S6E10 – The SaaS Founder’s Guide to ICP: Messaging That Clicks with Buyers with Craig Brown

Ever wondered how to create a good ideal customer profile for your SaaS? In this episode on the ⁠Grow Your B2B SaaS Podcast⁠, we explore the power of the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) a must-know for B2B SaaS founders looking to grow smart. Our guest, ⁠Craig Brown⁠, founder of ⁠Troubadour⁠ (a product marketing agency for SaaS startups), breaks it all down. With experience at HSBC, Beemri, and mentoring startups across the U.S., Craig brings a mix of deep business insight and stand-up comedian charm to the conversation.

Why Knowing Your ICP Is a Game-Changer

Craig doesn’t mince words: if you don’t know who you’re selling to, your go-to-market efforts are flying blind. For early-stage founders, defining an ICP is like turning on a flashlight in a dark room. It helps you spend time, money, and energy on people who are most likely to buy, stick around, and love what you offer. And as your business evolves, your ICP should evolve too — think of it as a living, breathing strategy that adapts with the times.

The Biggest Myths About ICP

Here’s a trap many founders fall into: finding a buyer and calling it a day. Craig says, “Not so fast.” Just because someone buys doesn’t mean they’re your ideal customer. Real ICP work considers how easy they are to reach, the competition you’re up against, and whether your business can grow with these types of customers. It’s not just about who needs your product — it’s about who’s best for your business long-term.

Common Mistakes Founders Make

Trying to appeal to everyone usually means you end up appealing to no one. Craig warns against keeping your ICP too broad — it waters down your message and makes it harder to connect with the right people. Another red flag? Going after giant enterprise clients too soon. They might seem like a dream, but they can drain your resources fast. Focus instead on truly understanding your target customer’s real-world struggles.

How to Zero In on Your ICP

So how do you actually find your ICP? Craig suggests starting wide — look at your whole market — then narrow it down with smart segmentation. Do deep research. Test your messages. Listen to the market. It’s a cycle of learning and refining until you lock in on the right group. The tighter your ICP, the sharper your messaging and results will be.

Spotting (and Avoiding) the Wrong Clients

Sometimes success means knowing who not to serve. Craig says empathy is your secret weapon — really understand what your ideal customer deals with day to day. Your messaging should speak so clearly to the right folks that it naturally turns away the wrong ones. Bonus tip: use win-loss analysis and customer feedback to fine-tune your ICP over time.

Product-Market Fit: More Than Just Numbers

Many think product-market fit is all about hitting a magic revenue number. Craig disagrees. To him, it’s about loyalty — renewals, referrals, and cold outreach that actually works. When customers stick around, spread the word, and keep buying without needing a huge push, that’s real product-market fit.

Growing? Your ICP Should Grow Too

As your company scales, your ICP and messaging need to grow with you. Craig talks about the importance of adjusting for new markets and customer segments. What works in one region may flop in another — copying and pasting your strategy won’t cut it. Stay flexible, stay curious, and keep learning.

Final Thoughts & Takeaways

To wrap it up, Craig leaves us with some gold: segment your market, know who you’re talking to, go to market intentionally, and always iterate based on feedback. No matter your stage, deep customer research and clear insights are your best tools for growth.

Key Timecodes

• (0:00) – Introduction and Common Startup Challenges
• (0:49) – Guest Introduction: Craig Brown
• (1:45) – Importance of Defining an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
• (3:01) – Misconceptions About Identifying ICP
• (4:57) – Common Mistakes in Defining ICP
• (7:53) – Going Enterprise Too Early
• (8:47) – Evolving ICP and Product Development
• (9:19) – Step-by-Step Process to Nail ICP
• (13:56) – How Narrow Should Your ICP Be?
• (16:58) – Avoiding the Wrong Clients Through Messaging
• (19:21) – Where Companies Get Stuck Defining ICP
• (22:03) – Product-Market Fit: Not Just Revenue Milestones
• (24:23) – Adjusting SaaS Messaging as the Company Grows
• (27:16) – Product-Focused vs. Value-Focused Headlines
• (29:01) – Best Advice on Defining ICP
• (30:37) – Advice for SaaS Founders Starting Out
• (31:50) – Growing to 10 Million ARR: Challenges and Advice
• (34:24) – How to Find and Contact Craig Brown

Transcription

– Craig

One challenge which I sometimes see with startups is trying to nail the messaging and positioning before they go to market. I absolutely don’t advocate for that. I believe your go-to-market is a huge part of your research. Just finding a buyer that wants your product isn’t actually enough. There are many facets to what defines an ICP. For example, how easy is it to sell to them or access them? What does the competitive landscape look like when you’re competing with targeting one segment versus another? You could find someone that screams and shouts about how brilliant your product is. But if it’s super expensive and takes a long time to acquire that customer, then there’s really a question as to whether that is an ideal customer.

– Joran

Today, we’re going to talk about how to create a good ideal customer profile known as an ICP, and going from that to messaging that actually clicks with your buyer. My guest is Craig Brown. Craig is the founder of Troubadour, a product marketing agency for B2B SaaS tech startups and scaleups, where they help you with your positioning and messaging and enter new markets. He started his career at the bank HSBC as an analyst, went to Beemri, started as an AE, after that, became a global CSM before he became the founding product Marketing Manager. After that, he has been hooked on product marketing as he became a product marketing consultant and building an agency for this. Next to building Troubadour, he’s a mentor and growth mentor for start out in the US and also a stand-up comedian. This actually might be a fun one with packed with jokes. Who knows? We’re just going to dive right in. Why is, I guess, defining an ideal customer profile ICP so critical for B2B SaaS founders?

– Craig

So much of your go-to-market engine revolves around who you’re targeting. I think the importance of the ICP depends on where you are in the growth journey. For early-stage founders, you are beginning this process of discovery. Who is that best You have limited resources, so you want to put that into a group of customers that are most likely to convert and become sticky, loyal customers that speak wonderfully about your product and help become part of your go-to-market engine. For growth stage startups, you’re looking at different use cases such as entering a new market. If you’re a European or UK startup going into the US or vice versa, your ICP could evolve, could change, and it depends on a lot of different market factors. Your ICP is constantly evolving, or your ICP itself faces changes, whether that be the impact of market regulations, cultural changes, values, new competitors that come in, new technologies, their needs and changes evolve. It’s important for every startup on the growth journey, and it’s also an ongoing thing. So get your ICP right around the I’m happy that we’re actually diving into how to build your proper ICP because we have been talking about it really a lot that We need to define it, but we never nailed it.

– Joran

I’m happy we’re going to discuss that today. Before we dive deeper, what is one of the biggest misconceptions founders have when it comes to identifying their ICP?

– Craig

Yeah, it’s a really good question. I was having this conversation with the founder. Just finding a buyer that wants your product isn’t actually enough. There are many facets to what defines an ICP. For example, how easy is it to sell to them or access them? What does the competitive landscape look like when you’re competing with targeting one segment versus another? Even then, you could be competing against different solutions and alternatives in the market. Even when you stumble across a particular buyer, are there enough of them? Is that market opportunity big enough? And also, is it consistent? If you target one company, could you find hundreds, thousands, depending on the contract size, would your sales process be scalable? Or are you going to be targeting a completely different use case and job title? There are lots of different elements that you have to take into account. You could find someone that screams and shouts about how brilliant your product is. But if it’s super expensive and takes a long time to acquire that customer, then there’s really a question as to whether that is an ideal customer. So yes, it’s good to find buyers and segments that show a need for your product.

– Craig

They have pains and challenges that match. There’s so much more to consider.

– Joran

Lots of interesting things to There’s two things that I took out of it. A buyer is not your ICP if they actually buy you, which is great. I think that’s definitely one thing SaaS companies have to take in mind. Then you’ll mention, are there enough of them? Always check your total addressable market, check if there’s enough. Buyers within the ICP are creating. I guess common misconception, when SaaS companies define their ideal customer profile, what are some common mistakes you see here?

– Craig

One challenge I face is a founder or a startup wanting to keep the definition broad, which tends to come from a concern about potentially leaving money on the table. They want to target a broader market because there are more potential customers that could say yes. It comes from a very understandable panic that they need to grow and they bring in money. The challenge of targeting a broad market is that your positioning and messaging then has to speak to that broad market. It means your message becomes broad, it means it becomes diluted, and then it’s hard to really cut through the noise and put in front of them a proposition that actually really speaks to a challenge that they feel is urgent and thus they’re willing to invest in solving. Other errors or challenges that I see. The question around going enterprise super quick, I think, is a very nuanced one because I myself have worked for a startup that targeted enterprise clients quite early and succeeded, and I have seen other examples, but it is difficult to do. It’s a more complicated sales process. The sales cycle is a lot longer. They typically put more restraints around exactly how you serve them.

– Craig

You need to have a customer success infrastructure that’s ready to deal with lots of questions, lots of handholding, security, ISO standards, compliance. That’s all really elevated when it comes to an enterprise client. You will find that you have to really take up a lot of resource and time to keep them happy for that one logo. I think you just have to be careful in terms of, are you ready to take them on and does your solution, in order for this to work, does it have to be an enterprise buyer? There are implications in how you do fundraising and where that fundraising goes. The other thing is the data that informs your ICP. Again, I’ll speak to founders that will say that they’ve done their research and they’ve spoken to lots of potential customers, buyers in the market. Then when I asked for insights, what are the common problems and pains that they express that your product could potentially solve. They’ll identify those surface-level challenges. They want to save time and they want to make money and grow faster, at which point, I don’t know what solution you’re potentially selling to them. Is it a climate accounting?

– Craig

Is it a new challenger CRM? You need to get down into something much more specific with that buyer segment where they feel there is this unresolved pain point that other solutions don’t touch upon. That means going beyond surface level, save time, be happier.

– Joran

We all You mentioned, I guess, also going enterprise too early. You mentioned before, the wider the ICP, the wider the messaging. If you go to enterprise, you’re defining already your ICP. You make it super narrow. We go for a certain type of company, but don’t do it too early. It will take all the resources. You’re going to go sales-led, sales cycle longer. You need to be able to actually spend that time, spend that money to get them in.

– Craig

With these things, I don’t like being absolutist. Social media has contributed to thought leadership, which is you’ve got to be black and white on everything. There’s too much gray and there’s too much nuance. I’m never going to turn around and say, Don’t go enterprise straight away, because you probably could do that. But I’ve seen examples of how having good relationships or good network or connections via VCs can help get into enterprise accounts. Not everyone has access to that. There can be situational circumstances or privileges that one can have that someone won’t. That will increase the likelihood of you succeeding with an enterprise. But the The point is, it’s probably more difficult as an early-stage startup to go straight into enterprise, whereas you could start off with SMB, move to mid-market, and then make your way up to enterprise later on. Like Stripe and their journey, they started off as simple online payments for developers. They weren’t going super enterprise.

– Joran

Your ICP is constantly evolving. Same as your product where you start with an MVP or a bare minimum of the product, the more clients you have, the more you develop the features enterprise clients would actually need as well. I guess we’re going to now talk about ICP. If a founder is listening, they want to nail their ICP after this podcast and probably also accelerate product market fit or leverage them as part of the go-to-market. Would you have a step-by-step process, a framework you would recommend we can follow?

– Craig

I dip into a few different frameworks and processes. It depends, again, on the stage of growth that you’re at. One of the challenges of being an early-stage startup is you have less data. There’s more testing. If you’re a growth-stage startup, you have your hands on more data, so you can probably get to the answer a bit quicker. But let’s go for the early stage perspective. First starting point is who is definitely not your ICP? The starting point is the total population of this entire world. This is where segmentation piece comes in. Who is the most likely potential groups and groups of customers that makes sense? You may already have existing data that proves that. That data being conversations, research on the internet. The reason you built your startup and products in the first place, you may have some industry experience. But there is a starting point of, We are building this solution in this area to broadly solve these problems. You already have a frame of reference that’s going to help you do that initial focus down. But generally speaking, you have lots of groups of customers you can then cut and slice in different ways, not literally the human being, because that would be a bit violent, but the actual groups or definitions of these people.

– Craig

The way I think about segmentation I begin with hero characteristics like company size or industry. Those are the obvious criterion. But know that your future definition of a segment or ICP may evolve beyond industry. Your ICP might be industry agnostic, not be about company size. It could be about company size, it could be about a team or a department. It could be about tech stack. But that’s the starting point. You will need to start somewhere. Once you’ve established that there are certain groups of potential buyers, you promising buyers that might have an interest in your product, I think there are two things to do in parallel here. Firstly is the in-depth buyer research. Secondly, there is this messaging development and testing. As you start speaking to buyers, you’ve got ideas on how you could potentially pitch your product to those buyers. I think it’s important to go to market quickly as you can, bring that messaging to market and use that as a testing device. One challenge which I sometimes see with startups is trying to nail the messaging and positioning before they go to market. I absolutely don’t to advocate for that. I believe your go-to-market is a huge part of your research.

– Craig

Once you start developing the V1 of potential messaging and you have something you can A/B test, go to the market and start validating some of that research and some of those insights that you have, and see then how the market is responding, see what the conversion rates are like, the impressions on those messages, whether it’s cold outbound, listen on the phone as you’re speaking to potential prospects, what is their enthusiasm, the emotions they have, and use that data to then continue that process of narrowing down from what I would call promising segments to potentially good fit segments. Promising good fit, eventually you want to get to absolute best of it. Then you return to your positioning. From the positioning, you then refine messaging, go back to market, and so on and so forth. Then it becomes this cyclical ongoing process. But look at it as a funnel, your potential total universe. You just want to, over time, get to this point where you have one well-defined segment in the early days that is the most likely to convert. I would say on the one hand, it’s a process. You don’t want to arbitrarily get to one single definition of a well-defined ICP because you know it’s great for your go-to-market, but there is a way you can get there.

– Craig

What I see from startups is they will get halfway there. They will do a bit of the narrowing down process, but because they start selling and people come on as customers, they go, Great, we’ve got to product-market fit. But actually, you want to still continue that process, split the hairs. Is that person asking for discounts? Is that person being active on the Zendesk tickets? Or you’re doing a lot of handholding for that customer, but actually this one is finding it super intuitive and easy. You still got to continue that process even when things seemingly are going well. Start off with all the potential possible buyers in the market, start to speak to them, figure out the messaging that could get them interested and hook them, see how that reflects in your positioning, go back to the messaging, and continue that positioning-messaging play-off.

– Joran

I’m curious, how narrow do you make it? For example, if I look at our own company, we target B2B SaaS companies, which is super broad. We narrow it into Europe or US. It’s a great focus. They have to have 1 million plus ARR. They need to be product-led growth. They have a team size already because of the revenue. Then from there, we talk either the founder or let’s say the affiliate manager. Is that still too broad in your case or not?

– Craig

It’s a good question. It’s hard to say yes or no, that’s definitely too broad. I think the first thing that I would say is, do you feel like every time you have a conversation, you’re having to make a lot of adjustments around how you’re positioning your product, the use case that you’re solving, the perceived value on the part of the buyer? If you feel like you’re having to make these constant adjustments, if you feel like you need six or seven different versions of your homepage, then it’s probably too broad. This is why I say your go-to-market is your research. You will start to feel signals of success and see buyers converting, but you can continue to split those hairs. This is where when loss really comes in, look at customers that have said no and go, why? What are the other alternatives they’re looking in the market? Or why have they considered the risk of adopting U2 Gray, et cetera, et cetera? It’s actually really great to get on the phone with those customers that have said no to you and incentivize them and give them a voucher or whatever. That can be valuable because you might have customers that meet the profile of those that said no.

– Craig

Then you start looking at your existing customers in a different way and you go, Actually, hang on. Yeah, they’re asking us to make a lot of these additional adjustments to the products. Because there’s one version of, Can you Can you add these features to the product? That could be a really enthusiastic customer that goes, I love it. I want to use it even more. Then there’s another version of that, which is, Can you add features? Because what you’ve built doesn’t add much value right now. When you start getting into the detail, you You eventually see it, but it’s hard to get first, which is why I love when lost, it can unlock that in the mind. When it comes to the size of market and size of opportunity, I was recently talking to a founder that actually did the opposite. He got so specific with his ICP that I said, you would have to take 100% of the market in the UK just to get to 20 million ARR. That’s a lot of pressure to take the whole market, take on all of these competitors. You will either have to expand or broaden the definition of your ICP, potentially by looking at different markets, or you need to open up to a broader definition of your segment.

– Craig

There isn’t a one size fits all answer to that question, but it’s very much where do you see friction in the sales process? Where do you see friction when it comes to the ongoing servicing of the customer? I think it’s a really good point because you’re going to use the data, I guess, based on the conversations you have to figure out where do you need to iterate it.

– Joran

Maybe With the other side of the coin, I guess, I think a lot of SaaS companies create an ICP, so we have our ideal customer profile, but those are not the ones who find us and actually sign up. And as you mentioned, a buyer is not always typically your ICP. In our case as well, they might come in where PLG, they might actually buy us, and then they have all these requests where they’re not actually the best fit for us. Any maybe advice maybe towards messaging more? How to actually avoid the wrong clients?

– Craig

I think this is where That dialing up empathy is important and goes back to the definition of your ICP. When you have lots of different segments, like when you speak to a broad market, you have to find that common thread between all of them, which is when your messaging starts to get very high level. It becomes this save time, grow faster, 10X this, 10X that. It broadly speaks to a lot of people. If you then change your ICP, let’s say from all B2B SaaS startups to to early-stage HR tech companies at Seed or Series A located in this country, and you’re building a solution for them based on system integrations, this is the worst spitballing on the spot ever done. You really get to the crux of the specific jobs. This is where I love doing jobs to be done, research on buyers. What are the specific jobs they’re trying to do day to day? Because it also brings your pitch and it brings your narrative down to the level of what am I doing to add value today as opposed to this big visionary pitch. And day to day, they have these jobs. These are the pains they experience.

– Craig

This is how they currently go about doing it. These are the obstacles they face in accomplishing that job. This is what a desirable outcome would look like for them. And so you can then start to dial up empathy and speak to the specific jobs of a very specific persona within a segment. That’s how you go, I’m talking to you, and someone might come along and go, Okay, well, I’m a people partner. I’m not a recruiter. Even though they work within the world of HR, because you’ve got down to such a specific level, they know that actually this is a solution for someone else in their team. That’s how they go, Okay, you’re not speaking to me. Good messaging will turn off people who aren’t the right fit as much as turning on the right us.

– Joran

We hit the demo if they don’t match the criteria we’re looking for, so they can’t even book a call. It became a bit too much. I think we even have to go more on our messaging just to make sure we attract the right people. Are you struggling to find a cost-effective and scalable marketing channel? Check out Reditus. We help you to have other people recommend your SaaS, and you would only pay them when they deliver you paid clients, making it a very cost-effective and scalable marketing channel. Want to learn more? Go to getReditus. Com. If you Then look at defining your ICP. Where do most companies typically get stuck during this process?

– Craig

I think I alluded to it earlier, that process of narrowing down your target market. A lot of startups begin that process But don’t continue it. Let’s say there are eight or nine different buyer segments. A startup might get down to, say, four or three, and they go, Oh, okay, cool. We’ve got customers buying our products. They’re onboarded. They’re using it. Great. We’ve got product market fit. But then the question is, are they sticking with you 12 months later? Are they renewing? Are they willing to pay more when there’s that 5, 10% premium put on at the renewal stage? Are they advocating for you? This is where you start to get down to, okay, are we targeting too many people? Are there customers that we onboarded that we thought were a great fit? But now they’re churning, now they’re asking questions, and it feels like the vibe is off. I always get a little bit frustrated when the definition of product-market fit is put down to some ARR figure that you get to 5 million or even a million. This is a sign of product-market fit. It’s only a sign of product-market fit for so long as those customers stay with you.

– Craig

If you, as an early-stage startup, you’ve onboarded too many different types of customers, that’s a lot of work that you’re putting on customer success to serve all of those different use cases, all the different onboarding flows, and then all of the different tool tips within the application, and then somehow it’s going to serve every single one of these very highly distinct use cases in exactly the same way. This is when you start to recognize the importance of being focused and being narrow at the at the beginning. That is something that you very much have to take into account. Just because you’ve onboarded them as a customer now, is it the right customer? I’m not advocating and saying, Don’t onboard them. In fact, it can be useful to try out this use case Let’s try out this type of customer and see how it goes. But don’t ignore constant objections or contentions through the process and have that hard conversation. Are we targeting the wrong customer?

– Joran

Do we need to get more focus? It’s good for cash flow to bring them in, but not always the best thing to It’s really interesting.

– Craig

Yeah, you raise a really important point there, Yoram, which is startups have to bring in money, right? They have to sell. I would never say you must stay in research mode until product market fit. That’s another reason why I say your go-to market is part of your research because you also need to bring in money whilst also acquiring data and insights. Never stop selling, but just be aware that that additional new customer might just be something that at the edges, at the seams of it, might Might be a bit too much and beyond the scope of.

– Joran

Product market fit is not a revenue milestone. It’s not a certain milestone in revenue. Maybe even a common held belief for some people that it has to have 1 million AR. I think that’s a common one people use. How would you define product market fit?

– Craig

I see it as a lagging indicator. You’re at product market fit after you’ve got there. For me, if I put my investor hat, I would look at a company and say they’re demonstrating traction. A pretty consistent type of customer, renewing, making positive noises in the market, and where there is even a limited referral stream from existing customers of new customers. Those, to me, would be signals of you have reached some form of product market fit. I would say renewals is probably the strongest indicator. Beyond your initial network, beyond those second-degree connections, beyond friends, investor connections, are you able to convert completely cold, contacted customers or prospects, rather, into customers? That, for me, would be another signal. Why I say, I’m not really interested in your ARR. I’m interested in knowing how you’ve acquired those customers, the profile of the customer is, and the journey that customer has gone on whilst being as a partner with you in this in your product.

– Joran

You can really feel like you’re obsessed with the ICP, at least like having a segment of certain clients who actually buy, renew, and refer, in this case as well.

– Craig

Those are powerful markers. You’ve got a very happy customer. When I see early-stage startups that companies of all different industries and all different sizes and they’re serving multiple use cases. That’s when I’m like, Okay, there is potentially traction here, but as long as you are planning to narrow the stand in future, great. You’re taking advantage of the revenue opportunity in the short term. But I get a bit worried when that’s an excuse or a reason to keep the ICP broad because I feel like you’re selling yourself up the potential.

– Joran

I want to now dive deeper into, I guess, when people are or when the company grow, as you mentioned, your ICP is going to evolve through different growth stages. How do you adjust your SaaS messaging? Because at one point, your company gets bigger, multiple stakeholders. You said, Okay, well, you need to develop and test it, it and test it. It really stays, it might be easier. How do you make sure you can still iterate it all the time?

– Craig

It’s an interesting point because brand comes into play. When you start speaking to different segments and use cases, it It becomes difficult for the website to do the heavy lifting of speaking to all of them and being super precise and really grabbing them with that level of empathy that you would have of a message speaking to one specific segment. I think this is a question around go-to-market journey. How are you targeting that specific buyer? What does the messaging look like? That persona to that use case. Do you have a journey on your website that can triage potentially to different buyers so that they have a different experience of your product that’s much more relevant to their world? And that makes the value that you can deliver something palpable to that profile of customer. Your homepage or your above the fold can still reflect on something specific that everyone cares about, and it might be more focused on the product. Is there a unique product suite or product capability that is so unique to you that might serve multiple use cases, but everyone can look at that and go, Oh, okay, I can see how that’s differentiated and how that’s different and how that I could uniquely solve a problem or make my life better in some way.

– Craig

Tools in your box, even as you launch more products and you start selling to more customers, you can still think, How do we need to pivot that headline positioning on our website so that We’re still speaking to those customers, but we’re still being differentiated at the same time. But going back to the point around brand, this is something that will become increasingly important because product differentiation will be harder to defend and is already harder to defend than was even 18 months ago. I get emails from dev shops every day trying to pitch to me or trying to tell me that they want to build an app for me, which is funny because I don’t want that. There are developer agencies in shops, you can hire them and they’re not particularly expensive. You can use something like Lovable to spin out an app quickly. In the world of AI, it’s going to be more difficult to build a moat purely based on the differentiation of your product. This is where brands is going to become even more important in the world of B2B. Given the work of product marketing in positioning the product, I think there is a massive relationship with brand positioning and how you speak to that audience and how you can use that as a way to build a more emotional connection while still standing out from other solutions within your category and beyond.

– Craig

It’s always going to be a tough one as you grow. Look at the main headline on the website for HubSpot and Salesforce. They’re practically the same. One says, grow better with, and the says, grow faster with. At that point, it’s about growing better, growing faster. As product marketers, we can look at that and chuckle and go, Oh, look at that. It’s so generic, it’s so broad. They’ve probably done a lot of research to actually say that’s the optimal headline for us. That’s the I think that would speak to our customer the most.

– Joran

I guess when you look at the headline of a SaaS company, so above the fold, would you recommend having it product-focused or would you recommend it value-focused, fixing their pain point?

– Craig

I think there are different formulas when it comes to figuring out what the headline looks like. It could be, are you building a movement? You’re the new way versus the old way. If you’re the new way, what is that new way? What are the downsides of the alternatives? Can you bake that into a headline? Maybe it’s a lead capability plus a benefit as a result of that, or lead capability plus this long term outcome. The only thing I don’t like is to start the headline with the value because you’re already having to get to the end of the sentence before it grounds that headline into something specific and tangible, and that makes the brain go, Oh, okay, I understand. The goal is to reduce the cognitive load of anyone that visits your website so that they understand what you do super quickly and why they should care. Start off the headline with the specific thing you can now do, and then end that with a benefit or an outcome. But the reason why I don’t have one specific approach to a headline is, again, depending on the product, market and problems you’re solving, the message can be either you’re solving a problem or you’re adding value or improving a particular process.

– Craig

It really depends on the thing that your target market cares more about. And again, being data-led, seeing what leads to more demo bookings and conversions as you A/B test it, especially for early-stage startups, grounding it in something specific to your product or to the problem you’re solving. That challenge obviously gets more difficult as you get as he gets aggressive.

– Joran

We are going to start wrapping up soon. Just to stay on the ICP topic, if you had to distill your best advice on defining your ideal customer profile into one or two sentences, how would you do so?

– Craig

Segment your market, speak to the market, go to market, and then iterate. There’s work to do at the beginning on going testing.

– Joran

We’re going to dive into the two last questions. When we talk about growing a B2B SaaS, what advice would you give a SaaS founder who’s just starting out in trying to grow to 10K monthly recurring revenue?

– Craig

At the early stages, you are in the discovery mode. I always find founders feeling frustrated and wanting to rush to product market fit and their ideal customer. I feel I need to bang on about the importance of a defined ICP or market. I think they get it. It’s just how do we get there? And Getting narrow is important. Don’t rush it. The research approach that you take, again, when we’re thinking about segmentation, when we’re thinking about the more one-on-one conversations that you’re having, making sure you’re asking the right questions and getting those more nuanced insights, that I think is going to be really important to those early stage founders to move the dial and focus positioning and figure out what pivots make sense for the products and also that the problem that they’re solving so that they eventually get to broadly write products, solving broadly write problem for broadly the right segment.

– Joran

I guess if we pass the 10K MR, if we’re now growing to 10 million AR, so it’s a huge step, what advice would you give here?

– Craig

I’ve spoken a lot about the process of narrowing down to a target market to a target ICP buyer. But then that point comes that you go, Okay, so at what point do I stop narrowing and then I actually start targeting new segments? The question for me is, have you got a system of acquiring those customers that you could say is broadly repeatable? Have you got that message market fit? Have you got a good onboarding process? Are customers sticking with you? Are they happy? Have you figured out the use case that they’re solving? Basically, the signals of product market fit. A BDR, SDR, you’ve got a customer success manager, someone that can do all the marketing stuff, hand it over to them, and it’s this engine that runs and it It continues to generate new customers, great, you’re ready to move on to the next segment. That’s something to really think about during the growth stages is the moment you feel like you can start handing that over to other people, that’s where you’re ready to grow and broaden your target market. The new challenge is you’ll come across when you’re on your way to 10 million is you’re potentially entering new markets.

– Craig

If you’re based in the UK, let’s say, for example, or Germany, and you want to enter the US market, you might be tempted to just take this very successful model that you’ve already built and just transplant it into the US market. But the reality is they’ve got different laws and regulations that might be new competitors, different competitors in the market. So your product looks different compared to theirs. Your differentiators are different. Their needs are different. So there are all these assumptions that because it’s a member of the same alliances and organizations, this market must therefore be really similar to ours. That’s something that you need to ensure that you are taking a much more thorough positioning approach to entering a big market like the US and any other market within Europe for that matter. For growth stage startups, have you finally got to something repeatable? How can you derisk the entry into new markets so that you can get to 10 million plus without any cock-ups.

– Joran

Thank you. Let me see if I can try to summarize what we discussed today. Icp, Ideo Customer Profile, when done right, they become part of your go-to-market. It is constantly evolving. A Buyer is not by default your ICP. If they want to buy you, make sure that there are enough of them. Keeping your ICP broad, the wider the ICP, the wider the messaging, so there’s going to be more misalignment. Going to enterprise too early is a common mistake. It will take a lot of your resources. When we turn it around best practices for defining your ICP, first of all, obsess over your customers, figure out their unresolved pain points, go beyond the surface. Early stage, there’s going to be less data, harder to define. Start with your own research, check your clients, segment them, check industry, company size, department, do in-depth buyer research. Then, of course, develop your messaging and test it. Keep testing it, narrowing down on the promising segment to see which fit best, and then define your positioning. Look at win-losses in your CRM system. Check the jobs to be done for your buyers. What is their ideal outcome? Product-market fit is not a revenue milestone.

– Joran

Do you have a consistent client group which buys, renews, and refers you? In 2025 and beyond, brand will become more important with the rise of AI. When we look at revenue stages, 10K MR, don’t rush things, do research, retrieve insights in order to define your pivots, 10 million ARR, achieve message market fit, have a repeatable acquisition channel, move to new segments when ready, don’t copy paste your go-to-market when going into new markets. How can people find you? How can they contact you if they wanted to know more?

– Craig

You can find me on LinkedIn, search Craig Brown, Trubador. If you see a bright yellow banner, you know on the right profile. Otherwise, just drop me an email, craig@trubador. Co. Linkedin is basically where I spend way too much.

– Joran

We’re going to link to your LinkedIn profile anyway, just to make sure they have the right one so they can find you and connect with you. For people listening on Spotify, please leave a review, give a rating, and answer the poll we add in there so we can learn what you thought of this episode and do better next time or do exactly the same. Thanks, Craig, for coming on.

– Craig

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Jérém.

– Joran

Thank you for watching this show of the Grow Your B2B SaaS podcast. You made it till the end, so I think we can assume you liked this content. If you did, give us a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel. If you like this content, feel free to reach out if you want to sponsor the show. If you have a specific guest in mind, if you have a specific topic you want us to cover, reach out to me on LinkedIn. More than happy to take a look at it. If you want to know more about Reditus, feel free to reach out as But for now, have a great day and good luck growing your B2B SaaS.