PlanetVerify Case Study
PlanetVerify and MFS - Launching a Successful Foray into a New Industry
Business Context
Founded in 2013, PlanetVerify is an Irish B2B tech company that provides a cloud-based onboarding and identity verification solution. One of the key value drivers for PlanetVerify was the flexibility of their system and its use cases across a number of industries. Leadership at PlanetVerify felt there was an opportunity to make a foray into another industry and unlock a new revenue stream.
Challenge
The challenge for PlanetVerify was essentially a marketing challenge - leadership felt that their system could add value to companies outside of their traditional target markets, but there were a number of stumbling blocks.
- Competitive Landscape - Each industry brings with it its own competitive landscape. By moving outside of their traditional areas of expertise, PlanetVerify was going to encounter a new set of competitors.
- Customer Expectations - Customers in different industries speak what may as well be a different language. Their priorities are different and so are their expectations.
- Existing Positioning - PlanetVerify was positioned as a secure onboarding system with expertise in their traditional target markets of property, telco, and accounting - they did not have any custom-facing materials that would target areas outside of these markets.
In many ways, launching into a new industry is like being back to square one. The credibility developed in other industries will help, but it is not as influential as proven target industry success. The marketing challenge facing PlanetVerify was considerable.
"MFS work in a highly strategic manner - never losing sight of the important things. Everything MFS worked on was focused on our goal of unlocking a new revenue stream for PlanetVerify."
- Owen Sorensen, CEO, PlanetVerify
Solution
Leadership at PlanetVerify engaged with MFS to try and figure out a route forward. This new industry strategy - while challenging - did represent a considerable opportunity for growth. Working closely with PlanetVerify leadership, we put together a multi-step plan targeting the lending sector - that would take prospects from the awareness stage through to consideration and, ultimately, decision stage. The plan contained the following elements:
- Industry Research - We built on the company's initial research into possible avenues and identified the lending industry as a suitable candidate to target. The lending industry still had a reliance on manual tools, so PlanetVerify’s automated onboarding solution was a good fit.
- Ideal Customer Profile Creation - We honed in on the particular segment of lenders that was most suited to PlanetVerify’s software and also identified the main types of buyer persona’s to target.
- Competitive Positioning - We identified all the competitors PlanetVerify would face in this new target industry and how their solution compared. Additionally, we analyzed each competitor’s pricing, marketing, maturity, market share, strengths, and weaknesses. This analysis helped us figure out how to position PlanetVerify in this new market.
- Validation - We set about validating this approach by launching pilot PPC and outbound email campaigns. Here we tested out different versions of our messaging to see what was resonating with our target buyers. Our outbound email campaign helped us set up some initial sales conversations which gave us invaluable insights into our target market’s pain points, priorities, and any possible sales roadblocks.
- Value Proposition - Taking what we learned from our initial sales conversations, we tailored PlanetVerify’s existing value proposition to the lending space.
- Messaging - We created messaging that would communicate PlanetVerify’s value proposition to the lending industry in a language that lenders would understand. This messaging would be incorporated into the sales and marketing materials we developed to support this campaign.
- Content - From here, we built out the content architecture needed to support this foray into a new target market including web pages, email marketing, prospecting emails, PPC content, and blog posts. We also worked on the sales enablement content that would help the PlanetVerify sales team get deals over the line - this content included competitor comparison charts, elevator pitches, battle cards, and ROI documents.
- PR - We added a PR element to the campaign to help generate awareness of PlanetVerify’s industry solution.
One of the biggest benefits of PlanetVerify’s software was that it would enable companies to move from manual to automated onboarding processes. PlanetVerify was tapping into the fast-paced area of digital transformation - so speed of execution was key here.
Result
The final outcome was a highly successful campaign that grew awareness and ultimately increased the sales pipeline and revenue.
- Awareness - MFS helped PlanetVerify build awareness of their solution within the target industry as well as trebling organic traffic to their website.
- Unlocking a new revenue stream - As a result of this campaign, PlanetVerify was able to win their first customers in this new target market. MFS worked with PlanetVerify throughout the sales cycle - ensuring reps had all the sales materials they needed to get sales opportunities over the line.
- Growing pipeline - PlanetVerify’s sales pipeline grew 24%.
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