MARKETING
FOR
M&A.

Operational audit a buyer (PE, strategic, family office) runs before closing a deal. Assesses whether the target's growth thesis is sustainable: unit economics (CAC, LTV, NRR), market position, pipeline attribution, execution capacity. In 2025, CDD got deeper and more data-driven — PwC's language — and marketing became a central item, not a peripheral one.

Because buyers need predictability. In SaaS, B2B services, and D2C, most of the company's value sits in CAC payback, NRR, and attributed pipeline — not in physical assets. Bain reports $1.3T in global PE dry powder pressuring deployment, and selectivity went up. Without documented marketing data, the buyer either discounts the multiple or walks away.

CAC payback period is the time required for gross margin from a customer to recover acquisition cost. Benchmarkit 2025: median B2B = 15 months, best-in-class under 12. By segment (ScaleXP): SMB SaaS 8-12 months, mid-market 14-18, enterprise 18-24. Above 24 months reads as a red flag in CDD. The most important number because it combines marketing, sales, retention, and margin in a single health indicator.

Rule of 40 = growth rate (%) + margin (EBITDA or FCF, %) ≥ 40. Bessemer 2025: companies clearing this bar trade at a 9.4x median revenue multiple in public cloud. Only 11-30% of companies actually hit it. Most used filter by PE to evaluate B2B SaaS / tech-enabled services deals.

Revenue multiple is Enterprise Value divided by annual revenue (EV/Revenue). For B2B SaaS, ranges 2-3x (bottom quartile) to 15-20x (top quartile). EV/EBITDA is the same concept divided by adjusted operating profit — more used for traditional companies. In both, the quality of documented marketing enters as a key valuation variable.

NRR = revenue this year from the same customer base last year, including upgrades minus churn and downgrades. Indicator of base health. Bessemer Cloud 100: top cohort runs NRR ≥ 110%. Below 100% reads as structural churn. In CDD, NRR by acquisition channel reveals whether marketing is bringing customers that retain — or churn quickly.

6 months is the minimum viable: instrumentation running plus 3-4 months of baseline. 12 months is the standard recommendation — a full year of tracked marketing. 18 months is ideal for robust cohort analysis and defensible growth narrative. Buyers discount retrospective documentation more than honest gaps, so starting earlier preserves more multiple at exit.

In parallel, not in conflict. The banker structures the sale process (teaser, IM, sales process, data room). We deliver the marketing content for that process: marketing data room, Q&A scripts for buyer calls, cohort analysis, narrative deck. Our artifacts feed directly into the Information Memorandum (IM) and CDD Q&A.