For Operating Partners & Portco CEOs
Marketing your portco runs on, not around.
Sheppard operates the marketing function inside PE-backed residential home services portfolio companies — embedded as the platform marketing team, or managing the agency stack on the sponsor's behalf. Ten integrated specialties run as one engine, reported monthly on EBITDA contribution, designed to defend the multiple at exit.
How We Engage
Three operating models. One operating system.
The right model depends on what the portco already has and what the sponsor wants to professionalize. The operating system Sheppard installs is the same; how we deliver it scales to the platform's stage.
— 01
Embedded
Sheppard operates as the platform's marketing function. We build the operating system, run the channels, and augment the internal team as the platform scales. The portco team owns customers and operations; we own the marketing engine.
Fit
Platforms without a senior marketing leader, or with internal teams that need senior depth on attribution, brand architecture, or roll-up integration.
— 02
Managed
Sheppard oversees the agency stack on the sponsor's behalf — holding vendors accountable to platform-level KPIs, consolidating spend, and reporting EBITDA contribution to the operating partner monthly.
Fit
Platforms with existing agency relationships that need professionalization and consolidation rather than wholesale replacement.
— 03
Hybrid
Sheppard operates select disciplines directly (typically analytics, attribution, brand) and manages vendors for others (paid media, content). Common at multi-portco roll-ups where some functions standardize across the platform and others stay local.
Fit
Multi-portco platforms where the operating model is part-standardized and part-distributed.
What Operating Partners See
Six metrics in the monthly report.
Marketing-sourced EBITDA contribution at the top, supported by five operational leading indicators. Reported on the same cadence as financial close so the operating partner can read it before the board pack ships.
— 01
Marketing-sourced EBITDA contribution
The headline metric. Normalized for channel-mix shift and seasonality. Reported monthly alongside financial close.
— 02
CAC trend by channel
Normalized customer acquisition cost by source — not raw blended. Shows whether the marketing engine is becoming more or less efficient over time.
— 03
Sourced-revenue contribution by channel
What share of revenue each channel is producing. Where to invest more, where to cut, where to test new entrants.
— 04
Booked-call rate
Lead-to-appointment conversion. The leverage between marketing spend and operations performance.
— 05
Average ticket by lead source
Which channels bring high-ticket replacement work vs. low-ticket service calls. The mix that drives gross margin.
— 06
Brand investment as % of revenue
The investment that compounds across the hold and defends the multiple at exit. Underfunded in 80% of platforms.
Built for the Next Sponsor
Owned by the portco. Transferable at exit.
Everything Sheppard builds is owned by the portfolio company — source code, infrastructure, data, documentation. Source code committed to the portco's repos. Infrastructure in the portco's cloud accounts. Brand assets, vendor contracts, dashboards, and operating playbooks all transfer at exit with zero vendor-dependency drag.
The next sponsor inherits a working operating system. Buyers see clean attribution methodology, vendor lineage, brand-equity baselines, sponsor-facing dashboards, and a transferable systems pack their team can run from on Day 1 of the next ownership cycle.
Platforms that ran this discipline through the hold defend their multiple in buyer-side diligence. The ones that didn't lose half a turn of EBITDA in negotiation.
Frequently Asked