Before I joined PPRO – a B2B payments tech company – in late 2019, they were straddling an awkward place between start-up and scale-up. They had a powerful product, but a weak story and boring style.
Here's the story of how we changed all that and finally go a $1 billion valuation. Out with the old, in with the bold.
It all started with building out a strategic narrative. Forget complicated frameworks, nonsensical architectures, and 70-page decks … we created a quick, memorable story that defined the company’s vision, outlined the problem we solve, communicated the solution, and embodies the culture.
I partnered with the VP of marketing and CEO to define that strategy and write the story. Then the real fun began.
For the rebranding phase of the project, I led the design team to build a visual identity that could scale and stand out amongst the boring payments blah. And I worked alongside my copy folks to develop our tone of voice: human, inclusive, enthusiastic, and a little bit playful.
Content for payments nerds, by someone who's not a payments nerd
As head of content, I developed the content strategy with input from commercial leadership and product, managed the content calendar, and had a team of internal and external writers and designers.
Our primary audience was other companies who rely on PPRO's global payments infrastructure, products, and services (think Citi, Stripe, or PayPal).
We served up a regular stream of PR, thought-leadership, data, and sales enablement content via the website, targeted emails, social media, e-books, podcasts, webinars, panels, trade show booths, and so much more.
Here's a taste of what our customers and followers found in their feeds and inboxes.