How do you write B2B marketing messaging that quickly earns trust and moves buyers to take the next step?

The following two sentences are going to seem like basic Marketing 101…

You start by clearly defining your ideal prospects. The specific types of customers and clients that are the best fit for your company’s particular competitive strengths.

Obvious, right? You already know that:

• You need to identify a target market.
• You need to think about things like ideal customer profiles and buyer personas.
• Your company needs to truly differentiate itself if it has any hope of competing for the best customers and projects.

And yet…

Go Google any random B2B industry category and click through the first 10 company websites you find.

Of those 10, how many have clear messaging focused on a specific set of customer types, goals, and challenges?

(It really should be 10 out of 10, but my guess is that the actual number is much lower than that.)

Now, the next question to ask is “why?” If positioning is such a basic marketing concept, how come there seem to be so few good examples of it out in the real world?

Here’s one theory. Defining a set of ideal prospects means:

• Making difficult decisions and trade-offs.
• Facing the discomfort and fear that comes with uncertainty.
• Accepting the possibility that good decisions based on current information can still go wrong (like when your market unexpectedly shifts overnight).

So it FEELS safer to cast a wider net. To hedge your bets and try to be more things to more people. Or to skip the positioning step altogether and just double-down on a larger booth at that big annual trade show.

The reality is that a wider net puts you in head-to-head competition with more companies gunning for the same customers, all using similar generic value props and offers.

And if your company is competing with everyone, everywhere, all the time, the “safe” bet is likely going to be a guaranteed loser.