The context
After building the go-to-market motion for self-storage operators, we identified another opportunity within the existing marketplace model: housing associations and councils managing large portfolios of empty or underutilised garages.
The commercial problem was clear. Empty garages meant lost rental income, but the business had no established presence in the sector, no existing customer base and no proven acquisition strategy.
My role was to figure out whether this could become a viable B2B market for the business, then build the go-to-market motion from scratch.
Finding the market
I mapped the housing and public-sector landscape to understand which organisations held the largest garage portfolios, who was responsible for managing them and where the commercial problem was most acute.
The research helped narrow the audience around the teams closest to occupancy and rental income, particularly asset management and income teams.
Building the GTM motion
I built the go-to-market strategy across market research and segmentation, ICP and buyer-persona development, positioning, outbound email and LinkedIn, landing pages, sales collateral, conferences, case studies, nurture and pipeline reporting.
The early campaigns were deliberately iterative. I tested different buyer groups, propositions and message structures, then used performance data to refine the approach. Messaging changes increased email open rates from 11% to 53% and LinkedIn reply rates from 5% to 25%.
Expanding the acquisition mix
Outbound became a core acquisition channel, generating £653k in attributed pipeline.
I then added conferences as a dedicated channel for reaching housing providers and developing high-intent opportunities, contributing a further £376k in attributed pipeline.
Turning early customers into proof
Early customer pilots gave us stronger evidence to take back into the market. an early housing association customer increased garage occupancy from 75% to 84% during its pilot and subsequently converted to a £25,200 annual contract.
Turning a new market into a meaningful pipeline
Within 15 months, the vertical grew from zero customers to a £1.2m annual-revenue pipeline, with 92 open opportunities and an average contract value of approximately £30,000 per year.
What started as an unproven market opportunity became a structured B2B growth motion with its own positioning, acquisition channels, customer proof and commercial pipeline.