Three marketing bottlenecks keep B2B brands stuck at a certain revenue level:
- Wrong Positioning
- Ineffective Messaging
- Weak Distribution
These problems keep the business from growing to its next stage.
Some businesses just have one.
Some others might have all three to a certain degree.
They have different symptoms:
1. Wrong Positioning
You create the wrong value and/or for the wrong clients.
Your solution isn’t anchored to a specific pain or priority.
You are either specialized in the wrong thing.
Or not specialized at all.
That’s why clients don’t get enough value from your solution.
Hence your business doesn’t get enough value from clients.
Symptoms:
- You have clients with completely different needs
- Every pitch sounds different depending on who you’re talking to
- There is no internal alignment around the value the business creates
- Your ideal client profile is too broad or vague
- You constantly feel the need to change your offers
- Buyers compare you with unrelated “competitors”
- You’re often competing on price
2. Ineffective Messaging
You might have the ideal positioning.
But you explain your value poorly with unclear and undifferentiated messaging.
Potential clients get confused about how exactly you can help them.
Or they understand it, but they don’t get how you are different than others.
Because you sound like everyone else.
Symptoms:
- Prospects don’t “get it” from your content or website
- They come to sales calls confused
- Conversion rates at each step of your funnel are low
- Employees might understand the value they create, but they describe it using different words
- Your site reads like a template with vague words
- Your content talks about too many things without delivering an ideology
- Your website and content could have been used by your competitors just by changing the logo and colors
- Even happy clients use different words to describe what you do
3. Weak Distribution
Even if you’ve got sharp positioning and compelling messaging, no one’s seeing it.
You don’t reach enough buyers.
Your brand is not top-of-mind when your ideal clients are ready to buy.
Symptoms:
- The pipeline is inconsistent
- You rely too much on word-of-mouth and referrals
- The new revenue chart looks like a roller coaster
- You don’t effectively use channels to stay top-of-mind
- Your leadership team sees marketing as a cost
Do you have any of these symptoms?
If so, it’s important to make the diagnosis right.
We’ve worked with companies that had tried to fix the wrong problem(s) and wasted a lot of time.
Because when the diagnosis is wrong, the prescription fails.
Bringing in a lot of traffic while having the wrong positioning is futile.
Having the perfect messaging is not enough when nobody is seeing it.
All these growth levers should work together:
So if you want to break a revenue plateau and take your business to its next stage:
Pay attention to the symptoms.
Diagnose the problem(s).
And pull the right levers.
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