Navattic, which offers interactive product demos for B2B companies, is growing fast. But its team struggled with keeping personas current and messaging relevant. Relying on sales anecdotes or scattered call notes wasn’t cutting it—and generic AI tools couldn’t deliver insights that were specific or trustworthy enough for high-stakes marketing decisions.
Published on May 29th, 2025
How Navattic sharpens persona understanding and optimizes messaging with GetWhys
Introduction
Natalie Marcotullio, Head of Growth and Product Marketing at Navattic, is responsible for refining how the company positions itself to the market. As buyer behaviors shift rapidly—especially with the emergence of AI—Natalie needed a faster, more reliable way to understand evolving customer personas and validate messaging.
The Challenge
Personas were shifting. Use cases were expanding: Navattic was seeing a variety of marketers adopt the product - content, events, demand gen - each of these marketing personas cared about slightly different things.
- AI changing the competitive landscape. With new AI tools emerging constantly, Navattic needed to stay ahead of trends and market shifts.
- Old research methods were slow and biased. Feedback loops were too dependent on existing customers or internal assumptions—neither of which reflected true buyer behavior in 2025.
- Messaging needed stress-testing. Before launching campaigns or pages, the team wanted to know what resonated before going live—not guess and revise after.
What Navattic needed to succeed:
Navattic's messaging strategy was based on real, validated customer insights. In practice, Navattic created solutions that could help them:
Stay Ahead of Market Dynamics
“With personas and the market changing so quickly, especially in martech, I needed a way to keep up. Even in the last three months, the way product marketers work has changed dramatically.”
Uncover Unbiased Insights
“G2 is biased—you’re only hearing from happy customers. Customer calls help, but they’re hard to scale. I used to summarize them myself for review, but it wasn’t structured.”
Enhance Research and Messaging Efficiency
“I needed a way to validate if what I was writing actually resonated. Not just rely on gut feel or ChatGPT summaries that I couldn’t trace back to a real person.”
The Solution
Navattic turned to GetWhys’ Compass and Echo tools to tackle these challenges. GetWhys provided a way to conduct instant customer research and message testing, enabling Navattic to gather detailed feedback directly from their target personas.
Compass provided instant access to fresh persona insights: frustrations, workflows, motivations, and what buyers actually cared about.
Echo let Natalie test messaging variations and get feedback on what resonated—and more importantly, why.
“What’s nice is you don’t have to just gut feel or internal opinions. You can actually say hey, we ran this, we got real feedback from the actual persona that we’re going after.”
This replaced a disjointed process that relied on anecdotes, internal bias, and third-hand sales notes. Together, Compass and Echo empowered Natalie and her team to test and adjust their messaging with real-time data, ensuring they were on track.
Curious to discover Navattic?
Navattic is a rapidly growing B2B SaaS company, providing solutions that help businesses showcase their products through interactive product demos.
Real-World Use: Competitive Landing Page
When building a landing page to position against a competitor, Natalie used Compass to gather insights from a new persona—specifically frustrations with demo tools and unmet needs. That informed the narrative and positioning.
“I used Compass to understand their pain points and what they thought about our competitor—what they liked and didn’t like. That gave me a foundation to write initial copy.”
She then tested headline variants with Echo to see which messaging resonated. Echo flagged which parts hit or missed, helping her quickly refine the copy.
“I tested a few different variants in Echo, got feedback, and understood which parts of the page were resonating. It helped me decide… maybe I should put that [insight] up in the H1 more…”
The insights didn’t just confirm gut feel—they provided proof points tied directly to research quotes from real personas.
“Echo tells me why something resonates and ties it back to the real insight. It’s not just ‘this is too long’—it’s ‘this works because product marketers said videos are frustrating in these specific ways,’ and links to the quote.”
To further validate, she then checked the insights against sales feedback—which aligned. This process is now a repeatable workflow for ongoing message testing and persona research without spinning up new research cycles each time.
Why GetWhys Beats AI Tools
Before using GetWhys, Natalie tried using ChatGPT to synthesize insights from scattered sources. But there were issues:
“One, I couldn't always trace the insight back to the original source. Two, the summaries could feel watered down or hallucinated. And three, I still wasn’t getting fresh, unbiased market insights.”
What stood out about GetWhys?
“The interviews GetWhys provides are structured, reliable, and totally unbiased. I can trace every quote to a source, persona, and company type. It gives me a much higher level of confidence that what I’m seeing is real—and not filtered or overly polished.”
Outcomes
Faster persona validation.
Compass helped clarify what different buyer segments actually needed—and how Navattic could speak directly to that.
Compass helped clarify what different buyer segments actually needed—and how Navattic could speak directly to that.
Messaging that lands.
Echo made it easy to test copy before launch, saving time and boosting confidence.
Repeatable process.
Natalie and her team now use Compass + Echo regularly, reducing guesswork and building a messaging workflow rooted in buyer data
What’s Next
Navattic is turning this into a permanent part of their workflow—pairing rapid persona research with message testing in every launch. GetWhys has become their go-to for stress-testing assumptions and making sure messaging lands with the right people, the first time.
“I like how the two products do make you think about both ends of your process. It’s very easy just to jump right into execution mode… or do a bunch of research and then not stress-test it against your persona.”
Interview with Natalie Marcotullio about the impact of Navattic
To kick things off, can you quickly introduce yourself and Navattic?
Natalie:
Sure! I’m Natalie Marcotullio, Head of Growth and Product Marketing at Navattic. We’re an interactive demo company—basically, we let your prospects get hands-on with your product earlier in the buying journey. I’ve been here for about three and a half years now. Funny enough, I was actually a customer of Navattic before I joined.
You’ve got a lot of experience in B2B SaaS and product marketing. I’m curious—what have been some of the biggest challenges in your role at Navattic?
Natalie:
In product marketing, the biggest challenge is how fast the market moves—especially in martech. Not only are there constantly new competitors and features, but even our personas and what they care about shift all the time.
We also sell to product marketers, which makes it even more meta. In just the last three months, the way product marketers work has changed dramatically.
Even though I speak to customers regularly, keeping up with overall market dynamics and staying on top of how people are thinking and feeling is hard. It's a constant game of keeping up.
Can you dive a bit deeper into how your personas are changing and who they are?
Natalie:
Definitely. There are two sides to the change. First, as Navattic has grown, the use cases for interactive demos have expanded.
We started with top-of-funnel use cases—demand gen, growth marketing, early sales cycle, product launches. But now we see product marketers, event marketers, and content marketers using Navattic in different ways.
Each new use case means learning a whole new persona—understanding their pain points, what they care about, and what messaging resonates.
Second, even individual personas evolve rapidly. Everyone’s workflows have changed—especially with the rise of AI. So I’m constantly relearning my personas.
How do you bring customer, market, and competitive research into your work?
Natalie:
In the past, I leaned heavily on G2 reviews—both ours and competitors’. But G2 has bias.
You're only hearing from customers—usually happy ones—and not getting the full picture. I also used to rely a lot on in-person conversations at events or calls with customers. Those are valuable, but they’re hard to scale or synthesize for the team.
The insights often live in my head. I try to share themes in team meetings, but it's not always scalable or structured.
"You're only hearing from customers—usually happy ones—and not getting the full picture. I also used to rely a lot on in-person conversations at events or calls with customers. Those are valuable, but they’re hard to scale or synthesize for the team."
Once you gather those insights, how do they influence your work?
Natalie:
Usually, I’ll synthesize and share what I’m hearing with the team—pulling out recurring themes from conversations. Then I’ll use those to inform campaign messaging or product positioning. But it’s still pretty qualitative. I like to think of it as an ideation phase. I get a gut sense of what our audience feels, but then I need a way to validate if what I’m writing actually resonates.
You've been using GetWhy for a while now. How are you incorporating it into your workflow?
Natalie:
Before GetWhy, I was scraping insights from G2 reviews, sales calls, and customer chats—and trying to synthesize it all with ChatGPT. That helped, but there were issues.
One, I couldn't always trace the insight back to the original source. Two, the summaries could feel watered down or hallucinated. And three, I still wasn’t getting fresh, unbiased market insights—just perspectives from people who already knew our product or competitors.
That’s why I love GetWhys. You’re a research-first company. The interviews you provide are structured, reliable, and totally unbiased. I can trace every quote to a source, persona, and company type.
It gives me a much higher level of confidence that what I’m seeing is real—and not filtered or overly polished.
Right, it’s the stuff your customers would say when you’re not in the room.
Natalie:
Exactly. Whether it’s us or a competitor in the room, people tend to hold back. But when it’s a third-party interview, the feedback is more candid and unfiltered.
How are you using Compass and Echo specifically?
Natalie:
I use Compass during the research phase to understand personas—what they care about, what frustrates them, how they think about software, and their day-to-day work. For example, if I want to understand how someone feels about video content vs. demos, I can get a lot of context—not just their opinion on demos but what they like/dislike about video more broadly.
Echo has been amazing for the refinement phase. That was always missing from my process. I might have initial messaging from research, but didn’t have a good way to stress test it with actual personas.
Now, I can take a piece of copy and see how well it aligns with what that persona cares about. Echo ties the feedback back to real insights. It’s not just “this is too long”—it’ll say “this resonates because product marketers told us videos are frustrating in these specific ways,” and link to the quote.
Yes! I feel the same—it helps turn that gut feeling into actual evidence without spinning up an entire new research project.
Natalie:
Exactly. In the past, I’d ask customers or advisors, but they’re already fans of your product. Or you’d run a research study and the personas would be too high-level. You wouldn’t get that specific feedback like: “This message works because of this insight from this persona in this industry.”
Can you share a specific project where you used Compass or Echo recently?
Natalie:
Sure—this quarter I worked on a competitive landing page for a new persona I wasn’t familiar with. I used Compass to understand their pain points and what they thought about our competitor—what they liked and didn’t like. That gave me a foundation to write initial copy. But I was stuck on the H1—what to say, how to make it resonate. That’s where Echo came in. I tested a few versions and saw which one actually clicked with the persona. Echo told me why something resonated and tied it back to the real research, which was incredibly helpful.
I’ve mentioned that I’ve mainly used GetWhys for one-off projects so far, but my next goal is to make it part of an ongoing process.
What I like is how the two products—Compass and Echo—make you pause and think about both ends of the research-to-execution spectrum. It’s so easy to jump straight into execution without doing any research, or on the flip side, to do a ton of upfront research and then forget to stress test your messaging with your actual persona.
The fact that I can use the same persona in both tools makes that process seamless. I don’t have to go find new research groups every time or bother customers again. I’ve already created this persona that I know represents our ICP—because there’s real research behind it. It’s just way more efficient and scalable.