How it looks on a real cycle.
We invented a SaaS and ran it through the exact pipeline we run for every client — discovery, competitors, reviews, angles, concepts, creative. Nothing here is a real company; it's here so you can see the depth, end to end.
The client: Marketly.
A made-up cloud platform to build and sell online courses. Its signature feature is interactive video with in-video quizzes — which is what makes the numbers worth advertising.
Marketly lets creators build, host and sell online courses in one place. Its standout is interactive video with in-video quizzes, which drives 68% course completion against an industry average near 34%. Reviewers rate it 4.7 on G2.
- Starter — $24/mo (+$5 per sale)
- Pro Trainer — $79/mo, 0% fees, includes SCORM
- Learning Center — $249/mo
- Corporate — custom
- White-label branded mobile app — +$149/mo
No built-in email marketing — an objection we plan for rather than pretend away.
Five audiences, five pains.
One product, five very different reasons to buy. Each pain becomes a different message later — the same creative wouldn't land on all of them.
Course creators
~65% of the base. Tool sprawl across a dozen apps, and students who stop watching before they finish.
Corporate L&D
Need SCORM, SSO and white-label — but at an SMB price, not an enterprise contract.
SaaS academies
Want to cut support tickets by teaching users the product instead of answering the same questions.
Instructional designers
Need SCORM, xAPI and cmi5 without signing a five-figure enterprise deal to get them.
Fitness & wellness
Want a branded mobile app for their members without a five-figure price tag.
Six competitors, six openings.
We map each rival's positioning and the live campaigns they run on Meta — then find the weakness we can build an angle on.
Lernova
Marketing-first all-in-one; most aggressive on Meta.
Just raised prices ~20–25% — we run a “switchers” angle at their unhappy customers.
Coursebase
Beginner-first, broad and cheap to start.
Lower rating (~4.1) and a 7.5% transaction fee on its entry tier.
Edventa
“Learning commerce” for serious sellers.
SCORM only on its expensive enterprise tier — the gap we lead with on price.
Brightpath
Lightweight, simple course builder.
Feature-thin — missing key capabilities creators actually need.
Circlewise
Community-first platform with courses bolted on.
A branded mobile app costs ~$17k/yr — vs Marketly's $149/mo.
Trainhub
Corporate HR / LMS for internal training.
No e-commerce — it's a training tool, not a revenue tool.
The angles we'd run.
Four kinds of angle, each grounded in something true from the research above — what users praise, what only Marketly offers, a capability tied to a pain, and a counter to a known objection.
Amplify what real users already praise — outcomes, ratings, scale.
- “G2 4.7 vs Coursebase's ~4.1”
- “68% completion at the scale of its creator base”
A differentiator a rival can't match at the price — often tied to a live event.
- “Refugees from Lernova's price hike”
- “Branded app $149/mo vs Circlewise's $17k/yr”
A concrete feature mapped to a concrete pain the audience already feels.
- “Students quit passive video — 68% finish ours”
- “SCORM for $79, not an enterprise contract”
A counter to a known objection or a rival's known weakness.
- “One Marketly instead of twelve tools”
- “Trainhub is for HR; Marketly is for revenue”
From angle to concept.
Each angle becomes a concrete ad idea: who it's for and the single claim it leads with. These are the four we'd take into creative first.
68% finish the course
For course creators tired of drop-off: interactive video with in-video quizzes — students actually complete.
Leave Lernova (+25%)
For switchers hit by the price hike: same all-in-one, without the surprise increase.
SCORM for $79
For instructional designers: SCORM/xAPI/cmi5 on the Pro Trainer plan, not a five-figure enterprise tier.
Branded app for $149
For fitness & wellness: a white-label branded mobile app for $149/mo, not ~$17k/yr.
Then the market moves.
Here's the part most agencies handle slowly. The market shifts — and we already know exactly which pieces of the work are affected.
Edventa makes SCORM cheap.
SCORM used to be the angle: only Edventa's expensive enterprise tier had it. Now Edventa offers it cheaply — so “SCORM for $79” is no longer a clean win.
Three connected pieces.
Because everything is one connected map, we see it instantly: the “SCORM for $79” concept, its creative brief, and its landing page all trace back to that one claim — and all three need rebuilding.
A stronger angle, fast.
We rebuild only those pieces — leading instead with completion and interactive video, where Marketly still wins. Hours, not weeks, and the rest of the work is untouched.
This is the same scenario you can press in the living map — change one fact and watch the affected pieces light up.
Want this on your actual SaaS?
Marketly is invented. The pipeline isn't. Tell us about your product and we'll run the real thing — discovery, competitors, angles, creative.