Imagine a booking man for a coffee shop who was used to getting lost in Google Sheets staring at numbers every single day, and didn't have a clue about B2B brand positioning and messaging.
This is me in the last two years.
Things were messed up at that coffee shop, so I told the Owner that I couldn't keep dealing with Excel and Google Sheets. We had to look for software that integrates with our cashier system.
After a long search of precisely one month, we signed with QuickBooks.
QuickBooks tool stood out for us and was better than the 13 companies we have reached out to.
I was a B2B buyer in the last few years, and here I'm, a B2B writer.
Now I understand why QuickBooks was our best choice. They were damn well positioned.
In this article, we will discuss brand positioning in the B2B context. And Guess what? I'm not alone here. I have asked guidance from masters like; Andy Crestodina and Mitch Solway to help me on this hot topic.
If you are a digital marketer who doesn't follow Andy, the first thing to do right now is to open a new tab and hit that button on LinkedIn. Here.
Andy is the CMO and co-founder of Orbit Media. With over 21 years of experience in the field, Andy has provided digital strategy to more than a thousand businesses. I enjoyed the chat I had with him. He was kind and very helpful… Just check out his profile to see what I mean.
Mitch is a fractional CMO who works with CEO/founders to help them enhance their marketing and build a world-class marketing function.
Over the past 20 years, Mitch has led marketing strategies of the top tech brands in Canada, such as; Lavalife, FundThrough, ClearFit, and much more. Again talking with an experienced marketer is different. He was precise, accurate, and helpful at the same time. Take advantage of his valuable insights on LinkedIn. Here.
In this hyper-competitive field during the viral digital transformation, and as a founder or CMO, it is super essential for you to know how to position yourself around the audience's needs and have a strong messaging strategy.
The things we are going to discuss are easy to comprehend and hard to implement, but there is always a right way for everything.
So let's get into it and see what experts in the field think of the right way.
From your perspective, what is brand positioning?
Andy: Brand positioning is the context within which the audience perceives the offer. A lot of marketers leave prospects without a reason to take action. It's not enough to tell that you are unique in what you offer. Sometimes you need to show those people how you are different. To do that, you need to utilize every piece of evidence of your achievements, such as; success stories, customer interviews, awards, reviews, and testimonials. Show, don't tell.
Mitch: Positioning is narrowly defining a set of customers you want to target. I like to think of it as how we can be very clear to the customers that we want them to choose us and that we're the right product or service. We also need to be clear that we're not the right product or service for a particular set of customers, and they should go somewhere else. The size of the opportunity is always so much bigger than the size of the resources you've got to go into the market, so it certainly makes sense to shrink the size of the audience and your target audience so that you can direct your business and marketing efforts at a very deliberate set of customers to be efficient in your marketing.
How do you best align messaging with the needs of the audience?
Andy: the most valuable approach is through research and by being close to the audience during the sales process so that you understand what this audience cares about. Marketers who are struggling to push up their ROI have one thing in common; they don't produce content that aligns with the information needs of their audience; they write articles that they think are interesting instead of answering questions that keep their potential customers up at night in a way that aligns with every stage of your marketing funnel. How? Well, you can reach out to customers or even do better than that, be present in the sales calls, and watch all the recordings. What are the questions that are mostly asked during the sales calls? What do they care about? Your content should answer those questions.
Andy here shares with me a graphic from a presentation that summarizes his last insight:
Mitch- It depends on how you've chosen to present yourself out there. The truth is nobody can tell your story better than your customers. My personal strategy is to know the whole story of the customers you want to get more of. To do that, you have to reach out to your customers and put the effort to answer some questions like:
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How did they end up using our product?
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How did they determine that they should consider us?
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How did they start their research?
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Why is our product the perfect fit for their business?
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Where do they find the value of doing business with us?
Now, you have the story of your customer base that you want to alter; the process is simple. Your content strategy should aim to find more stories that are similar to the ones you have uncovered. You have to produce content that makes prospects feel like; Omg, this is me talking. It's not about pumping articles and social posts consistently; it is about being intentional in your content strategy. Metrics and KPIs can show some results, but they won't say why, and they won't give a logic for the circumstance. To solve this obstacle, you just have to reach out and see from your audience's perspective.
How do you keep track of positioning in the competitive field?
Andy: Look at your landing page. Does it look like a startup that was founded yesterday can write the same page? If so, then you are lost in the crowd. To stand out, you have to fill your page with evidence, reviews, and ratings and use them in ways that say to visitors; Hey, this could be you. This is the biggest differentiator from my point of view, don't make your brand taste like water.
You have to also keep up with channels that a prospect ends up in while doing his research, like LinkedIn, Reddit, and Quora. Hang out with your audience, engage with them on every platform they are active, and get to know them properly. This kind of long relationship is also an advantage you can use to set yourself apart.
You have to be laser-focused on your audience, talk to them every day and stop looking at your competitors' ranking and who is linking to them as long as you maintain a healthy relationship with your audience.
Mitch: You don't have to overwhelm yourself with competitive analyses. Put your efforts into market research instead, find a segment in your targeted market that is being underserved first, and after that, take a broad look at the market to see the number of potential competitors out there and analyze their approach to that targeted segment. By doing this, you will be able to get rid of the distractions and eliminate many companies and dig deep into the market to find the actual competitors.
Now those actual competitors might say the same thing you are saying. Your job here is to not sound like them and to have a unique messaging strategy, and this takes us to the first point: Strong messaging=deep knowledge of the customer's story.
What is your way of telling people that your product is different or even better? In other words, how do you define the strengths of your offerings?
Andy: You can write a magic copy and leverage all practices of content marketing and SEO to empower your overall messaging, that is just marketing, and it is good to do so, but you also need social proof. Find your best customers, and ask them for feedback to be quoted in your product feature or wherever on your website. Make them play a role in your growth while they are paying at the same time. To simplify, answer top sales questions in testimonials. That is how to sell.
Mitch: The strength of your offering lies in how you've decided to state that offer. My approach revolves around understanding the individual customer's needs and challenges. It's not just about claiming to be different or better; it's about crafting messaging that says, "This is for you." The better I can communicate that I truly understand who my customers are, what they are currently struggling with, and how my product can help them overcome those challenges, the more they'll resonate with my brand. Instead of vague statements like "We're a great CRM for enterprises," I focus on being clear and direct, addressing their specific situation and needs by saying HOW instead of WHY.
The key is building trust. If I promise that my product solves problems, I must ensure it delivers on those promises. Making and keeping promises is crucial for authenticity and trust in the market. Failure to deliver on what we claim will lead to a loss of trust and credibility, which is bad for business.
Should marketers use a few emotions in their messaging or keep it formal and direct-to-the-point content?
Andy: I believe incorporating emotions into marketing messaging is crucial because emotions play a significant role in driving action. Considering the audience's emotions is essential, as they often start with existing emotions. Negative emotions tend to have a stronger impact on driving action than positive emotions due to loss aversion, a cognitive bias. Fear, for instance, can be a more compelling motivator than hope. Focus on understanding and aligning with the emotions of your buyers. Two common emotions to address are the fear of missing out (FOMO) and the fear of messing up. By acknowledging these emotions and addressing them in your messaging, you can appeal to the concerns of your audience.
Empathy can be valuable, especially in LinkedIn and blog posts, as it helps address the fear of missing out. Understanding what people hope for and fear allows you to tailor your messaging accordingly. While social media provides insights, it's important to recognize that it's a different context from buyer intent and the emotions of potential customers. Emotional triggers can be effective in pushing prospects deeper into the sales funnel.
Mitch: Using emotions in marketing messaging can significantly enhance engagement. Connecting emotionally with the audience through storytelling and showcasing an understanding of their problems and issues creates an emotional hook. This approach works well for longer formats like blogs or social media posts, where there is room to evoke emotions and build intrigue. Yet, I also think that different types of buyers respond differently. Thus, as a marketer, you must experiment and understand your audience to find the most effective approach.
Mixing emotional and direct-to-the-point messages may be necessary to cater to various preferences. For example, you can write a social post in a provocative way that makes them rethink their choices and then hit them with a direct-to-the-point type post. That, for example, could make them say; Omg, these people really get me. That's why being provocative is important. At the end of the day, it is your audience; you know them best and choose how to communicate with them.
What is your last advice about the whole thing?
Andy: Marketing and sales success comes from data-driven empathy. You need to use qualitative research to better understand your audience and then position your product and align your marketing messages. Find the best evidence that works for your prospect and buyer. Answer every question, and address every objection. Another trick I can say for both marketers and the sales rep is, "Implant a circuit in your brain to write down every question people ask in meetings" It's hard to do because you're immediately prompted to begin answering. But if you can go back and watch the recording, maybe AI does this great; just take the transcript and say, tell me every question asked by that person, answer those questions in your messaging, and now you are well positioned.
Mitch: I will go back to my first principles. You can only do so much at certain points of your growth in a company. So make sure that you focus on an ideal customer. And as I mentioned later, your ideal customer has a similar story to the stories of your current customers. So position yourself against the customer that you are best organized to serve. That doesn't mean rejecting any prospects that seem to be interested in your offerings; just try not to get distracted by other factions and continue to build out your audience of highly relevant customers.
The Takeaway
If we think of brand positioning as an actual location to be pinned on the map of the market, that pin will fall on the intersection of the three main topics we have just discussed:
- Understanding the needs of the audience.
- Competitive differentiation and authenticity.
- Defining the strengths of the offerings.
Is it worth putting all the effort into this positioning thing, considering the broad crowd already out there?
Well, it is definitely worth it.
The market is enormous, and the amount of pain points to cover is consistently rising. In other words, the demand level is shifting to the right side, and B2B buyers are always on the hunt.
Take a look at the numbers from Gartner:
These stats don't include the first two quarters of 2023. the thing is, entrepreneurs are responding well, and the number of saas startups is exponentially rising: see this:
2023 is only at the beginning edge of this curve, which relates to the fact that digital transformation is becoming viral day after day.
The bad news is that the crowd will not be anything but larger.
The good news is that we just listened to Andy and Mitch on how to stand out from that crowd.