Many marketing leaders are ignorant...and they don’t even realize it.

Ignorant of what a market actually is.

Ignorant in what it takes to communicate with a market.

As they’ve climbed the ladder working on “bigger” projects for “bigger” companies, they’ve convinced themselves that their messaging also must be “bigger”.

And “bigger” messaging means broader summarizations.

This is a big mistake. (see what I did there?)

These leaders have forgotten the first principles of B2B markets.

B2B markets are made of companies.

Companies come in a lot of different flavors (business models, industries, missions, etc.)

Companies are made of people, who also come in a lot of different flavors.

People are complex creatures.

They hold different beliefs.

They take different approaches to problems.

The tools they use (your competition) are unique.

❌ So the idea that you can communicate across all this fragmentation and uniqueness with a single big message is downright comical — it's not specific enough to resonate with anyone.

The reality is that you’re going to need a more specific message to communicate with any given market segment.

And if you truly want to own the entire market, you’re going to need a lot of specific messages.

• But there is a risk here!

If you start by delivering every unique message you can think of...

...it’s going to be harder for your create the most valuable thing in marketing: organic “word of mouth”

(where your markets and customers repeat your message for you)

——

If you find yourself working on your positioning & messaging, do yourself a favor and:

❌ Don’t segment your market into one big bucket

❌ Avoid summarizing all the value you might provide

✅ Make a choice of where you are going to focus