Marketing messages are elusive so-and-so’s. You want to put your business out there, but you also want to draw the right people in. You want to engage and you need to persuade.
How to find the right balance? And how do you find the right language?
Faced with the dilemma, faint-hearted B2B marketers revert to the easy option: they just write about what their business does and use language they find familiar.
All businesses struggle with finding the right marketing messages. That’s a fact of life. It’s a struggle because it isn’t easy. Even big brands with legions of marketing professionals get it wrong.
Perspective is everything.
It only makes sense when you stand further back
Stand close up to any artwork and all you’ll see are brushstrokes. Move a couple of steps back and you might make out details and individual figures.You have to step back a bit more to see the whole canvas.
Sometimes, businesses are too close to the problem to get the right perspective. How do I know this? Through simple observation.
If I look at 100 B2B websites I’ll guarantee that at least 90 of them will focus on the fine detail of what the business wants to sell, rather than what customers need to buy.
That’s fundamentally about-face. Lacking perspective, if you will.
What you sell isn’t the story you need to tell. This is the most basic advice I give to B2B businesses. Every single one of your competitors can tell an identical story (and probably does).
Where are winning marketing messages born?
Finding the right marketing messages starts with identifying your ideal customer. Out of all the businesses you could sell to, who’d you most want as your customer? And who’d be most likely to buy from you at a profitable price?
Next questions: what problem do they need you to solve for them and how would they ideally like you to solve it?
This will probably call for market research. But also exploit the knowledge that already exists in your sales, business development and customer service teams, as well as existing customers. There has to be a reason or two why they chose you.
You might need to modify your product, service or how you deliver it to enhance the appeal to your ideal customers.
Next, analyse why potential buyers become active in the market. Any of these reasons offers a great opportunity to get their attention and start a conversation.
Then think about psychology and emotions. B2B buyers have personal motivations. They like solutions that boost their status and influence. But never forget the trolls of personal risk and reputational damage that lurk below the bridge you’re asking them to step over.
Finally, look at your competitors’ messaging. What points are they missing and what gaps are waiting to be exploited?
When you have a first cut of all of these inputs you can start crafting your winning story and marketing messages that connect and convert.
Why is it so hard to speak your customers’ language?
Knowing what to say is step one. You also need to decide how to say it if you want to craft an effective marketing message.
A natural tone of voice that reflects how your customers speak is the foundation of effective marketing communications. By ‘effective,’ I mean copy that generates better leads and more sales.
Of course, you know this. It’s so obvious it shouldn’t need saying.
But it’s clearly something B2B marketers and businesses find a bit of a struggle. And there’s a simple reason: writing naturally is unnatural.
Our brains are designed to communicate through speech. When you write, there’s another factor between the thought and the communication. It could be a pen, a keyboard or a cuneiform stylus.
Suddenly there’s more processing needed. We can’t blurt out our thoughts, we have to reconstruct them from letters and punctuation marks. The natural flow gets lost.
We also get weighed down by the baggage of years spent in formal education. Worrying about the right or wrong way to write something can have a paralysing effect on the brain.
It takes a lot of practice to shake off the shackles of a formal writing style. But nobody’s judging. And if they are, who cares?
B2B marketing content also has the twin afflictions of the urge to sound like marketing and the need to be clever. If you can’t imagine saying it, don’t write it.
So is there a shortcut to a natural writing style that reflects how your customers speak? Yes there is.
Hire someone who knows how to do it.