Positioning Myths That Lead to Generic Messaging

Trying to appeal to the broadest market possible may seem like a smart strategy. After all, the more potential customers there are, the higher your potential sales and revenue will be, right?

Maybe not.

How often have you seen B2B messaging that sounds something like “we help small and mid-size companies operate more efficiently,” or “we enable enterprise organizations to attract the best talent.”

Generic statements like these may be technically true. But are they actually effective at engaging prospects? After all, it’s likely that any number of competitors offer the same types of solutions, and say pretty much exactly the same thing in their own marketing and sales messaging.

So if this kind of broad messaging fails to cut through the noise and truly resonate with prospects, why do so many companies seem unwilling to tighten up their positioning strategy and create more specific, customer-focused messaging?

In the next few posts, we’ll explore a few positioning myths that lead to generic messaging, starting with…

Myth 1: The More Customers You Try to Serve, the Greater Your Potential Market Share

When companies compete with each other over broad categories like “CRMs for sales teams” or “recruiting tools for enterprise organizations,” the goal becomes to grab the biggest possible slice of the entire pie, and success is measured in total market share.

But trying to compete for total market share means going head-to-head with everyone for the same customers. That means if you’re a relatively small company that sells something broad like “CRMs for sales teams,” you’re going up against every startup, mid-size company, and established enterprise organization that happens to sell a similar product.

While the bigger market technically includes more customers, you’ll have to win an uphill battle for every single one of them—battles for which you may not have the resources needed to win.

Ultimately, your odds of successfully competing for any single customer, let alone a significant chunk of the market, will be greatly diminished.