventures/partnering with affiliates to sell their products or services

Wrap Up

Hopefully by now you see the power of acquiring media and traffic assets.

The M&A strategies we covered can help you gain attention of a highly-engaged and captive audience of your ideal customer avatar.

If you’re looking to get in front of your ideal clients and massively improve your reach, purchasing media assets is a great way to do it. Keep in mind this is a numbers game, but there are countless great deals to be found out there.

Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions. Let me know how these strategies work for you – good luck!