Winning with messaging: How Stakemate became a #1 consumer app

As a product marketer, one of your main responsibilities is designing messaging to resonate with users – and ultimately convince them to use your product over competitors.

I’ve worked at many startups, and have seen teams get this wrong too often. Even an amazing product with subpar marketing will fail. The biggest problem I’ve seen has been internal teams’ reluctance to change their mind about the correct messaging, and a lack of proactivity in figuring out what will work.

I’m going to tell you exactly what I did to nail down Stakemate’s messaging, helping it to become the #1 sports app in the UK app store – and how you can apply these lessons to any product.

1. Start with internal stakeholders

In early-stage startups, everyone has an opinion about marketing.

The leadership team has spent a lot of time building the product, so they think they know how to sell it. Your designers have (hopefully) talked to users, so they think they know how to explain the product to them. Your product managers and engineers will also have their own ideas of what to say.

At Stakemate, for example, there were a lot of ideas on how best to tell users about our incredible product. It was fast, reliable, modern, and an incredibly pleasant experience. But was that enough to get our users to try it out for themselves?

Listen to your internal team. Interview them one-by-one, and write down everything they say. If you don’t know what to ask, here’s a cheat sheet:

2. Read user reviews

User reviews are a goldmine for product marketers. Export them, code them, analyse them. Even AI summaries on sites like Trustpilot can be really helpful these days. Below is the one for Stakemate. Can you spot the key themes?

You can also use tools like Apptweak that automatically do sentiment analysis and code keywords from your reviews on an ongoing basis. 

Of course, reviews are written by users after they use your product, and are a summary of what they appreciated (or hated) about it. Don’t make the mistake of thinking they would have tried the product out if you had just told them it has these benefits.

In our case, everyone loved the user-friendly design, but firstly, that’s not enough of a pain point in competitors’ apps to warrant switching, and secondly, how will the marketing team communicate that to users? “Come download this app – it’s easy to use” isn’t a differentiator. It should be a given in 2025.

3. Talk to users

The most important part. It’s also the part that too many people forget (or ignore). You don’t need to talk to dozens of users – even just five or six of your most loyal and active users will tell you all you need to know.

People often struggle with this, as users can’t be bothered to talk to them. So, here are some ways we’ve been able to speak with users:

Offer incentives like gift cards

This is a surefire way to get interviews. However, the risk is that they will be too nice because of the reward. 

I’d strongly recommend reading The Mom Test before doing any kind of user interviews. Try the solutions below first and offer incentives as a last resort only.

Build a community

Yes, this is easier said than done, but it will be worth it in the long run. Offer users things such as early access to features, merch, or just invite them to events. 

At Huzzle, we built a Product Committee, which at some point had thousands of members. They not only helped us build the product but also acted as de facto brand ambassadors, which led to compounding growth for us. Our users even put their membership on their LinkedIn pages!

Just ask for feedback

Sometimes you don’t have to offer users anything in return. Just identify your most loyal users and ask them for feedback straight up. Your biggest fans will want to be helpful (if they don’t, then your messaging isn’t the problem).

Once again, if you’re not sure what to ask these users, I’ve got a cheat sheet below. These questions are very similar to the ones you asked your internal stakeholders – just facing outward.

Notice that these questions aren’t asking people what they want or like, but rather trying to understand what they do and say.

4. Nail down your messaging

Once you’ve done all of the above, several themes should emerge. Focus on the ones that were mentioned most often, and try to summarize them in one sentence. 

A few key things to keep in mind while you’re doing this;

• Re-use the words your users used to describe the product/feature.
• Keep things simple. Avoid jargon or big words.
• Don’t try to catch multiple advantages in one sentence.
• Remember: people are lazy, so make it as short and snappy as possible.
• If comparisons came up during your interviews, use these!

At Huzzle, we realised a lot of people were comparing the app to Snapchat, and so we came up with “It’s as if Snapchat and LinkedIn had a baby”. This way, you immediately get that it’s a career platform with social features targeted at Gen-Z (the company has pivoted since I was there).

At Stakemate, for example, super-fast withdrawals came up a lot, and one of the influencers we work with was a boxer. So, we came up with the following:

5. Test, roll-out, scale

Once you have a few different messages, it’s time to test them. 

Start by presenting the options internally to get buy-in from all teams. Don’t just jump to what you think is the answer; take them through the process. Highlight what you heard, the themes that came out of it, and show them a few first drafts before unveiling the final iteration.

Without buy-in, you may face resistance, and you could be blamed if the campaign flops. It might also be a good idea to go through a few rounds of iterations just to make everyone feel like they are contributing.

Then, you’ll need to work with your marketing team (or yourself if you are the marketing team) to create ads, videos, and landing pages, and use paid or organic channels to test these. Scale your winners, then iterate from there.

Process over instinct

This should go without saying, but sitting in a boardroom, writing a one-line tagline, and taking something to market with it doesn’t really work anymore (it used to, in the time of David Ogilvy).

Messaging is also a lot broader than just your tagline; it includes the narrative, the personality, and the layers of communication you build around each value pillar. So, messaging ≠ your tagline. But knowing your core value is a good place to start.

If you’re a product marketer, you have good copywriting instincts, but hopefully, following this process and using the above cheatsheets should help your amazing products scale faster.

If you’ve been responsible for messaging design, I’m curious to hear what your process is like, and if what I’ve shared is helpful (or annoyingly obvious). Drop a comment below and let me know!