Semrush Acquisition Spree Spawning A New Direction In The MarTech Industry

Semrush SEMR, a management and content marketing SaaS platform, has already made two pronounced acquisitions this year including the monumental Backlinko acquisition. In 2020, it acquired Prowly, a PR and media relations company. 

Martech is a rapidly growing industry which is why there’s been a proliferation of identical tools in the market. According to Scott Brinker's martech infographic, there were 3,874 martech solutions in 2016. Whether Semrush is hugely investing in expanding its portfolio to quash competition, to remain the powerhouse or to stretch its returns remains unknown— but its impact on the martech space is certainly impressionable. 

Semrush’s move can be attributed to the prevailing market. Customer habits are fickle and brands are embracing mapping every step of the customer journey. As such, brands are finding it necessary and worthwhile to adopt all-in-one tools. Such tools not only reduce their expense sheets but also increase productivity. 

Kompyte, an AI-driven tool that offers competitive intelligence is one of the latest acquisitions by Semrush. With such a tool that easily squares with Semrush’s current solutions, brands will be more inclined to adopt Semrush since every tool will be under one roof. Besides, Semrush will have a diversified pool of services apart from its existing market-specific solutions. In turn, this would attract more professionals/users from various fields. 

Clearly, Kompyte will be a powerful tool, at least according to Semrush’s Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer, Eugene Levin who stated that Semrush was “always looking for a MarTech product that uses market data to bring other teams to the table. Kompyte is exactly that and can be used by almost every department: marketers can monitor the best campaigns across their industry to find inspiration, product teams can monitor critical feature updates of their competitors and changes in pricing, and sales teams can use battle cards to improve their win rate vs. other industry players.”

On SEO-specific matters, these acquisitions can easily help Semrush beef up its already powerful SEO tools and also enfeeble the high competition in the market. The acquisition of Backlinko, a reliable learning resource for SEO enhanced Semrush’s power position online. For instance, the keyword “link building” gets around 48,000 searches per month and Backlinko currently ranks at position 2. With the acquisition, Semrush now dominates front page results. Clearly, Martech is experiencing tectonic shifts created with the user in mind. (We will see the rise of Martech that has the target of the users in its periphery).