How to use B2B SaaS message testing to fuel your startup growth
For B2B SaaS startups, changes in messaging are inevitable. At the same time, making sure that the new messaging will resonate with the target audience and convert them into customers can be hard.
There are multiple reasons why this can be hard:
Initial challenges of identifying the best-fit ICP to target
Struggling with separating the signal from the noise in conversations with prospects or target audience folks
Lack of internal alignment on how to talk about the product
Finally, lack of agreement on what “messaging that will resonate” even means
This is why startups can sometimes realize that their messaging is not quite aligned with what the audience needs to hear months after the messaging update.
And that costs them conversions and momentum.
The answer is not building the perfect messaging guide and carefully crafting copy based on that for the next 3 months, missing out on conversions and sales until it’s ready. There are many ways to start improving your messaging now, but only one must-have: being able to get to the “why.”
Getting to the “why” behind messaging wins and flops
You can’t improve conversions if you don’t know what’s impacting them and why.
Without the “why,” startup teams are stuck in a world where their marketing is based on guesswork.
In many cases, that leads to random acts of conversion rate optimization, messaging that copies what competitors or incumbents are doing, and no way to consistently scale by using winning messages across GTM channels.
After making sure that your current messaging is not random, you can start looking for existing gaps between your messaging and copy and what your audience needs to hear to be ready to convert.
That means that on your page, you:
Explain what your product helps prospects achieve
Show how it’s different from what your competitors’ products or competing solutions
Address prospects’ objections around taking the next action (or even considering adding your product to their shortlist)
Present a future in which your product help prospects achieve their goals, but better
Next step: making sure you haven’t missed any blind spots that will make your prospects scoff in disbelief or shrug in confusion.
2 ways you can go about finding out how your ideal customers react to your messaging and copy: pre-launch testing and after-launch feedback loops.
They’re not mutually exclusive (in fact, I recommend that my clients do both), but adding a test pre-launch can help you launch better pages and see higher conversions once you start driving traffic to those pages.
Running B2B messaging testing pre-launch
This is how I approach message-testing projects as a consultant. (If you’re a part of the internal team, you could move faster, especially if you own the project and have already done your research. If that’s the case, you can go straight to prepping your page for the test. I like using Wynter, but you can use other tools as well.)
Step 1: Research
Answering the question: what do we know about our prospects and how does that translate into messaging?
Converting messaging is based on what ICPs need to hear, not what we want to say.
So I need to make sure that the copy we’re testing is aligned with that — otherwise, we’ll be getting back responses like “I don’t know why I should care” or “This is not something I’d use.”
In practical terms, it means understanding why customers should care about the features, the brand promise, or the next step towards conversions.
Step 2: Page prep
Answering the question: will our test panel be able to see everything they need?
This means checking for:
design issues (like those nifty tabs many startups use for features where you have to click on the tab to see the copy — those won’t be clickable in a test), and
copy issues (like placeholder headlines — “Don’t take our word for it” — or missing sections like feature overview)
This way we can be sure we’re getting high-quality feedback, not “I want to see the product” non-responses.
Step 3: Analyzing results
Answering the question: what have we learned about the way our messaging is perceived by the target audience?
I can’t overstate this enough: ratings are cool, but the real gold is in analyzing qualitative data.
If your prospects are thinking this in the wild, you’ve already lost the battle:
Real feedback from real ICPs, as documented in Do You Even Resonate?
But if you catch this before you launch, you can fix those messaging and copy issues and improve your conversion rates.
Step 4: Optimization
Now that you know what your target audience find confusing, where they need more information, or when they disagree with the way you talk about their goals and desires, you can fix those issues!
For example, you can:
Add more credibility signals if your claims seem too good to be true
Insert a pricing section that respondents asked for
Update website design and visuals
Rethink your tone of voice if it landed flat with your audience
Ideally, you’re not discovering hard-to-fix issues at this point (this is why I always start with Step 1).
Instead, you’re updating the messaging based on the feedback of folks that are the toughest audience — ICPs that are not shopping around for a solution. If you get feedback like “This is exactly what I’ve been looking for” or “Probably the best page I’ve reviewed so far,” you’re onto something.
Extra tips on running a Wynter messaging test plus page review checklist
Use this guide to prep your page and avoid common mistakes startup teams make:
Testing your messaging after launch
Whether you’ll be watching organic page performance or setting up a fake door test to drive traffic, you’ll have options to get to the “why” behind the page performance.
This is what I use when monitoring page performance:
Session recordings
Heatmaps
Analytics to track conversion rates, bounce rates and time on page
Post-action surveys
Exit surveys
When available, chat session recordings
You can catch UX issues and glitches without the surveys.
But to get to the “why,” you’ll need to get qualitative feedback from your visitors. The issue here is that response rates will be fairly low, and analytics take time, so you’ll have to wait until you have enough data to be able to find messaging optimization opportunities. But given enough time, you’ll be able to uncover:
Hesitations (what almost stopped you from signing up?)
Motivations (what has convinced you to sign up?)
Stage of awareness (what has brought you to our website?)
Understanding what works in terms of messaging — emotional reactions or responses to differentiators — may be harder to figure out, so you’ll likely want to chat with your sales team and/or customer support to keep tabs on what customers and closed lost prospects say.
When is B2B message testing worth it?
For startups especially, ongoing messaging tests can be cost prohibitive. So can you be sure it’ll be worth it?
Here are 2 situations where you can skip message-testing and focus on customer research and/or gathering data post-launch instead:
Your copy is 100% based on assumptions (things you think you know about your audience, but haven’t actually confirmed were true through research)
You dont’t have reasons to believe your messaging is outdated, and you haven’t optimized your copy for conversions (start there and see if that makes a difference, or hire me to run a copy audit for you).
And here are 3 scenarios where you’ll want to look into message-testing:
You are getting signals that your messaging is not working effectively (wrong type of prospects, confusion during sales calls, low win rates) and you don’t know what’s missing
You’re expanding from early adopters to early majority and anticipate that the current messaging will need ot be update for that audience
You’re expanding to tap new ICPs or new industries and want to make sure that your updated copy is aligned with their goals, objections, and desires
Sign up to get my guide on how to get the most out of Wynter messaging tests here — or hire me to run your message testing project.
I help B2B SaaS startups research, de-risk, optimize and launch their copy to increase conversions.