When growing your paint business through acquisition, the transfer of ownership process can be chaotic as well as exciting. Often during the transfer, the focus is on physical assets such as buildings, inventory and business accounts. But what about digital assets?
So often, retailers aren’t thinking of the digital assets they need from their new company. Ensuring that you have access to all of the store’s existing assets will help your marketing efforts in the future. Some assets won’t allow you to have multiple profiles for the same business, so ensuring that you have access to the original will be crucial. If you are working with an external marketing agency, having easy access to your digital assets will help them do their job best, without encountering timely roadblocks along the way.
Sometimes the existing owner may not know who has the information to access digital assets, but it is still important to include it as part of the sale nonetheless. Ensuring that there is some sort of verbiage in your purchase offer about the digital assets will not only protect you as the buyer, but also ensure that the seller understands your expectations from the start.
Here is a checklist of digital assets that you as a retailer need to be asking for from the seller before they go riding off into the sunset.
Website
Does the seller have an existing website? If they do, you will need to ask who built it and who is responsible for updating it. If this was done with an outside agency, you should arrange a group meeting with the seller and the agency so they are aware of the ownership change and you can understand their role and what they have access to.
If the seller’s website is a Shopify e-commerce store, Shopify will handle the transfer of ownership. You can read about those steps here.
DNS and Domain
A Domain Name System (DNS) acts like a phone book by managing the mapping between names and numbers. In short, it is used to connect your domain name with email, websites, and other web services. Often whoever hosts your DNS will also host the domain. The domain is your website address (example.com). Who hosts the seller’s website domain and DNS settings? You will need to update the billing information to renew the domain when it expires and to have access to the DNS settings.
Email Hosting/Provider
Who is the seller’s current email hosting provider? An email hosting provider is the platform that you run your email system on. The most common ones are Gmail and Microsoft Business 365. Often an IT company has set up the email hosting for the seller’s company so they would be able to provide you with the information. You will need to inform them of the ownership change and determine how best to integrate it into your current email set-up.
Social Platforms
Gaining access to existing social platforms can help maintain a positive reputation with the seller’s existing customers. Here is a list of social platforms that you should ask to be included in the transfer (if they have an account).
- Facebook
An oldie but a goodie. The largest social media platform and where the older audience spends their time. Users can share pictures, videos, articles and text updates. - Instagram
This platform is known for its younger audiences. This platform specializes in sharing pictures and videos. Visually appealing photos do well on this platform. - Pinterest
Where ideas are shared. Pinterest is often used by the DIY crowd to share articles of different projects or to create a vision board of their planned project. Users create “boards” to store all their pinned articles. - LinkedIn
The professional social network. Business professionals typically use the platform to share tips of the trade as well as recruit or hire new employees. This is often a person’s professional online presence. - Twitter
A favourite platform for political figures, Twitter specializes in sharing short text based messages and pictures to your followers. Posting multiple times a day to this platform is often encouraged. - Houzz
The home decorator’s social platform. Browse through home design photos and save your favourites.
Facebook Pixel
Pixel’s are pieces of code that you insert into the backend of your website. These are used to create targeted ads for your customers by linking actions they took on your website to the ads they see on Facebook. As with anything that involves customer data, you want control of these tools to protect the privacy of your customers.
Pinterest Tag
Similar to a Facebook Pixel, they are used to create targeted ads for Pinterest based off the user’s website actions. As with the Facebook Pixel, you really want to have control of your customer data.
Google My Business Listing
When you Google your business name, the GMB listing is the panel of information about your store hours, your name, pictures, reviews and sometimes coupon offers. By having access to your listing, you can ensure that your store hours are always up to date and you can respond to visitor reviews. There is one listing per location, so if you are acquiring more than one store, be sure to get access to each location’s listing.
Google Analytics
What are visitors looking at when they visit your website? Where are they coming from, how long do they spend? Having access to Google Analytics will help you evaluate website performance and see where you can make improvements. Ensure that you have been given admin access to this by the seller.
Google Tag Manager
Take a deep dive into your online marketing data. Tag Manager is used to manage and update all the various pieces of code that other Google products implement on your site, such as Google Analytics and Google Adwords. Similar to Google Analytics, you should ensure that you have been added as an admin by the seller.
Google Ads
Want to show up as the first result when searching for bedroom paint? With Google Ads, you can create ads and pay to have them appear as the first few results on a variety of keywords specific to your business. You can also insert video ads to the beginning of Youtube videos through the Google Ads Network. You can link one ad account to a single Google My Business listing, so you should make sure that the seller adds you as an admin to Google Ads.
Logo Files
Even if you are changing the name of the store, it is best to ask for all existing branding assets — you may want to pepper in the old logo on a few marketing pieces when first announcing the change of ownership to social media and other digital pushes.
Blog Content
Blogs are short articles on your website where users can gain information on a specific topic. If the website has existing blog content, who wrote them? Do you have permission to re-use the content?
Yelp Listings
Similar to Google My Business and popular in the United States markets, these listings hold reviews from customers, useful store information and other features to showcase your business that you might want to have access to.
If you are currently working with a digital agency, you should alert them to your buying plans early on so they can advise you on the digital assets that you should acquire during the transfer of ownership. Contact us if you have questions about the process of transferring digital assets and how PaintPass can help you achieve success in your newest paint store purchase.
Download the digital checklist so you are sure to not miss anything.