The Nail and Scale Playbook

Attention is the most valuable currency. Companies that get their target market and figure out how to resonate with them make money.
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There are more software/service choices than ever before. For buyers, it can be overwhelming to make sense of the landscape and figure out what's right for them.

What's also true is that companies aren’t spending money easily right now. That means you have to stand out in your category, and be obviously relevant and valuable.

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Playbook for winning: Nail and Scale

Pick a niche.
Get to know your ICPs better than others.
Tell them things they need to hear to convert.
Solve that particular problem better than anyone else.
Communicate differentiated value.
Build mental availability. Become known for that one thing.
Scale later to other problems and products. Repeat the cycle.
Win faster.

You need to nail a niche first, and then keep expanding to new markets, all the while building up mental availability across all category buyers.

The success depends on the quality of your insights about your target customers and what resonates with them, your speed of execution and making the right bets.

#1 Pick a niche

What is a niche? A focus on a specific type of customer with particular needs.

To win, you need to nail a niche. And then another. And another.

‍According to Sam Altman, most of the failed startups during his time as the president of YC Combinator were businesses that went after a large market from day #1.
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Once you gain a foothold in the niche, you can expand out (scale) later.

When you nail your niche, dominate a small market segment, and build a customer base of people who desperately need (not want) what you have, you gain momentum that aids further expansion goals.

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How to validate your niche with Wynter

Test if your solution and/or value proposition resonates with a particular ICP (or test with multiple different ICPs to see who resonates the best).
Survey various ICPs about their pain points and top challenges to find who cares a lot about what you help solve.
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Check out all our B2B audiences.‍

#2 Get to know your ICPs better than others

Your target market needs to be a primary input to how you run your strategy.

You really shouldn’t do marketing until your team knows‍

the top 3 big problems of your ICPs
what are the symptoms the target customer is feeling because of those pains
what's the value of solving those problems
what triggers them to seek out solutions like yours
the channels ICPs use to learn more about your category of tools
who in the company owns the budget for it
what the buying process is generally like.

Knowing the answers will make all the difference to your marketing effectiveness. The quality of your decisions comes from the quality of your information.

If you invest 1% of your go-to-market budget into insights, it will make the other 99% go much further.‍

How you can get to know your ICP with Wynter

Run a Category Buyer Survey with Wynter and get answers to all the questions listed above, and then some.

Do this every quarter and all your go-to-market teams (marketing, sales, customer success) will be aligned on what the ICP thinks and needs at any given time.

ICP/category buyer insights used to be a lot of hassle and took many weeks. Now, it's available on-demand, with full results in 48 hours.

The rise of fast feedback

The world moves fast and changes fast. The reality for your customers can change a lot from quarter to quarter.

A much-needed mindset shift is needed: companies need to go from ("capital R") Research to ("lowercase r") research. The idea that research needs to be this big, scary, and super expensive thing that takes many months is outdated.

As one VP Marketing shared:

"We went from big 100K research reports once a year to lots of micro-testing throughout the year that helps us stay nimble and continue to refine our messaging. In the world of SaaS, we operate in dog years and needs change with the wind, so it's important to make sure messaging is adaptive."

It's not just your messaging that needs to adapt. It's your whole array of go-to-market decisions (who, where, what, how much, etc) that need to evolve with the times.‍

How to do lowercase-r research with Wynter

All Wynter studies are completed within 48 hours. Some specific examples:
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Have one particular question about your ICPs? Run a single-question survey
Want to know if prospects resonate better with value proposition A or B? Run a preference test and find out in a day.

#3 Tell them things they need to hear to convert

Winners invest heavily in ICP research and message testing. The rest just go straight into spending more or "trying more channels."

Having a great product is no longer enough. You also need to win on things beyond the product: positioning and messaging.

Words are the most important part of a website. The message you want to convey is words.

How to use Wynter to create messaging that resonates with your ICPs

Someone signing up for a product or demo is the effect.

But what's the cause?

It’s whether the prospect finds the messaging

clear.
relevant,
compelling,
differentiated.

Focus on the cause, and you'll see the effect numbers go up.

#4 Solve that particular problem better than anyone else

It’s not enough to just say you’re better. You need to deliver on it.

You can’t nail a niche without delivering actual value with your product.

Even if you succeed in nailing the go-to-market for a niche, it needs to yield high retention after a cycle or two. Otherwise it isn't possible to expand to newer/bigger markets when you are on shaky grounds to begin with.

#5 Communicate differentiated value

Differentiation is about giving the buyer a reason to choose you over others. If you play in a mature category, you need to lead with your differentiated value on your website.

When prospective buyers check out your website, they are always comparing you to alternatives – who are mostly the top companies in your space. What they are looking to figure out is how you are different and/or better than them.

How to use Wynter to check if people get your differentiation

Run a message test, asking questions among other things “Why choose this over alternatives?” and see if they know. Can they clearly spell out why you vs the most known brand in the category?

#6 Build mental availability. Become known for that one thing

95% of target customers are not actively shopping today. So the game is building mental availability - being thought of by category buyers in buying situations.

Brands with more mental availability are easier to recall than brands with less mental availability. Building high mental availability requires repeated exposure to your ads and content, with an effective message.

While brand awareness is important by itself, if your brand is not cued to buying triggers in your customers’ minds, they won’t be able to recall you when their search starts. So, mental availability is not just about awareness; it’s about the association of your brand with what triggers your customers to buy.

How to use Wynter to improve mental availability

Test your campaign messaging with Wynter to test your message effectiveness and brand associations.

Run a message test on your campaign creative.
Conduct a brand awareness research study to learn what are category buyers associating with your brand.