← The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
What Your Messaging is Missing: How to Close the Meaning Gap (with Diane Wiredu, Founder of Lion Words)
00:52:11
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- [00:01]
Dave Gerhardt
This episode is brought to you by paramark. Look, it's November 2026. Planning. We're already here. Somehow we're already here. The holidays are coming, it's planning season, budgets are being built. And you know, the stuff that you're doing right now is going to decide how next year is going to play out. Somehow they expect you to plan for the next. The next year. It's hard, but you got to do it. And you can't make smart budgeting calls if you're just guessing with what's working. Most most teams are still planning next year's marketing strategy based on the wrong data because of things like broken attribution and a misleading gut feel. If the data is wrong and you're making decisions off of that, it's going to be a challenging year. That's exactly where Powermark comes in. They can help you replace the guesswork with actual insight. Backed by over $2 billion in analyzed marketing data, they figured out exactly what drives incremental growth. And that's the name of the game in marketing across every channel like LinkedIn, Meta, TikTok, Google, CTV, even out of home. And right now they're doing something crazy. They wanted to do a crazy offer for this podcast. This is not hyperbole, this is real. They want to do a one to one private consultation with Pranav, their CEO and Sam, their cmo, both who have led marketing teams at companies like Dropbox, Adobe, Microsoft, Shutterfly. They're doing this now and building Paramark. I know them both well and they're actually smart guys with strong opinions in this space space about attribution and measurement. So they're going to give you a 45 minute strategy session. They'll help you measure the real impact of every marketing dollar you spend. They'll pull insights from your current media mix and design a 2026 roadmap that's rooted in data, not gut. Like, how do I get this? Can I? I need some of this insight. This is an amazing offer and it is real. They're going to really sit down with you and walk through your business and help you get more insight on what you should be doing in 2026. So go check it out. If you want to future proof your marketing strategy for next year, don't miss out on this offer. Go and grab your spot right now. Pull over on the side of the road, stop your run, do whatever you're doing. Go to paramark.com brand-consult that's paramark.com brand-consULT brand consult. We'll link it in here in case you can't understand the words coming out of my mouth. Let's get into this episode. You're listening to B2B marketing with me, Dave Gerhardt.
- [02:21]
Diane Weirdo
2, 3, 4, exit.
- [02:25]
Dave Gerhardt
Hey it's Dave. Quick note before we get into this episode. This is a recording from Drive 2025, our annual event here at Exit 5. This was recorded live in Burlington, Vermont at Hula as part of our event and we'd love to have you at next year's event. We're bringing it back to Vermont Stow, Vermont. You can go to exit5.comdrive to get more information, put your name on the wait list and maybe make it to next year's event. But we're bringing the audio recordings from these sessions to you live, well recorded on the podcast because we thought it'd be a fun way to show you the stuff we talk about at DRIVE and give you a sense of what it was like if you didn't get to be there. And if you were there then you get to now re listen and maybe take notes again. So this is one of the sessions from drive. Go and check it out. Get tickets. Put your name on the waitlist for next year. Exit5.com SL drive our next speaker. She spends her days in the trenches with B2B marketers writing messaging that makes the value of their products easy to understand. She's the founder of Lion Words, a messaging consultancy that helps B2B tech companies find message market fit. And before that, she spent nearly a decade running localization and global comms for major brands. She speaks five languages fluently. She'll kick your ass in a workout. I know that as a fact. And that explains why she's so good at translating text speak into messaging. That resonates when she's not breaking down B2B product stories. You'll find her with a heavy dumbbell or a glass of wine in her hands, though thankfully not at the same time. She's going to share what your messaging is missing, how to close the meaning gap. And she's here because she was one of the most highly rated speakers that we've had on one of our virtual events earlier this year. Please give it up. All the way from Barcelona, Diane Weirdo.
- [04:06]
Diane Weirdo
Morning everyone. Nice to be here. All right, so the reason that I'm here is because we have a little bit of a messaging problem in B2B marketing. And I think I know why. So for years, folks like me, the messaging experts, the copywriters, the communicators, have Been giving marketers the same advice. Be clear, show the value, be compelling. Right? The magic trifecta advice. If you do this, you'll get your message across. And all of you did it, right? It worked. Everybody made loads of money. We all work at unicorns and we lived happily ever after, right? Wrong. Turns out it's actually not as simple as that. And we have over optimized on all these things and now created a whole new set of problems. We've over optimized for clarity and we've ended up with these vague generic promises that don't really tell anybody anything about our solution. How many times have you read something made easy, right? Was invoicing that hard? Like, how is it easy? I don't know. It doesn't really mean anything anymore. We've over optimized for showing the value and we've ended up with these overhyped, overworked messages that don't really tell anybody anything about the solution and are really confusing. Turn validated innovation into repeatable, predictable revenue. Hell yeah, I want that. Hands up. I want some of that. But what does it actually mean? I have no idea. And we've over optimized on being compelling, but we've ended up with these kind of punchy, choppy headlines that read like cryptic crossword clues.
- [05:46]
Dave Gerhardt
This is a real website.
- [05:47]
Diane Weirdo
These are all real websites. Network, harmonized, optimized, live. Yes. Like, what does this mean? What does it mean? Nobody knows what it means, but it's provocative, right? That is the problem. We have over optimized for everything except meaning. And so our buyers, our customers are out there like drowning, trying to decide if our solution is the right thing for them. And we're just saying so much, putting so much out there, but actually communicating so little. We don't need to say more. We actually need to mean more. So there's a meaning crisis in B2B marketing right now, right? There is this huge kind of grand canyoness disconnect between what we think we're saying and what our buyers are actually taking away. Now, I'm sure that every single one of you here is marketing a really cool product or service that solves a genuinely valuable problem for your customers. But often how we articulate that causes friction for our buyers. And so our messages don't land right, they kind of end up in this disconnect. Now, I have fallen victim to this too. So this is me five years ago. I think I took this picture about five years ago, beads of sweat running down my face. So I was working on one of my first ever big website copywriting projects. A B2B marketing agency had hired me to refresh the copy and quote, quote, make it more compelling. Solid, brief. And so I followed all the advice. I tried to create more value, make it punchy, make it compelling. And as we were sat there on the call, painstakingly going through the wireframes that I had put together, we were going back and forth about word choice. Diane, I think fuel your growth doesn't really sound right. How about we say turbocharge or roi? Make your business work for you. It just sounds really conversational. So we were on this call going back and forth and back and forth about word choice, right? And as we were, like, optimizing every single little word, I had this sinking feeling that we were essentially just like, cleaning the windows on a burning building. A burning building. I love to put this as my background in meetings, as you all know. It's a great one. And so maybe this feels familiar for you. You know, maybe at some point you've launched copy, or the copy on your website is like, okay, but, you know, you know that it doesn't really hit the mark, or you've worked on a campaign and, you know, like, it doesn't really feel like us, but you're not really sure what went wrong. Like, I thought I had done everything right. You know, we tried to understand the audience and the market, the product, the brand. We spoke to customers. But somewhere along the way, I had forgot to ask the most important question in marketing, which is, what do we really mean? Right? What do we actually mean? And this is also like the PG version of this question, because I definitely asked this with a few more swear words in there as well. And so in that moment, I realized that what we were doing was solving the wrong problem, right? Like many B2B companies, we weren't really fixing the root cause, and so we were just putting lipstick on a pig, right? Trying to make something a bit prettier. But we hadn't really got to the root of things. And so I've realized over the years that most copy problems are actually messaging problems in disguise, right? And that's what we needed to fix first. Often the words that we look at and we blame are just a symptom, and they're not really the root cause of that problem. So the way that I define messaging, I'm not going to call you out and ask how you would define it, by the way, I'm not going to put anyone on the spot today. But in its simplest form, I think of messaging as what we say, right? How we articulate the value of our products and services and then copy is then how we say that message and how we shape that. So over the past five years, I have focused exclusively on messaging for B2B tech and digital service companies. And I've become obsessed, right? I was like, why is it so hard? How can we get better at it? Where are we going wrong? And I've kind of cracked the code on a few things that I think we are missing out on on the way. So today for the rest of this talk, I want to share kind of three fundamental barriers and gaps that I think we're missing in our messaging. I'm going to share a few ways to fix those, show a few examples along the way and try to make this as tactical as possible so you can go away and start implementing some of this stuff next week and when you get home. So the first thing that our messaging is missing is a flagship message. This is the most common one that I see with companies that I work with. And it seems really simple. Sounds like it's going to be simple and easy, but it's actually really not, right? Because we need one overarching, clear message that kind of guides everything that all of our messaging ladders. Up to now, every company that I've worked with has struggled with this and I think most B2B businesses are actually doing the exact opposite of this. So you know that feeling when you go to like an all you can eat buffet, right? If you're anything like me, when you have all of these options in front of you, you just like take a little bit of everything and put them on your plate and. And you end up with this plate piled high of random things that mishmash that never should have gone together. Well, we do the same with our messaging, right? We want to talk about security, but we have to talk about ease of use. But don't forget efficiency. And so we stuff in another message and another message, another message and it becomes really hard for our prospects to digest. So we end up with messaging bloat, right? Messaging bloat is like feature bloat, but for your marketing. We where our prospects can't really take away what we're trying to serve them. And there's a principle in psychology, Miller's law, you might have noticed. It's often Talked about in UX where most people can't retain more than like 7 things in their working memory at any one time, right? Give or take two. That's it, Nothing more. And so we really want to avoid this situation of this mishmash buffet of messaging, that messaging by committee, right? That doesn't really say anything and usually pisses off someone along the way as well. So what should you be looking out for? So we can look out for things on like the macro level, but also in the micro level as well, right? Telltale signs, things like too many ands in our copy, too many commas, too many adjectives. If you are the fastest, most accurate comprehensive solution on the market, which one are you? Right? And so what's the fix? I start with just one really simple question, right? If you could be known for one thing, what would it be like if I were to give you 60 seconds to answer this yourself, would your team also give the same answer, right? In another question, what do you want to own in customers minds when we think about that mental availability. Now when I ask some variation of this question to the companies I work with, we always have a huge range of answers. And I think that lack of alignment in the beginning is also a sign that we're not really going down that same path. So we can start there, but we really need to refine this, go a bit further and then shape that into a flagship message. So I want to show you three approaches to kind of find and refine that as well. Now the first way is to name your villain, right? But the villain is not your competitor, right? So I am not talking about an us versus them. This is not HubSpot versus Salesforce and Mac versus, sorry, Apple versus Microsoft, right? This isn't the Whopper and McDonald's wars. The villain is actually the cause of your buyer's problems. And that key message, that flagship message makes it easier for them to understand. So, you know, loom. Their villain is like time sucking, draining meetings, right? Cloud zero. Their villain is like unpredictable cloud billing. And so the message that they're leading with is like unit economics is the way out of that, right? Another way is to just simply sell the win. So you might be thinking, hey, well we can't call out the old way, the outdated way of things. So instead make a bold promise, right? So copy hackers, their bold promise is and has been for ages, become the most profitable person in the room. It's not always on the website, it's not always on the homepage, but it's that through line message that translates through everything. CXL always talks about learning marketing from the top 1%, right? So that shared point of view and that shared belief that they have with the audience as well Is that to become great you need to be great, Right? So a couple of years ago I worked with CXL on some of their messaging and copy on their product and brand marketing mini degrees. And some of you might recognize this space. There he is.
- [14:28]
Dave Gerhardt
He looks way younger and less stressed in that photo.
- [14:32]
Diane Weirdo
And so because we had like that really clear, simple flagship message, it was really easy to know how do we position this product, how do we position the value? Right. And how do we talk about the value of this course? Right. So to become great, you need to learn from people who are great. It also helps that you can just slap someone's face on the homepage. Right? Another method is to just plant a flag, just own one thing. Sometimes the strongest message is the simplest message. And so don't overcomplicate things. So, you know, when Superhuman first came to market, they didn't try to be everything. They just said, we are the fastest email experience ever. That's it. Like they went in on speed and they went all in on that. Their messaging has become a little bit AI diluted, but you know, it's still there with the speed. If you check it out, they're all in on speed. Whereas Tutor went all in on privacy. They said if you want end to end encrypted email, we are the people to go to. That's it. So how do we find that message that actually resonates? Right, well, you want to start with market signals, not with sticky notes. I hate to break it to you, but you know, you can't workshop your way to good messaging. Unfortunately, most messages that really land and resonate with your market actually come from research from buyers. So my process always starts with speaking to customers, right? Analyzing, looking for themes, looking for patterns and then mapping that out to our strategy as well. And yes, I do still get into the sticky behind the scenes actually going through quotes and going through gong calls and doing this manually even in the age of AI. So I guess I got partway through before saying AI. So I know what you might be thinking. I'm going to address the elephant in the room. You're probably thinking, okay, sure, Diane, that sounds great, but you know this isn't going to work for us, right? We can't call out the villain. We're actually kind of a boring industry. We're a boring company. And I kind of get this pushback a lot because I work with a lot of self described boring B2B businesses. Here's what I believe. I truly believe that there is no such thing as a boring Business, Right? You either solve a problem or you don't. So do you solve a problem, yes or no? You're either the vitamin or you're the painkiller product. But if you actually have a solution that matters for your buyers, then it doesn't really matter. Like, we can still get this. Finding that flagship message isn't about having, like the sexiest message. It's just about finding that vessel to actually better communicate with your audience. Right? So we're not trying to be flashy. You don't need the biggest budget. You just need conviction to get through. So let me show you this in action. So I worked with a content verification software recently. So they have a tool that top pharma medical device companies use to kind of proofread all of their labels and packaging before they go to print. Again, another company that said they're self described boring. Although I think if you're saving a company millions of dollars, that probably it's not that boring of a problem to solve. And when they came to me, they were just saying everything, right? They were talking about workload reduction, ease of use. Messaging was everywhere. Like the whole buffet. There was no real hierarchy. And so what we did is, you know, we spoke to their customers, and one thing that we heard over and over and over again was that, like, I'm terrified of making a mistake right, from their buyers. So everything else mattered, but this mattered the most, right? Actually making sure that no errors got through any of those rounds across all of their ICP and across all of the roles that were using their tool. So we knew we have to kind of really go in on accuracy. And the product also backed it up. Right? We also had proof that their tool was actually more precise than the other competitors. So we'd seen this in win loss analysis, we'd seen this in tests that less errors went through. So we knew we wanted to hone in on accuracy, but we didn't know how to frame it. And so we decided to kind of strip everything back and really lean into a promise. So we kind of lent into this message, be sure it's right. Be absolutely certain that your content is 100% accurate. And so we translated that into various formats, into content and copy across their marketing. And on the homepage, we came up with this really great headline, right? When it has to be right, teams use tbt. So we had one simple message that not only sells the promise of accuracy, but it taps into that feeling of certainty as well and really positions them as the leader. So that's kind of the power of having a flagship message across the board. So close that meaning gap. Right? I know often you'll hear, right, it's just enough to be clear and be clear about your solution. But. But go beyond that and actually really narrow down and ask these questions. If you've been thinking about this while I'm talking or you think you've got that message dialed in, ask yourself, is it memorable? Would everyone across the team actually say it? Would they remember it? Could people explain it? Is it provable? Is it actually coming from the value of your product? And does it differentiate you? Does it actually push your brand forward as well? So the second thing that messaging is missing is messaging a balance, Right? Because we can have, like, a clear message locked in, but if we're not really speaking to that right level of detail to our buyers, then our messaging can kind of fall in that gap. Now, one of the reasons that we struggle with this debate, we struggle with this is because of, like, the most exhausting debate in marketing, which is one camp was saying, you know, people don't buy products, right? They buy outcomes. They buy solutions to their problems. So just talk about the benefits. And then on the other side, you have the other camp that's like, people don't care about that. Show them the product. Show them the features. We have been arguing about this for years. So this is a post, like, five. It says four days. Because I took a screenshot. This is five years ago. Marketing millennials posted sell benefits, not features. And there are thousands of comments, thousands of likes, hundreds of comments, Marketers in there picking sides and battling out about which one's more important. But the reality is we actually need both, right? Benefit camp is right. Benefit camp is right. Because we don't really buy things based on logic. We buy things based on emotion, and then we justify them. How many times have you picked a vendor that was the biggest in the market just because you didn't really want to take the risk with the small guy, Right? But we also know that our B2B buyers are not shopping for some huge magic transformation. Sometimes our buyers are out there with, like, a vendor spreadsheet, and they're just checking boxes, right? So we need to have that balance. Like, I discovered recently a really cool way to think about this. I discovered something called, like, narrative distance. So we have any book lovers in the room? Like, anybody who is a bit of a bookworm? Not business books. I'm not fond of our books. Novels.
- [21:18]
Dave Gerhardt
I'm reading Harry Potter right now, man.
- [21:20]
Diane Weirdo
You're right. All right, so Fiction writers use this thing called narrative distance, which is really cool, right? So sometimes they zoom all the way in on the details and they talk about the sizzling bacon in the pan and that charred smell drifting through the room. And sometimes they zoom out a little bit and they talk about a man walked into a diner and plunked himself down and ordered a black coffee. And then sometimes they zoom all the way out to talk about the scene and the setting of the neon lights of a diner in the distance. And great stories have to have that balance. They have to zoom in and they have to zoom out. If we spend too long in the details, right. Novels become these meandering things that are really hard to follow. And if we spend too much time zoomed out, we don't actually make any connection, right. With the characters in the book. And it's kind of the same with our messaging. Our messaging has to zoom in and zoom out and it can't spend too long in any of those one layers. But when we talk about benefits, right? Benefits and outcomes as marketers, often we are not talking about the same thing at all. So most of the time when we're talking about benefits, you're actually talking about these high level, big picture outcomes. But there are actually so many layers that we've kind of skipped in the middle. So this is kind of how I map out messaging along the spectrum. And messaging builds up. It builds up and we start with our product or our service component, and we can map those all the way out into actually those big picture results at the end. All right, let me show you an example of this. So TOGGL time tracking software. I don't know if anyone uses like a time tracking or something. Hey, we got someone from TOGGL here. Oh, okay. Just a big, Just a productivity fan, just a nerd like me. Yeah, like let's track our time. Yeah, my people. So if we zoom in right at what the feature level here, that might be automated time categorization. Way too techy. Like I have to decode, like, what does that mean for me? If we zoom all the way out to that big picture outcome, right? It could be. Well, TOGGL helps you optimize your team workflows, which could be any single productivity tool on the market. Like how many websites are talking about optimizing your team workflow? But maybe if we zoom into that like first benefit layer, right? Maybe the value of this is know exactly where your team's time is going to. Now, if I'm a team manager and I'm Looking for this, then I care about this message. And it's a meaningful message, right? Actually cuts through the noise. And then beyond this, we can support this with the action. We can support this with proof, right? So we can zoom in and out at that right level. Now why does this matter? Right? This matters. Getting into the weeds and the details of this matters because every single one of our products and services all lead to the same high level outcomes, right? All lead to the same generic things. We can all eventually say that we save you time, we help you increase your money, increase revenue, we help you become more productive. So when we lead at that wrong layer of zoom, that's one of the reasons why we all kind of sound like each other, right? We're often talking at that wrong layer. And that's why when you land on a website, you have no idea what they do because they're not really speaking at that right layer of zoom and all that stuff. Like it affects our buyers. Figuring out if our products are the right fit for them, Effects on things like our pipeline. Right. As well. And our marketing efforts.
- [24:45]
Dave Gerhardt
This episode is brought to you by walnut. It's 2025. Something has to change based on how people buy today. Why are we pouring all of this effort into marketing just to hand prospects a PDF or push them behind a book, a demo wall? Come on. Today's buyers, just like you and me, we don't want to wait. We want to explore the product, see how it works and understand its value. Before booking a meeting with someone, I want you to show me. Come on. 70% of the B2B buying journey is already done before sales rep is even contacted. So your buying experience needs to match. And that's where Walnut comes in. Walnut helps you put your product at the center of your marketing. They make it easy for marketers like you and me to embed interactive demos on the site, drop them in campaigns or personalize them for sales in minutes. No engineers acquired love that is that. Is that called vibe coding? Once a buyer is interested, they don't just want a one off walkthrough of your product. They want a place to actually evaluate, compare notes and make a decision that they feel confident in. So Walnut has deal rooms that make it easy for your internal champion to sell your product to their team. With interactive demos at the core, the result is fewer stall deals. Fewer stalled deals, consistent buyer experiences and intent data that shows exactly what features are winning. That's why companies like Adobe, NetApp and more trust Walnut to shorten sales cycles, scale pre sales and Drive millions in new pipeline. Want to see it for yourself? Go check it out. Walnut IO, That's Walnut IO and they have a cool offer for you. They will actually build your first demo for free. So you can see how demos and deal rooms actually works. You get to see the product, test it out. They're going to do it for free because we're sending you there from exit 5. So go to Walnut I.O. today and tell them that you heard about them from Exit 5.
- [26:29]
Diane Weirdo
I run messaging tests with companies and it's always really interesting to like, see the tension of this as well, right? So buyers are always saying things like, well, on the one hand, like, it's too technical, I don't really understand that. And then on the other, what's the business need being resolved? So your buyers have like different needs, right? They're looking for different things. So remember, you know, copy problems, most of them are actually messaging problems, right? So we really need to address that need. So let me show you this, an example of this in action. So I recently worked with a demand planning and forecasting software for consumer brands. And when they came to me, a lot of their messaging was like, really high level, right? They were promising to free your team and that you could move with confidence, which again, don't really know what that means. And they were promising the classic, you know, fast, actionable insights. Anyone got actionable insights on their website right now? I saw a hand go up and then it went right down. Yeah, it still counts. I saw it still counts. Listen, we've all said it. We've all said things like these before. It's that easy first step, right? But you have to take a step back and be like, well, what does this actually mean for our buyers? So I spent time, like, speaking to their customers to really understand, like, what were they doing, what were they doing before and what value are they getting from this solution? And so what I heard was their customers were spending time, like uploading spreadsheets and downloading them every single week. Some of them were spending like three to five hours every single week pulling data from five different tools and then aggregating them to get a report. So when we look at it this way, the value of that is so much more than just fast, actionable insights, right? It isn't just free your team. And so what we did is we kind of dialed in on that right zoom and we realized the right focus was that their platform helped you consolidate all your data sources in one place. And they actually pulled every warehouse and supplier into one dashboard and Right. Giving them a real time view of sales and inventory status without all of those CSV uploads or jumping between tools. Right. Much clearer and much more meaningful. Talking about the exact same value of that product. But now we actually have the right focus. Right? And then we can shape that into many different ways in our copy. So balance your messaging. Right? I know we talk about showing the value and showing the benefits of our solution, but we need to go beyond that initial value. Right. Actually find that right level. So maybe do this yourself. Like, check it out, like whatever you've got on your website right now, maybe a feature that you're leading with, maybe it's a big picture outcome that you're leaning with. Map it out. Right? Map it out along that spectrum, infuse it and actually make sure that you're informing the decisions of what you're saying with actual customer insight and customer words. Right? Don't guess the value that people are getting from your product and then find what clicks. Right? And try to get a balance with that zoom. So the final thing that your messaging is missing is your bias framing. So I went back and forth about kind of putting this in the talk because there's a little bit of nuance here. We're kind of bridging the gap between copy and messaging and kind of positioning. But I think this one's really important. I think it's really overlooked because you can have a clear message, you can balance your features and benefits, but your messaging can still fall at that last hurdle. Like if it's not really speaking to your buyer's customer reality and their current perspective right now. So I have a question for everybody who's in a relationship, right? I just want to know if this is not just me, but does anybody else's partner think that you can read their mind? Does this happen to anyone else? Where? Right. My. Yeah, you can see your partner sat right next to you, so you're throwing her under the bus. So my partner, he does this all the time. He'll launch into something like mid conversation and think I have the contest. So he's like, oh, they got back to me and they decided they want to wait. And I'm like, who got back to you about what? Wait for what? What are you talking about? I have no idea. He always jumps in and thinks that I know what he's talking about. And I, on the other hand, am like the complete opposite of this, which is pretty terrible because I spend like my days working with companies to simplify the messaging and cut the fluff. But with my friends and family, I'm actually the worst chronic over explainer. So I will go into a story and I will give you every bit of context that you do not need. So I'm like, oh, do you remember Sarah? Like, we met her at the conference last year. She's red hair and she, like, works in fintech and her husband is Italian and he makes a great cattare e pepe. Anyway, like, she wasn't there, but, you know, and it's like, so I am the opposite, the absolute opposite. And both of us are just looking at each other like, what are you talking about here? And the thing is, we're both really frustrating to each other, but we do the same thing with our messaging, right? Some of our messaging just jumps in and speaks to our buyers as if they have all of the context. We start a conversation that they're not actually ready for. And then some of our messaging gives way too much context and way too much buildup when our buyers don't need it at all. And both of those cases were kind of speaking at cross purposes, even if we're saying a valuable message. Here's why this matters. So Winter did a study of B2B SaaS buyers last year, and it was really interesting because 54% of buyers go and jump into a category search right at the beginning. So that shows mental availability is important. Probably SEO is also still important, so to make sure that you're part of that search. But after that, then they only actually shortlist like three vendors to get on a demo with. Right. 78% of buyers are then shortlisting just to speak to three companies. Now, at that stage, the website is still one of the most important marketing assets. Right? It's really important to make sure that we're speaking to our buyers who are in that selection process. But it needs to focus on the right things to help our buyers make that decision and actually move forward with us. A lot of our messages miss the mark because our buyers are coming to us with a bunch of baggage. Right? Our buyers have expectations based on past experiences with other companies like ours. They have assumptions, they have gaps that they're trying to fill in. And when our messages actually ignore that, ignore that reality, we end up kind of missing the mark. Now, one of the biggest factors in this is our buyer's stage of awareness. Hands up. How many of you are aware of the five stages of awareness? Nice. All right. Love being in a room with marketers. You guys are my people. So this relic of a bygone time Right. I think it was created in like 1960. Something by Eugene Schwartz is still valuable today. There are a lot of frameworks that I think have kind of haven't stood the test of time, but this one is still really valuable, right? And it's valuable because it helps us kind of how we frame our messaging for our buyers. Now, is this how people buy today? Hell no. Right? This isn't a buyer journey. Like, the buyer journey isn't linear. There are hundreds of touch points, right? We're still trying to find out, like attribution, but that's not what this is about. This helps us frame our messaging to where the majority of buyers, the majority of our customers sit, right? So we really want to make sure that we're really making sure that we speak to buyers that are either problem aware, solution aware, or product aware. So let me kind of show you a few examples of this. So for our Problem Aware buyers, right, we have to obviously highlight the problem. We have to empathize with that struggle, and we really need to show that our solution speaks to that pain. Now, a great example of this is Shield. So Shield is like LinkedIn analytics. They call out that knowledge gap, right? So if you're spending time on LinkedIn, you know, you've got the content now you need the data. They're speaking to an audience of creators who are probably thinking, yeah, I wish I actually had more data. And I wish I knew, like, why things are performing, why they aren't. So this is kind of perfect game focused Problem Aware messaging Condo goes a little bit of a step further. This is a really awesome headline, right? LinkedIn's inbox is shit. If you agree with that. I know a lot of us spend way too much time on LinkedIn, so if you agree with that, you've got that buy in. But maybe you haven't actually started looking for a solution to that problem. Like you didn't know that there was an alternative inbox. So then they kind of hook you in, right? It's kind of pain focused, problem aware messaging. But when we get to our Solution Aware bias, like if our majority of our audience and our customers are around that Solution Aware stage, we have to obviously position ourselves within that solution category, right? We have to show how we deliver that value and make sure that we back it up. A great example of this is Paddle. So Paddle knows that their audience knows Merchant of Record solutions, right? They show who they're for, why they're the best, and they back it up with proof throughout their whole website and also through a Lot of their marketing as well. They don't need to agitate the pain. They don't really need to tell you why you have a problem, right? They can go straight in and say, hey, when you're shopping in this solution, we are the right person for you. Now, when it gets to our product aware buyers, this is a little bit more interesting because at this stage we have to differentiate, right? We need to differentiate our products and services across the board, obviously. But for our product aware buyers, we really need to show why are we different or better than the competitive alternatives. And even more importantly, if we can show me also why they fall short, right, why they actually don't deliver on the promises that you say you can. A really great example of this is Fathom, right? Fathom Analytics. So Fathom is, you know, up against the single biggest category leader, right? So if I'm landing here, I'm obviously thinking, why should I choose you over Google Analytics? They don't bury that. They lead with that. They go in with that straight away and they don't shy away from it. Right now, if they had spent time calling out the pain and the problem of analytics, there'd be a bit of a mismatch of messaging there. The reason this is so important, like really understanding our buyer's stage of awareness is because this shapes so much more than the framing of our message. The stage of awareness also shapes what messages we prioritize. It shapes how detailed our messaging is as well. It shapes the order of messages that, that we put on the page. This is also why I hate templates. Copywriting, like homepage website templates are the worst thing. There is no such thing as a one size fits all template for your website. And often if you're following templates, right, it's very easy to like, comment, comment for a lead magnet on LinkedIn, like, send me the best B2B website template. But if you do that, often when you follow best practices for everyone, you can be causing friction for the majority of your buyers as well, right? And sometimes, you know, it's just a little bit of an issue, but sometimes it's actually much bigger, like brand damage as well. So let me show you a quick example of this. So I worked with a digital asset management software a while back and you know, they're operating in a pretty saturated category, right? And when they came to me, a lot of their messaging was really around like the category, right? You know, like we are the better, more streamlined digital asset management tool, which is fine, but it was causing a lot of friction for their buyers, right? So technically accurate, but their buyers are thinking, well, are you kind of an enterprise solution? Maybe? It's a lot more complicated than what I need. So I asked them, hey, where are your buyers actually switching from? You know, a lot of your customers, like, what were they using before? And they said to me, the head of marketing was like, well, most of our customers are not actually switching from, like, another dam. They're coming from Dropbox, from Drive, from using Wetransfer links. Like, a messy setup. They don't have anything in place. And so I realized we needed to lean more into that actual reality of their buyers instead of just talking about this huge category solution. So, you know, we spoke to customers and we heard, hey, you know, we don't want our stuff on Drive anymore. Like, it's chaotic, it's messy. We have these huge Wetransfer links. A lot of them actually picked their tool because of the aesthetics. Interestingly, like, often we think that people use our stuff for the right reasons, but in their case, it was just like, hey, this looks nice. This is where we want to put all of our images and videos. And they said that made them feel at home. Right? They actually, all of the teams could use this solution, and it was a nice place to work. And so we shifted a lot of that messaging to frame that reality. We actually called out the competitive alternative. We said, move on from Dropbox and Drive. We lent into the emotional contrast as well of that chaos before and actually having your stuff in an actual home. And we also kind of showed them how simple it was as well. So close that meaning gap. Right? We can talk about being clear and getting your message across, but we really need to also focus on our buyers actual perspective and their reality. So test it out. Do a quick pressure test on a lot of your marketing as well, and ask, where are most of our customers? What stage of awareness are they in? Are the messages that we're putting out there really speaking to that actual stage? And are we addressing those objections, those concerns, and those assumptions that they're feeling as well? So these are things that we're missing in our messaging. So, you know, next time you hear advice, right, from someone like me, from a copywriter or a messaging expert saying, you know, be clear, be compelling, show the value, maybe it isn't that, you know, your copy is the problem, it might be that your messaging is the problem. And that's kind of what we need to fix. But if we put aside the templates, the frameworks, all of the advice and the tips that I've given you. Really, what we need to focus on in our messaging is just meaning just really focusing on what are we trying to say before we shift how we say it. So I just want to leave you with one really simple question. Next time you're working on a campaign, next time you're writing copy or a headline, just ask really simple question, Right? What do we really mean? What do we actually mean? All right, thank you, guys.
- [40:49]
Dave Gerhardt
But you got to do questions. We're going to do.
- [40:51]
Diane Weirdo
You're going to do questions.
- [40:52]
Dave Gerhardt
That was so good. Can I give you my favorite note?
- [40:54]
Diane Weirdo
Yeah.
- [40:55]
Dave Gerhardt
The need for a flagship message. Did people, like, hit hit with that one? Because I think a lot of people, this is. If you could be known for one thing, what could it be? Right? Because then, like, you sit in that executive meeting, and it's like, you know what the answer is. But then the CEO or whoever is like, well, but we also serve this Persona. And we also serve this Persona. And it's like, I read this Roy Williams, the wizard of ads, and he talks about, like, the risk of insult is the price of clarity, and so you risk insulting the other people. But if you can be specific to that one. And it was great. That was.
- [41:22]
Diane Weirdo
So when you have shifting priorities, like, we need to run after this thing and that thing, but, like, there has to be that flagship thing that it's just easy for everybody.
- [41:29]
Dave Gerhardt
I got a bunch of notes you absolutely delivered. Okay, so I want to do Q and A. Just quick housekeeping. I want to questions with Diane. One of the things that I like about DRIVE is we don't ask you to sit for that long. So it's usually like, you know, two speakers. Then we have a lot of break and lunch and all that stuff coming up. So let's do some good questions for Diane. That's on your mind right now. Who wants to go first?
- [41:46]
Diane Weirdo
Cool. Thank you, Diane. That was awesome. My name is Dasha, and my question is, we've seen that, like in B2B SaaS, when you have one product, your homepage can be crystal clear. But then as your company grows and evolves and you launch new products, sometimes to different buying committees, everything kind of morphs into platform messaging. Yeah. For the clients that you work with that do platform messaging, how do you make that sing? Yeah. This is a classic situation, which is, you know, you grow, Everything is diluted. You're offering more things. I think it also speaks to, like, the homepage cannot do everything right. Like, when we're talking about messaging, like, we're talking about top line company messaging that should function across the business. Your homepage is just that front door. Right. So in that case, your homepage really needs to be doing the job of actually pushing people through to where they need to go. And so when I work with companies that are, you know, kind of platform where we have a multiple suites one, we also need to find like that core, like that through line. So either it's like the problem that we're solving across the board for everyone so we can speak to that, or we also need to like funnel people through a lot quicker. Right. The reality I also see is like, are you actually a platform? Like are you really a suite of products or are you just like one product that you're trying to position in all of these different ways? So I think sometimes there is also the positioning question. Like it's kind of garbage in, garbage out. So a lot of times like work with companies and I question they're like, oh, we have all of these different products. I'm like, are they the same though? You know, like, is it really a different suite? But yeah, your homepage, it can't do everything. Right. So I think it also needs to be clear on like, what is that common point that we have across the board? What is that key message that we're speaking to and then how do we structure that so we're not trying to speak to everyone that we funnel through. So usually then what I would do is like prioritize getting people through to the right page on that website much more quickly. So I think there's this two approaches there, there's the messaging side of things and then there's actual like the structure and navigation of your website as well.
- [43:43]
Audience Member
Hey Dan, first of all, you spoke to my soul, so I appreciate it. As a messaging for mg, Yeah, I feel heard we can hug it out.
- [43:54]
Diane Weirdo
We hug it out later. I feel, I feel like there's some pain here, but yeah, we'll hug it out.
- [44:01]
Audience Member
I do not have actionable insights on my website anymore, I'll say that.
- [44:05]
Diane Weirdo
Okay.
- [44:06]
Audience Member
Which is good, good progress. Slightly different turn from the platform question, but it's a similar thing because I think there's a lot to think in there Category.
- [44:15]
Diane Weirdo
Yep.
- [44:15]
Audience Member
So I had the special privilege of have of being a category builder, which means before even talking about why and how and what it gives you and when impact, it's like, what the hell is this? I don't have a budget line for that.
- [44:30]
Diane Weirdo
Right.
- [44:31]
Audience Member
I don't know what you're selling. And we run into this issue of I need to sell you on what it is you realize now you need to have, but then also very quickly, why it matters to you before you get distracted and move away. And the zoom in, zoom out part. Right. The narrative distance was a big part of that to me of like, how do I make sure you know what we're talking about, but also know enough about what it actually is or what it could give you before you go away?
- [45:01]
Diane Weirdo
Right.
- [45:01]
Audience Member
And is there a formula or is there a kind of a way that you guide people through that? When it comes to category, where what is just as big of a question as why.
- [45:11]
Diane Weirdo
Yeah, that's a huge question. We can talk a little bit, I think. Yeah. I was like, all right, let me gather my thoughts on this, because we could talk about category creation for an hour, but that's like a whole other talk. So I'm like, I don't know if we all need to be doing that. Okay. So I think sometimes we need to, like, step away from the category conversation a little bit. And I think. I don't think that that's the right messaging lens for a lot of companies. You know, this is like, we're kind of touching on positioning right now. We've got April later or tomorrow. Right. It's like, you know who you're competing against, the actual competitive alternatives puts you in a box and brings a whole bunch of assumptions with it. And so if it's a very clear category that you're operating in, sometimes that is the right message to lead with. But I often think with companies, it's a lot more valuable to actually call out, like, the specific thing that you are replacing. Right. What is it that I was actually doing or using before? And then how does your solution or your service come in and help me solve that? And so with some companies, yes, we're going to lean on the category, and we're going to try and ride that wave up to the top. And for others, it doesn't make any sense. The digital asset management pool that I work with, we shifted that messaging completely. There was no point trying to go elbow to elbow. We really needed to speak to, this is how you're doing it before, and this is how you should be doing it now. And it just so happens that we're a dam, and so, I don't know. I think that that category conversation, I think we have to be aware of where we're sitting and how we're speaking within that. Right. And how people are speaking about us. But the reality for most companies is that particularly well tech and SaaS, like mostly you're competing with a spreadsheet or nothing or like an intern, you know, like that's the actual reality. Reality. And so we can get caught up in like the category creation language, but probably it's not always the right conversation to have. Great presentation, Diane. Thank you. I know because I already full already. So I'm in demand gen and marketing ops. So my focus is on website conversions. So above the fold, messaging. Right. So we focus on 5 second roll. So as soon as I landed the site, you have to make sure that they get your messaging within five seconds. So I love that. I love five second test. Like brilliant tool. If people aren't running five second tests on your website, do this because this is a great test for messaging. We all think that things make a lot of sense. Like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Show it to somebody for five seconds and see if they actually remember what you said. This is brilliant. Love it. And if you remember any of them, maybe they were good messages. Yeah. So how do you balance the conversion website conversion with awareness and education for the homepage? Because most. I'm not a product marketer, but I have strong opinions because my focus is driving conversions. We got someone for next year. Okay. So, you know, I come from, I've got into messaging, coming from actually conversion copywriting, like focusing on conversion, conversion based copywriting. And I think a lot of the principles are the same. We might not be measuring the same thing. Like when we're talking about high level top line company messaging, it's really hard to like measure the instant impact. Did this increase your homepage conversions? But maybe it was the wrong traffic. Maybe you weren't attracting the right people. Maybe you're repelling the right people as well. So I think when it comes to messaging, this is the wrong metric and the wrong KPI to be focusing on. A lot of the time we need to focus, we're looking at conversions. It's like, are we even, do we have any internal alignment at all? Are we attracting the right people? But the baseline principles are the same. The process that I run with companies to lock in their messaging is the same process that I run when we were working on copy. It all starts, starts with like, what is the foundations right? Research and discovery, understanding the customers, making sure we're understanding all of the pains and problems that we're solving. The alternatives, like surfacing that and then running with something. The thing with messaging is that you have to let something run for quite a while to actually start seeing results. Like you can't be shifting things. Like you actually have to have that kind of brand availability. But I think that there's a huge overlap. Right? There's a huge overlap. And I think that when you're working on creating a message that actually drives awareness and speaks to your customers, all of that down the line also is going to help you increase conversions as well. But that's just not the metric that you should be tracking for. Right?
- [49:11]
Dave Gerhardt
Okay, one more time, give it up for Diane.
- [49:12]
Diane Weirdo
Thank you. Thanks.
- [49:18]
Dave Gerhardt
Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode, you know what? I'm not even going to ask you to subscribe and leave a review because I don't really care about that. I have something better for you. So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at exit 5. And you can go and check that out. Instead of leaving a rating or review, go check it out right now on our website, exit5.com our mission at Exit 5 is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing. And there's no better place to do that than with us at exit 5. There's nearly 5,000 members now in our community. People are in there posting every day and asking questions about things like marketing, planning, ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers. Building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are so you can have a peer group or maybe just venting about your boss when you need to get in there and get something off your chest. It's 100% free to join for seven days, so you can go and check it out risk free. And then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go, go check it out. Learn more exit5.com and I will see you over there in the community. Hey. This episode is brought to you by our friends@customerio. Do you remember? I'm old enough to remember this. You remember when a personalized message meant slapping someone's first name into an email? Hello David or hello Gerhardt. Yeah. Well, those days are long gone in marketing. AI has raised the bar for lifecycle marketing because now you can deliver smarter context aware communication that actually feels personal. And you can do it at scale without hiring five more content people. Personalization today doesn't just mean using my name. It actually means having context about any previous interactions. But the problem here happens because even though this sounds great in theory, most teams aren't actually doing it. They're stuck with broken reporting siloed data and outdated stacks. It's often easier just to keep doing things the way you've always done them, right? Isn't that kind of the. The the norm Default to the status quo. So customer IO they did a survey on this. They surveyed 600 marketers just like you and me to figure out what's actually working and what's broken in. This is what we call lifecycle marketing and they detailed how the best teams are actually solving these problems. The report breaks down 2025 priorities, where budgets are moving and how to tame the measurement mess. Real world examples from brands like Notion and Monarch Money that use AI personalization experiments and and understanding the next chapter of AI what's on marketers Wishlist right now and how customer journeys can get smarter, not just faster. It's packed with examples, data and strategies you can put to work right now. If you want to get smarter about lifecycle marketing. This is a great free resource, so go check it out. You can get it@customerio exit 5 and you'll learn how to build lifecycle marketing that keeps up with today's expectations. That's customer I.O. exit 5.