Digital Marketing Assets & Transfer of Social media handles

Commercial Agents and Business Brokers,

As you are completing your Asset Purchase Agreements with clients and preparing sellers to hand over key content and accounts to buyers, make sure that they prepare a list of logins/passwords for those accounts they can easily hand over and walk your clients through logging in to confirm ownership. Alternatively, we recommend you work with a digital marketing consultant or an digital escrow company (recently launched here at BROEKMAN communications) to handle the transition of accounts.

Many social media companies allow you to add a new user and invite the buyer as the admin to an account. Some seller clients are eager to remove their name from accounts or even close down accounts creating a hindrance to the productivity of the buyer getting started. Rarely does this type of digital sabotage happen intentionally, but nonetheless, wouldn’t it be great if we consulted our sellers in advance so they are prepared and we create a cool digital box transfer for our buyers to pick up. #AddedValue #SeeItToTheFinishLineRight

We know that many buyers will repackage the restaurant, bar or business, or seek to start new reputation management accounts from scratch if they are going to operate under a new name so that they can distance themselves from the negative reviews, or declining reputation (if that’s the case). However, more often than not, a good digital marketing consultant will be able to leverage the number of past customers, clients, followers, rans and reviews and bring the account back into the positive. (Case Study to share: Restaurant Realty’s Yelp (4 Stars) and Google account program (4.9 stars)).

Keep in mind that any account typically once shared can easily be modified with new contact identity information overriding the sellers’ information creating distance and removing liability!

Often times, BUYERS do not know or think of what to ask access to what before it is too late and the relationship has soured with other issues or the decision is made to just START OVER. Owning the content and the past fans/followers can be key to WINNING BACK old customers. 🙂

Make sure to include Digital Marketing Assets & Social media handles and accounts include this list:

1. EMAIL ACCOUNTS
   Often time a generic gmail or a restaurant gmail was acquired in past (or Yahoo, Hotmail, or other generic email).
   Make sure that this login/password transfers over.
   If you get lucky, despite the effort of retrieving access to an old recovery email or phone, you will find yourself with one email connected to everything. PRAY! Trust me, it’s worth the effort and headache in the end.
2. Reputation Management
   1. Yelp – invite as new owner of account
   2. Google My Business – invite as a new owner and manager of the profile – sellers often mark these as closed for business making it difficult for the buyer to restart the business
   3. Trip Advisor – share login & password
   4. OpenTable and other booking – share login & password
3. Social media accounts
   1. Facebook Fanpage (includes Facebook Reviews) – make admin of Fanpage, doesn’t require one’s personal Facebook login/password, but authorizing a user on the page only
   2. Facebook Business Manager & Meta Ad Account – invite as new user of account
   3. Instagram – share login & password
   4. YouTube – can invite buyer as new Owner of YouTube Channel
   5. Twitter – share login & password
   6. TikTok
   7. Snapchat
   8. Pinterest
4. Google Advertising (AdWords) account – can easily transfer ownership of the account by inviting buyer as a new admin of account
   After transfer the SELLER can be removed.
5. Social media tools
   1. Zoom Social
   2. Hubspot
   3. Alternative posting & calendar program
6. Website Visitor Tracking Tools
   1. Google Analytics – one can easily add the buyer as a NEW ADMINISTRATOR of account and then seller can be removed
   2. Any other tracking tools like Statcounter, Heatmaps, etc.

BOTTOM LINE, if I were a buyer, I would want access to everything and then decide afterwards what I want to keep and discard.

We know that these are Already prioritized 

1. Blast Email programs – Constant Contact, MailChimp (an obvious one not overlooked)
2. Postmates, Grubhub, UberEats
3. CRM for Customer Relationship Management Database
4. Couponing or promotional tool accounts
5. Toast & other POS systems are part of the normal handover

Next phase: SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING