Penetrating Crowded Market: Going From $0 to $250,000 ARR in 10 months [Trackdesk Case Study]

To establish a successful go-to-market strategy, it’s crucial to begin with defining target audiences, identifying ideal customer profiles, understanding their pain points, mapping their decision-making process, conducting competitive research to identify gaps, and, based on these insights, define positioning and distinctive communication strategies.

To establish a successful go-to-market strategy, it’s crucial to begin with defining target audiences, identifying ideal customer profiles, understanding their pain points, mapping their decision-making process, conducting competitive research to identify gaps, and, based on these insights, define positioning and distinctive communication strategies.

Competitive research

Many businesses fall into the trap of following generic strategies based on case studies, which result in average outcomes and blending into the crowd. Picture yourself as a brand on this bustling street. How would you capture the attention of your potential customer?

In a digital environment, this often leads to companies using similar wording, animations, and imagery, along with happy people in their homepage header. Almost every tech and finance brand is blue. Blue is the color of the “sea of sameness.”

Is this your case? You have a problem. Trackdesk faced a similar challenge, being just another “Easy-to-Use Affiliate Software.”

Open your competitors’ websites, examine their main headlines, understand the target audience they serve, and identify their main value proposition.

Conducting a thorough competitive analysis is crucial. Try to understand their go-to-market strategy, obsess over identifying gaps in the market, and position your product uniquely.

Infinite game: product value and target audience

Understanding the competitive landscape is just a single piece of the puzzle. To succeed, you have to build a complete picture of the market. Ultimately, it’s about the value your product delivers to customers. Nothing else matters. Marketers often employ sneaky tactics to trick people, which can work in the short term. However, smart entrepreneurs play the infinite game, focusing on the long term. Start by identifying your target audiences and ideal customer profiles (ICPs), then map out their pain points and the decision-making process.

At Trackdesk, we began with the questions: “When does a company need to implement affiliate software?” and “Who needs affiliate software?” This helped us identify the segment of the market we initially focused on: companies starting with partnership marketing. In each company, a different person may be accountable for these endeavors, whether it’s the CEO, founder, marketer, salesperson, or even a dedicated partnership manager. The decision-maker varies mostly based on the company stage and industry. However, they all share one common trait: they will be ready to pay for a product once it delivers value to them.

Positioning and distinctiveness

To position yourself as different, your product must solve customer problems unlike any other competitor. Is this your case? Congratulations on securing a pole position. If not, don’t throw in the towel just yet.

You can build your positioning around addressing a specific pain point of your target audience, serving a niche market, or opting for the most challenging path: disrupting the market with a groundbreaking product, establishing your own category, and becoming a category leader. Good luck with that!

“B2B companies are really, really, really bad at branding.” 

Evidenced by an analysis of 300 brand assets from over 60 business-to-business (B2B) brands across six categories, it revealed almost no distinctive assets in any category for any brand. There is extensive, decades-long research demonstrating that distinctiveness significantly enhances marketing effectiveness. A principle well-established in business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing but largely untapped growth opportunity in B2B.

Yet another easy-to-use all-in-one solution

When I joined Trackdesk, it was yet another easy-to-use all-in-one affiliate management platform, allowing you to do, well, more.

In 2024, there are more than 14,000 solutions. The marketing technology landscape has been growing for the 13th year in a row, with a staggering 27.8% year-over-year growth.

Being

• {Category Name} that does more;
• All-in-one {Category Name} platform for those who do it all;
• One platform to streamline your {Category Name}.

is a common pitfall of today’s SaaS founders and marketers.

Satisfying everybody is difficult. You will face many challenges, such as:

• Iterating your messaging to a generic value proposition;
• Making strategic decisions about your product development;
• Struggling to decide which feature to highlight.

Do you remember how you laughed when you saw an announcement where every second word was highlighted by bold, underlined, different color, or font size?

Focusing your product on a specific subsegment streamlines your endeavors and significantly increases your probability of success. It allows you to emphasize the specific pain point your product addresses for your target audience, use language relevant to your ICPs, and, most importantly, define a product roadmap addressing their needs. This builds the value you deliver over time and benefits from the compounding effect.

Do you like emojis? ❤️😡

Internally, it’s a love-hate relationship. If you ask me, I don’t care. A few years ago, I disliked them—they seemed infantile. Now, I am used to them. This is how the brain works: it prefers the familiar and fears the unknown. Here is a challenge for you: be bold enough to try something new and tell your stakeholders that nobody cares if they like the communication.

What truly matters is being distinctive to amplify the effectiveness of our efforts. Likability comes second; everyone has different preferences.

An evidence-based study by Ariyh explains how emojis can improve communication.

This isn’t advice to build your distinctive brand assets with emojis. It won’t work if nine out of 10 competitors in your category already use them heavily. For us, emojis came naturally, by accident, and stuck around—at least for a while. We’re testing them. At the same time, you do not have to be afraid of using emojis simply because we did. It could work if it makes your brand and company distinctive within the category.

Imagine you’re on our shopping street, choosing partnership marketing software. We want you to remember us among the competitors. It’s not perfect, nor a polished, fluent device strategy for which we’ve paid consultants and agencies tens of thousands. Is it distinctive? Yes, for now. None of our competitors are using emojis. Will we continue to use them? Nobody knows. My guess is not, as we are aware of their limitations.

Building distinctive brand assets is no simple task, especially for a startup with zero revenue-seeking product-market-fit (PMF). We need to act quickly and prioritize results over perfection.

Tackling the market as a horizontal SaaS

At Trackdesk, targeting a specific vertical or subsegment of the market was not an option when I joined due to the company’s and product’s stage at that time.

Competitive research revealed a huge opportunity to introduce the FREE tier and pioneer product-led growth within the affiliate marketing landscape.

It immediately resulted in a rapid influx of new customers and an overwhelming demand for our tool.

The initial excitement of our model working was replaced by frustration caused by an overwhelming number of requests expecting our paid services for free, often in impolite manners. This was compounded by a high churn rate, with the most common reason being “realizing it takes more effort to build a partnership RevStream than initially anticipated.”

Product-led growth is not just about launching a FREE tier model; it’s about:
[1] aligning the value your product delivers to customers with your pricing and
[2] building a self-service product. Being FREE is not what will pay your bills. We aim to build the best affiliate tracking software.

We introduced premium support services, customer lifecycle marketing, and the world’s first Partnership Managers Marketplace, connecting you with top-tier partnership managers who can effortlessly persuade the most prominent partners to promote your business. Additionally, we launched an affiliate academy for beginners and live masterclasses.

Pricing and packaging: most significant growth lever

While our initial strategy worked, we found ourselves still attracting customers with unrealistic expectations, making it increasingly difficult to identify those worth investing more effort in. To address this, we implemented two additional pricing and packaging refinements.

Our solution was to de-emphasize “FREE” in our communication. During our competitor review, we noticed varying pricing strategies, including different rates for specific industries and undisclosed fees on top of the fees.

With just a few iterations, Trackdesk transformed from being just another easy-to-use affiliate tracking software, offering vague promises of doing more, to becoming the best deal in the market. Our platform enables you to establish a partnership revenue stream with $0 upfront costs. Plus, when you’re ready for a paid package, you’ll find fair and transparent pricing that awaits.

Why did it work for Trackdesk? Will it work for you?

Crafting a successful go-to-market strategy requires a solid product foundation, a deep understanding of the target audience, a clear mapping of the decision-making process, a definition of the ICP, and thorough research into their pain points.

Once traction is gained, it’s crucial to reinforce it by developing distinctive brand assets and communication. While copying product features is easy, invest your time wisely until someone eventually does. Focus on building mental availability (easy to mind) balanced with physical availability (easy to find) through standard digital marketing channels and tactics like SEO and paid ads, etc.

Be inspired by the process, but avoid blindly copying successful strategies and tactics, as this often leads to failure.

Repeat the mantra: your product, market, and company lifecycle are unique, and you don’t have the same resources as others. 

Aim to lead, and monitor competitors without chasing them. Otherwise, you will always be behind them until you decide on a follower strategy. Paving your own path often leads to greater success.

Have a smooth go to market!

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