B2B Messaging That Resonates

I recently responded to a reporter’s request for input on how to make business-to-business (B2B) content more memorable. It’s a great question, especially in a generative AI (GenAI) environment where an increasing amount of content is being generated by GenAI tools, rather than humans.

That automatically makes any content that you generate generic and marginally useful. Dare to be different! Here’s how.

Our #1 tip for making B2B content more memorable: make sure humans are writing it! That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use GenAI tools as part of the process. We do.

We use these tools for research, to help create outlines, to suggest headlines and subheads, to proofread/edit and offer suggestions for recommended improvements, to recommend hashtags and create meta descriptions—and even to help us generate HTML code for websites and landing pages.

But we don’t, and you shouldn’t, use GenAI to actually write your content. Leave that to the humans.

And here’s what those humans should be doing as they create content designed to really resonate with their audiences:

1)  Understand your client’s objectives/goals clearly and as precisely as possible.

2) Understand your audience’s interests, needs, and pain points.

3) Turn features into benefits—it’s not about the razor, it’s about the clean shave the razor provides.

4) Convey how the benefits your brand offers are different or better than what competitors have to offer (and keep in mind that “competitors” are really “any other alternative” to what you have to offer.

For instance, for healthcare organizations that could be asking your mom for advice or doing a Google search. The bottom line: focus on conveying to your audience why they should pick you.

5) Offer proof points—these might include studies/data, testimonials, video demonstrations, etc. Basically, you need to back up what you say with evidence.

6) Always, always tell the truth. It doesn’t help you out even a little bit to use false claims; if someone buys based on those false claims they’ll only buy once and then they’ll spread negative word of mouth about you.

Here’s the thing about these essential steps: they haven’t changed since I first learned the basics of effective copywriting many years ago.

These are the basics, but I believe that following the basics can go a long way toward standing out in today’s market—especially in a time when more and more people, including professional writers, are turning to GenAI tools to do the work for them.

The bottom line: You don’t want to be like, or sound like, everyone else.

You want to stand out in meaningful ways based on your audience’s needs and interests.

We can help!