You can’t differentiate your brand by using what’s expected. Let me explain with an example. Go to 20 management consultancy firm websites. You’ll see that they claim to be different by providing high-quality work. Or by bragging about years of experience. Go to 20 CRM software websites. You’ll see that they claim to be different by providing pipeline tracking or email integration. But here’s the problem. These are expected by buyers. All management consultancy firms are expected to deliver...
23 days ago • 2 min read
Who wouldn’t want less competition in the market? How easy everything would be. You could charge much more. Clients would stick with you longer, maybe forever. And you’d grow like there is no tomorrow. It’d be a dream come true for every executive. Well, there are ways to reduce your competition legally. The obvious option is to buy them out. But that’s not possible for most companies. And you can only buy so many of them. So leaving that out, there are two ways. The first is by reducing your...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Why do many B2B brands struggle to get their message across? Why is their value lost in translation? Here’s one reason. Many executives confuse messaging with copywriting. But messaging isn’t just about beautiful words. It’s about making decisions. It’s about clarity. Most B2B brands skip straight to copy and content, without building the structure beneath it. Hence their message becomes a soup of random ideas that disappear in the noise. For your messaging to be effective, it has to comply...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Every industry has its incumbents. Established players who come at the top of buyers’ category ladders. Like McKinsey and Accenture for consulting. Salesforce and Hubspot for CRM. Or Adobe and Canva for creative software. And then you have the challengers. New and upcoming players who try to get a hold in the market. They compete against the incumbents of their categories. Incumbents and challengers have key differences: Incumbents play to defend their castles. Challengers play to tear down...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Oscar Wilde has a quote I like: “Don’t use big words. They mean so little.” But most B2B brands don’t follow Wilde’s advice. They love big words. They want to revolutionize stuff. They want to supercharge growth. But guess what these big words and phrases mean for buyers? Nothing. They are vague. They are disconnected from the language clients use to describe their problems. Nobody starts a day thinking, “We want to revolutionize our operations.” So reading it on a website doesn’t help...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Three marketing bottlenecks keep B2B brands stuck at a certain revenue level: Wrong Positioning Ineffective Messaging Weak Distribution These problems keep the business from growing to its next stage. Some businesses just have one. Some others might have all three to a certain degree. They have different symptoms: 1. Wrong Positioning You create the wrong value and/or for the wrong clients. Your solution isn’t anchored to a specific pain or priority. You are either specialized in the wrong...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
What leads your clients to look for a solution like yours? What makes them realize they have a problem? The answers to these questions matter. Because when you know your clients’ buying triggers, you can: Build your product/service for their context Talk to their real needs with your messaging Target them more easily Think about the buying triggers in our lives. Like becoming a parent. Your life changes when you learn you’ll become a parent. You start looking for parenting books, furniture...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Having clarity around your brand’s positioning has a hidden upside. We usually talk about how it helps you win clients. It raises your perceived value. It makes buyers choose you over others. But it also changes things inside the business. You know what they say. Constraints breed creativity. A blank page is scary because you can write anything. There is no constraint. But once you pick a topic, ideas start flowing. You get focused. You get creative. Clear positioning does the same. It gives...
3 months ago • 1 min read
We’ve talked about why most push marketing tactics fail and how to do it right. Today, let’s focus on pull. Here’s why most organic content doesn’t deliver results and how to fix it to attract clients: - The Soviet Union had a shortage of nails during Lenin’s government. To increase production, Soviet officials started setting quotas for the number of nails factories to produce. Factories wanted to avoid punishment. So after hearing about the quotas, they reduced the size of the nails to...
3 months ago • 5 min read
