The biggest mistake in B2B messaging is copying consumer brands. I know. Who doesn’t want to be inspirational like Nike? Who doesn’t want to influence buyers with a strong mission like Patagonia’s? But think about it. These are consumer brands. They sell commoditized products. A jacket is a jacket. No matter what brand you buy from, the product functionally does the same thing. So to differentiate themselves, consumer brands have to give intangible meaning to their tangible products. They...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
In 1970, Listerine’s marketing department was feeling the heat. P&G had launched a new mouthwash brand as a competitor a few years before. They called it Scope. And they attacked Listerine’s obvious weakness — taste. Listerine burned like medicine. Consumers knew it. So Scope entered the market using taste as its differentiator. They claimed a mouthwash didn’t have to taste bad. And they were quickly gaining market share with aggressive ad campaigns. “Scope fights bad breath without giving...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Most marketers think social proof sells. But it doesn’t. It reassures. And this difference changes how to do messaging right. Imagine going to a B2B brand’s website. You’d like to figure out what they do. But you struggle. Because first, you read an aspirational mission statement that means nothing. Then they bombard you with social proof: “We helped this many clients.” “We generated this much revenue.” You keep scrolling to find an explanation of what the hell this brand does. But no chance....
2 months ago • 3 min read
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...
3 months 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...
3 months 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...
3 months 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...
3 months 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...
4 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...
4 months ago • 2 min read
