Healthy B2B Messaging

In terms of B2B marketing, your messaging strategy is the infrastructure for everything that you do. It must be continuously nurtured and kept healthy if your company is to thrive. But what makes for a healthy messaging strategy?

To lay the foundation for a good messaging strategy you must first get to know your company very well, and build up an authentic brand for your company, how exactly do you do that? Great question– get the answer here. Once you know who you are, you can begin to communicate that identity to others, but it matters how you do so.

Before your company can say anything, it must first decide who exactly it is trying to speak to. Create a specific target audience profile, taking into consideration what unique problems your target market experiences in their daily lives and what they care about. By doing this you will be able to create effective messaging– narrow enough to make a few strong points that will stick with your target market, rather than a message that is too broad and watered down.

At the core of a good messaging strategy, though, is people. If you want to strive to have a compelling messaging strategy you will shift your point of view from “What do we do?” to “What is in it for the consumer?”. When we shift our focus from our company to the consumer we suddenly have people-centered messaging– a very powerful agent.

For example, we once heard of a rebar manufacturer who was suffering from low sales and low employee retention rates, but who could blame them? Working in a rebar plant isn't the most glamorous job. The company was desperate and went back to the drawing board to see if they could recover. They decided to make a single change in their marketing strategy. They shifted their messaging from “We make rebar” to “We make supplies that help people”. This single shift not only increased sales but the company also drastically increased their employee retention rates. Why? Simply because this shift gave meaning to the company's work. Both for the consumer and the employee.

A good messaging strategy matters. So when was the last time you took a look at what your company was saying?