Writing Well
You should write better. If you do B2B content writing, especially in the tech industry, you should really write better.
You should write better. If you do B2B content writing, especially in the tech industry, you should really write better.
Business to Business (B2B) messaging is more intellectually stimulating and harder to create than Business to Consumer (B2C) messaging. B2B messaging is harder to test as well, which is why the use of solid research methods is critical.
These challenges exist for one simple reason: B2B sales are more complex. Consequently, this complexity leaves B2B marketers with a heavy burden, one that can only be lightened with solid customer insights.
Facebook and Instagram provide tremendous B2B marketing opportunities – if your B2B creative is good enough to grab viewers’ attention. This is especially important in the niche B2B tech context, where generic creative really doesn’t fly.
In the B2B buyer’s journey, buyers have to wade through a lot of nonsense to find relevant information.
Improving win rates is within your control. After many B2B win-loss analysis research projects, we have found that simple adjustments can make a huge difference to the effectiveness of your sales team.
Applying a B2C approach to B2B brand research just doesn’t work.
B2B tech messaging tends to be big, broad, and vague. Which is the opposite of what savvy B2B buyers are looking for.
So often, B2B marketers leave customers in the dark in terms of:
After conducting scores of B2B message testing studies, we’ve seen the good, the bad, and the truly horrifying.
Here are some common messaging mistakes to avoid before you launch your next landing page, product marketing initiative, or content calendar.
Tech companies, powerful visionaries that they are, have a tendency to go really broad with their messaging. For example: “Your vision. Your Cloud.” Or: “Cloud for all.” But is it really for everyone?
B2B products and services are rarely intended for the use of any and all. Unfortunately, it’s rare for tech companies to make it immediately clear who their intended audience is.
Buyers shouldn’t have to work to figure out whether a product or service is relevant to them. B2B messaging should make it really obvious. Whose life will be made easier by this B2B solution? Use visuals, smart layouts, and clever formatting to make sure the eye is easily drawn to copy that identifies and speaks directly to key buyers.
Is your target buyer technical? Do you have someone technical on your marketing team? You should. At least make sure you get someone technical to vet your messaging.
Technical buyers will lose confidence in your solution if the messaging gets the jargon wrong or strings random concepts together in a way that doesn’t make sense. Or if it skirts specifics and stays vague. (Also, technical buyers will be turned off by anything they consider “fluff.” They don’t like marketing buzzwords.)
Context matters. Don’t message in a vacuum. Do what you need to do to author, edit, and verify that you’re writing messaging that resonates with your key buyer personas.
Here’s a place where understanding your target buyers’ “jobs to be done” really comes in handy. You’ll score lots of brownie points if you can speak to the specific issues your solution solves for the intended buyer.
And remember, B2B buying decisions usually happen by committee. In other words, you need to convince a group of stakeholders, not just an individual.
Your B2B tech messaging should speak to all the key buyer personas involved in making the purchase decision- not just the end-user.
The goal isn’t just for the customer to remember the product. You also want them to remember the brand.
If your product is part of a larger suite of solutions, your messaging shouldn’t make it sound like an isolated offering.
Graphics are often an effective method of demonstrating that a particular solution or tool is part of a holistic suite of offerings.
Your B2B messaging strategy needs to connect the product or service back to the company.
Bad grammar creates an unnecessary obstacle for communicating the relevance of your solution. Especially if your target buyers are non-native English speakers.
In our B2B message testing studies, we’ve watched scores of buyers use the bulk of their energy trying to parse out the intention behind our client’s initial attempt at messaging. This prevents customers from moving down the purchase funnel.
Make things as easy as possible on the buyer. Communicate clearly. Don’t make them work to figure out why it’s smart to buy your product or service.
So. Use complete sentences. Simplify your wording. Amplify your main message so that it’s the most noticeable thing on the page, the paragraph, etc. Only attempt to convey one idea per sentence. Make sure you can get through a sentence without having to take a breath when reading out loud. Shorten the sentence if you can’t. Edit. Edit a lot. (More on this here.)
Tech companies love listing the attributes of their product or service. Unfortunately, they often neglect to explain how these features solve problems for their target buyers.
Also, lists are just plain hard to read. Reading a list gets monotonous and boring. Which of the many adjectives is the reader supposed to remember? What’s the main point of the product? What makes it special?
Say you’ve got five key selling points. Please do not pack all five key points into one sentence or even one paragraph. That will mute the impact.
Instead, give each key point its own space and separate emphasis. Add in supporting points as needed. Make sure the supporting points strengthen the main idea, rather than sounding like isolated factors.
Strategic messaging requires a hierarchy of emphasis. Your marketing team needs to be clear on the main selling points of the solution and the supporting, secondary factors.
Readers are more likely to remember what is given the greatest emphasis. If everything has the same level of emphasis, readers may struggle to remember anything at all.
What do you want the main takeaways to be? Emphasize accordingly.
During our market research studies, we’ve watched many B2B buyers grow suspicious over broad messaging claims.
Unless you have substantial, authoritative backup for making such a claim, shy away from declaring yourself “the best” or “the leading solution.” When such lofty claims are made, we’ve noticed that B2B buyers often take it as a challenge to think of a brand with a better solution.
Further, to be blunt, messaging that reads like marketing wrote it puts many B2B buyers off.
B2B customers often take vague terminology as a red flag, as it may indicate that the solution is being pushed by a company who doesn’t understand how it will actually be used.
Further, marketing buzzwords tend to scare off technical buyers. These customers will only be convinced by brands that get what their day-to-day entails.
So, be as specific as possible. What does your solution actually do? How does it do it? How will it fit into the work of the buyer? Specifically, what value does it bring to your key customers?
Also, marketers, make sure to run your messaging by someone who is well-versed in the business and technical context of your target buyers.
To summarize: don’t make your buyers work to figure out your solution’s relevancy and value-add.
Make sure your B2B messaging:
Need some help with messaging strategy? We offer B2B messaging upgrades.
Special thanks to Senior Consultant Colleen Clancy, Senior Research Analyst Hercules Randolph IV, and Research Analyst Courtney Bae for advising on this piece.
With custom market research and marketing services, Cascade Insights helps companies seize opportunities in the B2B technology sector. We work with everyone from enterprise tech stalwarts to up-and-comers in fields such as FinTech, MarTech, Health Tech, and more.
David Fisher, author of Hyper-Connected Selling, knows that technology-enabled sales is great, but it’s never going to satisfy the need for human connection.
The best way to listen to the episode is through Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Overcast. You’ll be able to listen to past episodes and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes.
As we mentioned in the show, if you’re enjoying the B2B Revealed show we’d love it if you would leave a nice review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to the show.
Chloë Thomas, author of “B2B eCommerce MasterPlan” joins us to talk about B2B eCommerce. Yes, B2B companies need to go online. No, they shouldn’t be taking their cues from the Amazon consumer experience.
Chloë’s book: http://a.co/fZpuzum
The best way to listen to the episode is through Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Overcast. You’ll be able to listen to past episodes and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes.
As we mentioned in the show, if you’re enjoying the B2B Revealed show we’d love it if you would leave a nice review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to the show.
It’s not just newly-promoted, doe-eyed marketing managers who make serious management mistakes. Seasoned enterprise executives aren’t immune to expensive screw ups either. On the latest episode of the B2B Revealed Podcast, Herding Tigers author Todd Henry explained that mismanagement of creative teams leads to talent loss and companies that underperform compared to their peers. Henry shared some tips for conscientious creative leadership.
Managers need to make sure their teams understand how their work affects the larger business goals of the company. This helps avoid an ego-driven company culture. Creative success should be measured in terms of business results.
“The reality is, for most of us, we engage in work that we don’t always love, we don’t always agree with necessarily, but it’s our job to get it done,” Henry said.
In a business setting, creatives need to be able to produce great work even when they don’t control the larger vision for the project.
Leaders need to understand how to build an environment where creativity thrives. According to Henry, that requires providing stability without getting near the border of Boredom Land. Without stability, the team will find itself working on the same problem over-and-over again, without every finishing the project. With too much stability, the team won’t feel creatively challenged. It’s the leader’s job to walk that fine line between stability and boredom.
To key elements of a great creative environment are:
Todd Henry teaches leaders and organizations how to establish practices that lead to everyday brilliance. He is the author of Herding Tigers.
Like it or not, meetings are a fact of life — especially on creative teams that depend on collaboration. Yet, even though we all wish we’d only have to sit in on useful meetings, the opposite is often true. That’s why at some point in all of our careers, we’ve all walked away from meetings scratching our heads and wondering, “Wait, what did we decide again?” Great creative leadership is about making this as uncommon as an enterprise company with no marketing vendors.
According to Henry, good leadership means being able to say, “Okay, this is the decision and now this meeting is over.” That’s true even if there are still 20 minutes left on the scheduled event. That kind of clear action is uncomfortable for people who don’t want to put their neck on the line for controversial or risky decisions, but is critical if your creatives are going to do effective work. Decisiveness eliminates confusion. Don’t less unnecessary meeting time detract from needed periods of creative focus.
Focus on building a culture that fosters creativity, but in a way that doesn’t just seek to flip over tables and start from scratch every time. To illustrate this, Henry referenced two quotes.
“There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road” Henry quoted G. K. Chesterton, the notable English writer. “The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’”
Then, in contrast, Henry pointed to a quote from Anton Chekhov, the famed Russian poet, who advises, “Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”
A great creative leader knows how to balance these two extremes. They know that they shouldn’t just throw everything out because it doesn’t make sense, but they also know that they need to remove unnecessary distractions for their team. Finding that balance creates an environment that allows creatives to reach new heights.
This interview with Henry was packed so full of valuable insights we couldn’t fit them all in one article. Listen to the episode for more on constructing a creative environment, best practices for managing a creative team, how to (smartly) give up control over decisions, the secret benefits of having a pet project, and some great book recommendations.
The B2B Revealed Podcast is brought to you by Cascade Insights, a market research firm specializing in B2B technology. Need more B2B expertise in your life? There are many ways to follow us.
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