The Secret to B2B Sales Messaging Success: Marketing-Sales Synergy
Including sales in the development of B2B messaging is crucial to its success.
Tag Archive for: B2B messaging
SaaS Messaging and Positioning: Successful vs. Struggling
Consider the last SaaS company’s website that you read while checking out a potential new solution. How was the company positioning itself in the marketplace? Was the messaging clear and concise, or was it hard to understand? Did it target your specific role and address your jobs-to-be-done (JTBD)?
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Message Maps, Frameworks, and More: Decrypting the Differences for the B2B Marketer
It’s typically standard practice for B2B marketers to lead the development or enhancement of an organization’s messaging. What’s not standard, however is how marketers label a messaging development effort. In our experience we’ve seen tech marketers use any or all of the following when attempting to describing a messaging creation effort.
- Message map
- Messaging framework
- Message house
- Message architecture
- Messaging matrix
- Messaging hierarchy
- …and more
With so many different terms all used in varying degrees, there is the potential for some initial confusion. What distinctions are there between these terms and approaches? How significant are those distinctions?
Given how often we see this confusion we thought a short primer that can help decrypt those differences would be useful. In this article, we’ll take a look at all the different ways a company can organize its messaging, and exactly what a marketer will focus on when approaching the problem form a particular point of view – message map, message house, etc.
Finally, we’ll dive deeper into the specifics of how to develop great B2B messaging – regardless of how it’s structured.
The Rundown: Different Options For Structuring Messaging
Message Map
A message map lays out a company’s positioning for their product or solution in the format of a map. It will typically start with a key value prop, followed by key messaging points and supporting details that explain the benefits of the product or solution to a specific buyer persona.
The supporting information can include examples, proof points, or even customer quotes. Some marketers may prefer to keep those supporting details in an appendix that are ready for external use.
Pros + Cons: Message maps offer a great visual representation of an organization’s messaging. It allows for a quick snapshot of the core value prop, followed by key and supporting points. However, it may not provide the space necessary to provide a detailed and strong set of supporting points.
Messaging Framework
A messaging framework lays out an organization’s key value prop(s), messaging pillars, and supporting proof points in more of a grid-like format. Messaging frameworks generally offer more space to be descriptive and detailed.
Messaging frameworks can be flexible about which details make most sense to include. They will typically include specific personas, industries, and company size segments. They may also include elements like short and long-form positioning statements, customer pain points, and the brand tone to use.
Pros + Cons: Frameworks provide the room that’s needed to include thorough and comprehensive copy, allowing marketers to get into great depth with each framework element. However, this copy-heavy format many not be as scannable as other potential formats.
Message House
As the name suggests, a message house organizes an company’s messaging in the outline of a house. At the top of the house is the roof which contains an “umbrella message” that is meant to convey the primary value proposition. The three columns each have a supporting pillar message. The foundation includes the supporting details such as proof points, examples, and testimonials.
Pros + Cons: Similar to a message map, message houses are also great for creating a more visual impact. The structure of the house provides a strong visual indication as to how each message component supports the company’s main message. However, an additional appendix may be needed to provide the additional depth needed for certain audience segments.
Message Architecture
A message architecture addresses the key messages each persona or stakeholder needs to hear, based on their needs and how the product or service will benefit those needs.
Additionally, a message architecture will outline key objections or concerns that each persona is likely to have and your company’s responses to those objections. Those responses should be persuasive, well-reasoned and include supporting proof points such as case studies, third-party research, and more.
Pros + Cons: A messaging architecture offers a more persona focused way of organizing your messaging. This format may be particularly helpful for sales teams; however, it may not provide overall, foundational messaging that marketers need that crosses all of the company’s target personas and solutions.
Messaging Matrix
A messaging matrix is a chart that allows companies to create distinct messaging by persona and channel (email, social, paid ads, etc.). This is particularly useful when developing content to reach prospective customers at different stages in the buyer journey.
Pros + Cons: Similar to message architecture, a messaging matrix concentrates less on the behind-the-scenes internal messaging that guides an organization. Instead, it focuses more on how to activate it that messaging. Messaging matrixes are great for developing a plan that effectively targets personas and the channels they pay attention to. However, this approach has the same flaw as a messaging architecture in that it doesn’t typically provide overarching messaging for the company as a whole.
The Verdict: How Should B2B Marketers Structure Their Messaging?
Each messaging format provides a different visual representation of an organization’s messaging. Although very similar, there are differences in how they can be best utilized.
Message maps, houses, and pyramids are all similar in the fact that they are very visual in nature and can provide a clear snapshot of an organization’s messaging at a quick glance. They can be very useful when an organization is misaligned on it’s messaging efforts all up. At the same time, more visual approaches like message maps limit the amount of information that can be effectively conveyed at a glance. This can be a problem for more complex solutions or for companies who target a number of different verticals, solution areas, or personas.
Messaging frameworks give the space needed for marketers to delve deep into the specifics of each messaging pillar and supporting points. This added depth makes it easy to keep various marketers, and sales teams aligned, when it comes to in-depth customer facing messaging. However, such a format can lose the forest for the trees, in that a clear understanding of a single clear brand promise, tagline, or top line messaging pillar can be harder to connect with.
Message architecture and messaging matrixes focus more on how an organization would go about activating these messages and how to use different messages while targeting different personas via different channels. These are helpful for marketers who have already established their organization’s foundational messaging, and are thinking about the best ways to activate that messaging.
Ultimately, any marketer needs to make a choice when it comes to these formats. Is it more important for me provide detail and direction or vision. Once that decision is made, the choice of model – or at least a category of models – becomes that much easier.
B2B Messaging: How to Make a Significant Impact
Aristotle once said, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” This insight can apply to messaging efforts as well. While all of the models discussed previously provide a way to structure the parts of a messaging effort, the parts themselves only add up to so much. A great messaging development effort ultimately focuses on how all of the messaging will impact customers over the buyer’s journey. It is this “sum of the whole” that marketers need to keep their eye on.
As a way for marketers to stay focused on this end goal, we developed a checklist to help determine if 1.) they’ve met the baseline of what’s essential to any set of messages, 2.) they’ve elevated their messaging into the realm of being highly effective, or 3.) their messaging actually contains some red flags.
Table Stakes B2B Messaging: What’s Essential
These are the critical components that need to be included in any B2B organization’s messaging:
Key Value Proposition/Brand Promise
Critical to any organization’s messaging is their key value proposition. A brand promise or similar, describes, in a nutshell, what is most important about your organization and what sets it apart from competitors.
Messaging Pillars
Organizations use messaging pillars to elaborate on their key value prop. Messaging pillars branch out and expand upon the different key messages that target personas care most about.
Proof Points, Facts, Etc.
Some claims made in a messaging pillar or value prop will need to be supported by an outside, third party source. For example, if a messaging pillar includes a reference to your technology solution being “number one” or “industry-leading” in a certain area, that needs to be backed up by independent research of some kind. Without those proof points, marketers won’t be changing any minds. Worse yet, they could actually be alienating potential customers with claims they consider to be dubious.
Elevating Your Message: How to Make it Truly Resonate
To elevate the content of your messaging so that it captures the attention of prospective buyers and inspires them to act, marketers should ensure the messaging is:
Tailored To Specific Personas, Industries, And Company Size Segments
Messaging that speaks to the right person is the first step toward delivering a message that will resonate. Once you’ve identified which role at a certain sized company and in a specific industry that you will be targeting in your messaging, then you can speak to that person’s specific fears, risks, and challenges they face within their roles. You can speak to the meaningful career goals your solution can help them achieve, and highlight the exact features of your solution that they would care most about. This level of specificity is the crucial first step toward building out messaging that will motivate them to learn more.
Truly Differentiated
Great B2B messaging requires differentiators that actually stand out. This seems obvious. But unfortunately in B2B tech great differentiators are hard to come by. To ensure your messaging is truly differentiated, it needs to be:
Unique from competitors
Before crafting your own messaging, perform an analysis of your competitors’ messaging. Do you notice any gaps that your offering can cover? Are there certain features or benefits that your competitors don’t have or that they are not highlighting? Are there certain areas where your offering could do something better or improve upon what a competitor is offering? Those are opportunities for you to message something that’s different from what’s out there.
Specific
Avoid copy that could be considered generic and vague. Your messaging should be explicit in explaining exactly who the solution is intended for and how that will benefit them. Furthermore, the messaging should make clear the types of customers, organizations, or personas that it would not be a good fit for.
Valuable to the buyer
According to the B2B Elements of Value pyramid, B2B buyers have a spectrum of priorities, beginning with table stakes elements like price, capabilities, and features. Higher needs like their own personal fears, risks, and challenges, however, is where differentiation begins to occur. If your brand or solution is tied with a competitor on table stakes, your peak elements of value might get you over the line with your buyers.
Backed By Research
Market research helps to set a strong foundation for which effective messaging can be built upon. For example, buyer persona research can help to identify which roles in the buying teams carry the most influence, what they care most about, and how your solution could potentially benefit them. Message testing can help make clear which messages resonate best with which audiences. These kinds of insights can provide the information that’s needed to build effective messaging that’s rooted in fact, not intuition.
B2B Messaging Red Flags: What to Leave Out
Does your messaging contain any of the following problems? Unfortunately, much of B2B tech messaging is flooded with these common mistakes. Take a look and see if you may be turning buyers away with:
People-Pleasing: Trying to be all Things for all People
B2B messaging should always clarify what the product or service does not do. Being upfront about your solution’s limitations saves buyers’ time and reduces confusion. Forcing buyers to dig through your website looking for what you don’t do leaves them frustrated. They know that before their organization invests a significant amount of money into this purchase, they’ll need to know what the limits are of that solution. Making that easy to find builds trust; making it difficult to find leaves a sour first impression.
Worse still, glossing over limitations leads to frustrated customers later when they realize they didn’t get what they paid for. That leads to churn and bad reviews, which turns other prospective buyers away.
Conversely, clearly laying out your solution’s limitations gives buyers an accurate picture of how best they can utilize it. The majority of buyers want to understand the cons of a product or service before purchase. Filling in the information gaps for them can only be mutually beneficial.
Buzzwords
What do phrases like “digital transformation”, “robust ecosystem”, or “scalable” all have in common? Well, they’re used constantly in B2B tech messaging, yet they don’t really mean a whole lot to buyers.
The problem with these terms is that they don’t provide any real, concrete descriptions or examples of what they will do for buyers and how they might benefit from them. On top of that, competitors are all using these same terms, so you’re losing your ability to differentiate.
Inauthentic Or Unsubstantiated Claims
It’s tempting to develop a messaging strategy that overemphasizes the inspirational, uplifting, and idealistic aspects of your brand. However, sometimes marketers may take it too far, moving into the realm of inauthenticity. B2B buyers are inherently cautious and skeptical of this type of messaging.
B2B buyers also have a dim view of any marketing boasts they see that don’t come with proof. Making claims like being the “fastest” with no statistics and competitor comparisons provides no useful information for your buyers. Worse yet, it can mislead and/or turn them off if they try to gain clarity by googling to figure out if your boasts are true and it turns out that they are unsubstantiated by any reputable third party sites.
Moving Beyond the Message Map
American writer Richard Bach once said “Judge not by the form of the messenger, but the form of the message itself.”
B2B messaging can come in a myriad of forms. However, how that messaging is organized internally – whether it’s through a message map, or framework, or house, or anything else – is typically of less significance than the impact of the messaging.
Effective messaging will instantly capture the attention of the desired persona and inspire them to learn more. Free from buzzwords, people-pleasing, and inauthentic claims, great B2B messaging stands out from the competition.
If that sounds like something you’re interested in, then give us a call. We can organize your messaging in a way that makes sense for your organization. Most importantly, however, we’ll deliver targeted, focused, and differentiated messaging that inspires action.
This blog post is brought to you by Cascade Insights, a firm that provides market research and marketing services exclusively to organizations with B2B tech sector initiatives. Want to learn more about the specific messaging that we deliver? Our B2B Messaging services can help.
B2B Messaging Frameworks: Grounded by Research, Activated by Marketing
Marketers often find themselves stuck when trying to create the right messaging frameworks for their organizations. Maybe it’s because they are nervous about suggesting a new messaging framework without the data to back it up. Or perhaps they weren’t hired to solve that type of problem; they were hired to drive existing marketing campaigns. So, they’re not confident in their ability to create new messaging. Or maybe it’s because they’ve been sitting at their end of the table for so long that they no longer even know what their buyers’ needs are.
Don’t Stop Believin’ in Message Testing
Arguably the most famous song from the 1980s was introduced in 1981 by the band Journey. To this day “Don’t Stop Believin’” is a hit song for people of all ages that’s heard at sporting events, weddings, and other social events. Now, you might be asking yourself, “How has this song stood the test of time?”
Greatest hits are rarely born overnight. For example, the initial inspiration for the core lyric in the song “Don’t Stop Believin,” occurred five years before Journey sat down to record the track. After inspiration, comes the hard work of developing lyrics and music that work in harmony.
Musicians, songwriters, and producers write and rewrite a song, refining the lyrics, melody, and title until they create an irresistible song. Oftentimes, there are multiple collaborators working behind the scenes testing musical ideas. Even “Don’t Stop Believin’” has three songwriters and two producers to its credit.
The same creative and intellectual rigor can be applied when developing great B2B messaging. Just as a great song benefits from multiple collaborators testing ideas, great messaging benefits from external perspectives – specifically, those of your potential buyers.
To develop B2B messaging that resonates, marketers first need to test it. Without message testing, your messaging may fall flat with your audience, alienating buyers, or worse, driving them to your competitors. However, conducting message testing allows you to understand where your messaging falls short, where it resonates, and what you can do to craft messaging that rocks your audiences’ socks off.
What Makes A Greatest Hit?
Just as a hit song consists of a catchy title and lyrics, a memorable melody, and a great hook, great B2B messaging can be broken down into the same key elements:
- Instant attention-grabbers
- Clear persona targeting
- Banished buzzwords
- Clear calls to action (CTA)
Instant Attention-Grabbers
According to Pew Research Center’s 2021 Digital Experience Benchmark report, the B2B industry spends an average of 1.37 minutes on a company webpage. As a marketer, that’s all the time you have to grab your audiences’ attention.
Your message needs to instantly capture a potential buyer’s attention to want to learn more. Once you’ve commanded a buyer’s interest, more descriptive and informative messaging can follow.
You Can’t Write to Everyone, You Have to Write to Someone
If you’re still trying to write a universal message that resonates with all your audiences, think again. Sharp messaging should be built to target each of the personas’ interests and concerns.
The context: We worked with a company who wanted to understand how people responded to the word “risk.” We found that respondents generally don’t like the word “risk” because it implies you might lose something.
For example, if you’re talking to a line-of-business person in financial services, they wouldn’t want to hear the word risk. Instead, they’d prefer a phrase like “improving security.” Conversely, a chief security officer may want to hear how you plan to mitigate risk.
The takeaway: When you understand how your audiences will perceive different phrases, it allows you to write stronger content. Rather than writing generalized blanket statements, you need to tailor your messages to the right persona.
Say Bye-Bye to Buzzwords
Certain terms gain instant popularity in B2B messaging, but can fizzle out just as fast. These buzzwords suffer from frequent overuse, resulting in loss of meaning. Unfortunately, many B2B marketers still continue to use them.
The context: We once worked with a client who was interested in message testing across their website. Our experiential analysis revealed that consumers and IT roles did not respond well to the flashy marketing buzzwords they repeatedly used. Some of the language was so overused that it lost its meaning to our client’s tech audience.
The takeaway: IT buyers want to hear specifically what your solution does and why it is unique. They will lose confidence in your solution if it includes the same generic buzzwords they’ve used to describe other solutions.
Focused CTAs
Does your messaging encourage your audience to take the next step? Effective CTAs not only bring in potential new leads, they also clearly indicate what your audience should do next.
Some examples of focused CTAs include:
- Download our ebook
- Subscribe to our weekly newsletter
- Download this whitepaper
- Sign up for free
These examples have a few things in common. First, they evoke curiosity and entice the audience to want whatever it is you’re offering. Second, they require the audience to take an actionable step. Words like “download” or “subscribe” tell your audience to take action, so there’s no confusion.
Great Message Testing Leads to Great Messaging
Although successful business messaging can sometimes come from a flash of creative inspiration, most of the time great messaging is achieved through the process of testing and refining ideas.
Here are a few examples of how B2B message testing research has helped out clients.
Test Messaging That Sticks With Your Audience
Generic, buzzwordy messaging feels easy, but B2B buyers are looking for impactful messaging. To reach your buyers, test specific messages with each of your target personas.
The context: We worked with a client who wanted to improve the benefits of one of its offerings. So, they came to us to conduct message testing to understand their target audience and how their messaging was perceived.
Our research revealed that IT directors, system admins and developers each wanted different things from our client’s content. System admins and developers despised the use of marketing fluff and preferred language that was directly related to technology.
However, IT directors were more interested in seeing the ROI impact and placed a strong emphasis on security. When it came time to place value on the benefits of our client’s offering, each persona felt differently because they didn’t feel like it met their exact needs.
When it came time to place a value on the benefits of our client’s offering, every persona responded poorly because they couldn’t see how the solution met their exact needs. The messaging wasn’t specific enough.
The takeaway: We recommended that this client adjust their messaging to educate and increase awareness of their offerings. Message testing helped our client understand that different audiences value the relevancy of a message.
Rather than trying to put all your eggs in one basket, we suggested that our client develop specific messaging targeted at each persona. Why? Because it not only shows that you understand your audience, but also demonstrates that you’re aware of the environment they’re working in and what matters most to them.
No One Wants to Hear “Free Bird”
Long paragraphs and stale language bore your readers. Understand what your target audience wants and strategically deliver that message.
The context: We worked with a company to conduct message testing based on previous knowledge of their target audience. However, the messaging they used included run-on sentences and complicated phrases. They completely missed the mark on delivering effective messaging because they assumed that their target audience wanted more detailed, thorough information.
Message testing revealed that the needs and interests of their audience had shifted. Their audience preferred short, direct messages not lengthy paragraphs of detailed text. This research gave our client the opportunity to reevaluate their messaging to keep their target audience engaged.
The takeaway: A lengthier message isn’t always an effective way to reach your audience. Messaging testing helps reveal these misconceptions, allowing you to sharpen your messaging.
R.E.S.P.E.C.T the Research
Sometimes you need to set aside persona opinions to produce great messaging.
The context: We recently worked with a company to conduct message testing on a few phrases for a product offering. After conducting focus groups, it was apparent that respondents preferred a particular phrase over the other options presented.
During the final readout, one of the stakeholders explained that they did not agree with the choice of words the respondents preferred. In fact, the stakeholder went on to say that they would not change their messaging, even though the data suggested otherwise.
The takeaway: While our job is not to tell you what to do, we try to give you the information to make savvy business decisions. It’s important to keep an open mind when hearing the results of a message testing project.
Feel the Beat
Great messaging should help your clients and prospects feel the beat. A beat that speaks to their interests, their jobs to be done, and their organization’s goals.
Yet, great beats take time to find and create. And they must be tested, with real world audiences. Finally, the danger in skipping this testing step is that you might find out you are standing out in all the wrong ways in the marketplace with your messaging.
If you want your messaging to be the next greatest hit with your buyers, give us a call. We can help you find the beat and create messaging that resonates.
This blog post is brought to you by Cascade Insights, a firm that provides market research & marketing services exclusively to organizations with B2B tech sector initiatives. Want to learn more about the message testing we deliver? Our B2B Messaging Services can help.
Special thanks to Sean Campbell, Co-Founder & CEO, Laurie Pocher, Senior Consultant, and Brian Surguine, Creative Services Manager, for advising on this piece.
B2B Messaging: It’s Harder than B2C
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.
Horror Stories: B2B Tech Messaging
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:
- The intended audience.
- Relevancy to buyers’ “jobs to be done.”
- How the product or service uniquely solves their business problems.
- Whether the messaging is to be believed at all.
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.
Horror Story 1: It’s Unclear Who It’s For… And Who It’s NOT For.
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.
Horror Story 2: It’s Not Written In The Voice of The Buyer(s).
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.
Horror Story 3: The Messaging Is Stranded From The Brand Strategy.
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.
Horror Story 4: It’s Poorly Written.
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.)
Horror Story 5: There’s No Hierarchy of Emphasis.
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.
Horror Story 6: Unsubstantiated Boasts, Vague Terms, & Marketing Buzzwords.
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.
The Takeaways
To summarize: don’t make your buyers work to figure out your solution’s relevancy and value-add.
Make sure your B2B messaging:
- Identifies the intended audience. It should be very obvious who the solution was built for.
- Is written in the voice of the buyer. Messaging needs to get the B2B buyers’ business and technical context right.
- Connects back to the brand strategy. Give the reader an easy pathway to related solutions and information.
- Is easy to read. Pay attention to good grammar and avoid run-on sentences.
- Has a hierarchy of emphasis. Be clear internally on the top 2-5 selling points you want the reader to take away. The main value-add should have the most space, visual draw, ink, etc.
- Is specific. Avoid vague terms, unsubstantiated boasts, and marketing buzzwords. Explain how your solution accomplishes the benefits you’re boosting. Back up your claims.
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.
