FROM START UP TO SCALE UP
Delivering growth through customer centric marketing
The big business challenge
Shepherd are a funded InsurTech start-up targeting the commercial property management space. They came to us with bold ambitions to disrupt and scale.
Traditionally, managing the operational expenditure and upkeep associated with commercial buildings was pretty reactive. You waited for things to go wrong. Then you fixed them.
This made it difficult, expensive and unpredictable to manage and insure buildings - particularly older ones without any built-in monitoring technology.
Shepherd fixed this problem. Their technology monitored and learnt the inner workings of buildings, allowing businesses to predict problems, prevent loss, disruption and reduce their energy consumption.
Reducing risk and cost of managing a property portfolio while improving sustainability. Surely an easy sell? Funnily enough, that's where it all started.
What we did
Shepherd's goals were big, and as a start up there was lots to do. Over the course of two years we helped Shepherd navigate and conquer challenges concerning positioning, go to market, growth, partnering and fund raising.
Positioning for influence
When Shepherd first approached us, they were up and running, they had proof of concept and had recruited their first clients but they knew they needed help to accelerate growth and achieve their goals.
Our first step was insight. We knew that positioning was going to be cardinal. And in order to create the most effective positioning, we needed to fully understand Shepherd as a business, its people, its product, its resource, its markets, audiences and competitors.
Once we had fully mapped Shepherd's environment we were able to formulate strategic priorities and objectives.
Transitioning from Product-led to customer-led
When a business creates a product it's only natural to want to talk about it in your communications. However, focusing on functions and features is rarely what entices a new prospect (though it does have a part to play later on the buying process!). When someone's discovering your brand they're far more likely to be engaged by an understanding of their needs and wants and a demonstration of your product's value to them.
We worked with Shepherd to formulate a value proposition articulating their value to prospective customers and used it to wireframe a wide range of brand communications from collateral to presentation decks.
Simultaneously, we segmented and refined target markets to generate maximum impact in certain key vertical groups. From here, we were able to develop and deploy an array of tactics across the full marketing mix to deliver against the strategic objectives.
For close to two years we were immersed within Shepherd with an active role in their leadership team. Acting as Marketing Director we helped shape the sales and marketing strategy and product strategy. Working closely with the CTO, Sales Director and partners we delivered an array of campaigns helping them to shake-up the sector and gain traction against their growth ambitions
The resolve
Shepherd's goals were big, and as a start up there was lots to do. Over the course of two years we helped Shepherd navigate and conquer challenges concerning positioning, go to market, growth, partnering and fund raising.
Success & impact
During our time with Shepherd we helped them to grow to manage £5bn of property risk, partner with the 6 largest insurers in the UK, build strategic partnerships within the insurance sector, count English Heritage and Skanska amongst their customers and bring home several key industry awards.
“Perfectly Picked bring so much more than marketing know-how. They can see the big picture, but they also get stuck in and make things happen.”
Stephen Chadwick CEO, Shepherd
