Wynter on Wynter: How A Survey Pivoted Our 2023 Content

Running Wynter means we get to use it quite often. It’s shaped how our site explains things, how to position ourselves, and what we talk about. What we produce isn’t by chance, it’s through getting feedback directly from our ICP.
‍

In this series, we are pulling back the curtain on the surveys and message tests we’ve run for Wynter. We’ll show you exactly how we use it, and what it’s inspired that you’ve seen, read or watched from us in the days and weeks that followed.

‍

First up: The content Wynter should focus on

Test type: Buyer Intelligence Survey

‍

Our Buyer Intelligence Surveys let you ask a certain number of panelists 5 open-ended questions. Something interesting about these is you’ll often see patterns in the answers among all the different questions, and not just the one asked. 
‍

Common threads become obvious, no matter what question the user was asked.
‍

Questions asked: 

1. What are your top 3 problems when it comes to driving more pipeline?
2. When it comes to driving pipeline, what’s the effort split between getting more qualified traffic (SEO, PPC) vs. increasing the website conversion rate? What’s changing compared to 2022?
3. What role does messaging play in your website conversion optimization efforts?
4. In your opinion, how good is your existing messaging? (Choice between 1-10, with 10 being perfect.)
5. If your messaging was more effective (better clarity, more relevance, better articulation of value), what do you think would be the business impact of this?

‍

Finding 1: Connecting with the right user and right message.

Something immediately clear was it’s difficult to connect a laser-focused topic with the ideal ICP. We also had focused on website conversion topics, but the first two questions showed us struggles outside of that we could make helpful content for.

Here are some of the answers we saw that reference this when asked about the biggest challenges:

‍

‍

Another similar one:

‍

‍

And another:

‍

Finding 2: Conversion content for every stage is needed

In question 2, we found most of the focus was not on website CRO – rather, it was on messaging for generally higher-funnel acquisition in driving traffic.. This opened up a much larger landscape of content around messaging we could create that our users would find helpful.

Here were some of the answers around that:

‍

‍

You get the idea: creating the right things for the right people continues to be a marketing challenge, especially in b2b where targeting can be limited, and there are multiple decision makers.

But CRO-focused content needs were more centered on further up the funnel, not as specifically on a landing page to convert to a demo.

What that meant for us: our content should expand the idea of CRO into upper funnel stages, not just on-site messaging for demos. Clearly, messaging from start to finish is something usres are thirsty for more help and ideas around. 

‍

Finding 3: Seeing ahead to how our content should change

This survey was run in the beginning of 2023 – it operated almost like a crystal ball for us to anticipate how to make our content timely.

There was a clear thread in all of the answers: we will have less staff, but be expected to do the same, or more, sales.

‍

‍

‍

‍

How Data Became Action

Previously, we created content around things like website CRO, homepage improvements for better conversion, and landing page optimization, but clearly, we could expand.

Looking at pre-site-conversion concerns, there were some obvious topical themes to explore:
‍

1. Reaching your ICP in budget-constrained environments.
   
   For companies running paid media, we did a workshop that explored how to validate and run ads before putting any scaling money behind it.
   
   We also tackled how to define your ICP so you knew exactly who to make messaging for, but without spending money to research it. 

2. Defining yourself versus competitors
   
   Clearly, brand awareness and differentiation were themes but they also can take longer for potential customers to grasp. We focused on content to help our users get to it quicker.

3. Focusing on demand generation tactics versus lead generation
   
   Many of the answers showed the need to create demand, versus just capture it. The input from the survey focused less on things like landing page demo conversion, and more on “how do we talk to people and create interest even before that?”
   
   We covered how to position your brand, ideas around brand narrative frameworks to differentiate your offering, how to stand out from your competitors.

‍

Content Shouldn’t Be A Guess

As a SaaS that focuses on messaging and content, we know things evolve. The messaging and topics that worked a year ago may be less relevant – just look at the difference in the tech industry over the past 3 years.

Trends like limited budgets emerged, so strategic and tactical advice must change with it. The push to do more with less budget or less headcount has been very real, and it’s a lens we looked through with our content this year.

Your brand is probably not radically different, no matter the industry. Customer needs (and sometimes even who you target) change, but you don’t need a statistically significant multiple choice survey that costs thousands of dollars to figure that out.

You can run a simple intelligence survey, a preference test, or any other targeted customer Wynter test to get to these insights, too. Spend more time creating exactly what your customers want and need, and less of it guessing and learning the long way.