When you’re an early-stage tech startup, the pressure to choose the right customer is intense. But what happens when you don’t have the luxury of time, a big marketing budget, or a large sample of customer data to inform your decision?
That’s the real-world dilemma Michelle Zak faced when she joined InCommon — and it’s the story she shared with me on Product Marketing Maestros: Tales from the Front Lines brought to you by Caribou Strategic, where we help tech scaleups stand out and succeed.
Michelle, a seasoned product marketer and founding team member at multiple startups, walked into a familiar challenge: two plausible ICPs and no clear way to pick one. There weren’t enough customers to find a statistical trend, and the company lacked a large enough email list or social following to A/B test messaging at scale.
So what did she do?
She ran parallel tracks.
- Discovery Interviews: Michelle tapped into her network and startup communities to run targeted conversations with both ICP segments. She asked traditional product marketing questions — but framed them to compare the two audiences head-to-head.
- Cold Email Experiments: At the same time, she wrote email sequences tailored to each ICP and launched them to tightly segmented audiences. Even though cold email was a new channel for the company, it allowed her to test resonance in-market, fast.
What made this approach work was the balance of qualitative insights with real buyer behavior. By keeping the segments and messaging tightly defined, she was able to see who engaged, who converted, and where the traction really lived.
The outcome? A clear, stage-specific ICP focused on growth-phase companies — and an early outbound playbook that scaled into multichannel campaigns across email, LinkedIn, and the website.
For founders and CEOs of scaleups, this episode is a reminder: You don’t need perfect conditions to make a strategic leap. You need clarity, velocity, and a willingness to test forward.
—
🎙 Wisdom From Wizards is brought to you by Caribou Strategic, helping tech scaleups stand out and succeed.
📈 If you’re a CEO who refuses to plateau, join a Caribou Strategic Mastermind.
