Getting the B2B Message Right

In this ‘cast Bill Lowell and I discuss one of the biggest challenges in Business-to-Business marketing: Messaging.  Many companies struggle with communicating their true greatness to the market, and developing a clear message is crucial to successful marketing. You’d think after so many years in the business, that developing a solid message for a given company would be easy, but frankly, it isn’t.  The main three boxes to check for a solid message is:  Be different from competitors Be super-relevant to customers pain Be authentic to the value proposition Different from what exactly?  Simple answer: your competition.  When was the last time you visited your competition’s website? If it’s been more than two years (or never) how can you be sure what you are saying is truly different? Keep in mind the competition doesn’t always come in the same form as your business, platform, or software. Like it or not, whatever you offer, an alternative to it exists. There’s also the “invisible competitor,” in which potential customers simply don’t do anything and probably new competitors who are emerging under your radar. This brings us to the second point: “be super-relevant to customers’ pain.” The best way to really understand what might be relevant to customers is to ask them. Customer research is one of the keys to developing or refining a message that inspires and motivates customers.  Being “authentic to the value proposition” is a fancy way of saying, “Whatever you are claiming, it has to be true.” You can’t fake your message. In fact, you need to tick all three of these crucial boxes to have an effective message.  In this week’s podcast we talk about how the human brain makes decisions and how you can unlock how to stand out from the great blue ocean of noise that is the modern B2B market.  Scope out our webinar series here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/clarity-marketing-support-inc-7831936458