Forty percent. That’s the share of boutique investment bankers who, in a 2024 survey by SRS Acquiom, identified incomplete information on a target company as one of their greatest due diligence hurdles in their most recent buy-side deal. And among those experiencing extended due diligence timelines, 59% said one to three months had been added to the process.
In M&A, time is never neutral. Deals that drag invite doubt. Doubt invites renegotiation. Renegotiation erodes value, often in the exact places a seller least expects: their brand clarity, digital ownership and marketing measurement.
Due Diligence Starts Before the Buyer Does
At the AM&AA Winter Conference 2026 in Charleston, a panel of transaction advisors and brand specialists put a name to what’s silently killing deal value for founder-led, middle-market companies: marketing unpreparedness. Not the absence of marketing but the absence of a documented, transferable and measurable marketing infrastructure.
Many companies assume they are prepared for diligence because they can log into their website, analytics, advertising accounts or social platforms. However, ownership is often unclear. Sometimes the domain is held by the original web designer, the Google Ads account is owned by a former employee or software subscriptions are tied to personal e-mail addresses and credit cards. These gaps, the panelists warned, don’t just create friction. Buyers have reduced their offer based on digital asset findings. A Google Business Profile with poor reviews signals investment in reputation recovery. A website that needs rebuilding represents ‘technical debt,’ and the cost will be deducted from your enterprise value. And an ad account that can’t be transferred means starting from scratch on lead generation, but even more than data loss, it cuts off the ability to predict future revenue.
But digital ownership is only half the problem. The second half is marketing measurement, which can get murkier the deeper buyers dig into your numbers.
The Math Buyers Do Without You
What is the average revenue per customer over twelve months? What percentage of new business is attributable to referral, organic search, paid media and direct outreach? What is your blended customer acquisition cost (CAC)? CAC preferences can be dependent upon your business, but a common benchmark is to aim for a CLV-to-CAC ratio of about 3:1, or lifetime value is three times the acquisition cost. Buyers specifically evaluate whether traffic sources are diversified across organic and paid channels, and whether the digital effort is scalable, predictable and transferable. Beyond auditing, sophisticated buyers are also stress-testing what you’ve built to see what they can do with it, including “pricing strategies, margin improvements or new products or services,” offers Bain & Company.
Fix It Now, or Fund It Later
But if it’s a struggle to produce accurate data repeatedly, this could be a sign that your marketing technology is not structured to support the business, nor that your processes or standard operating procedures (SOP) are, in fact, standard – and buyers will price that gap accordingly. Towers Fractional Marketing works to help you build the marketing infrastructure, documented processes, digital systems and measurable marketing performance that acquirers expect to find, and that protect deal value when they don’t. As the AM&AA panelists concluded, involving experienced professionals earlier in the process can reduce friction, avoid surprises and protect value throughout a transaction.
The best time to start working on your exit strategy may have been three years ago. The second-best time is before you sign your Letter of Intent (LOI). Schedule your marketing readiness conversation with Towers Fractional Marketing by booking a call today.