Why positioning and messaging are important

Last week, I started outlining a new workshop I’ll launch soon. While working on it, I kept coming back to a pattern I’ve seen for years:

Most B2B founders struggle because they can’t explain their service in a simple and clear way. And when the explanation isn’t clear, people assume the service is unclear too.

It’s just how we evaluate things. If something requires effort to understand, we tend to view it as something that will also require effort to work with.

What’s interesting is that when someone has unclear messaging, they usually think the problem is in the writing.

They want to update the headline, rewrite the website, or adjust the way they talk about their service.

But guess what? It won’t work.

That’s because before you can explain what you do clearly, you need to understand what you do clearly.

(Please read this line again)

Most founders skip this part completely.

• They never define the problem they actually solve.
• They can’t name the situations that make someone take action now instead of “later”.
• They haven’t mapped the alternatives people compare them to.
• They can’t explain the difference between their service and the next best option.
• They don’t know what category they should be placed in.
• And they haven’t defined the use case people hire them for.

Because of this, the messaging always ends up either vague or overloaded.

Sometimes it’s vague because the founder tries to keep everything “broad enough” so anyone could be a potential client.

Other times it’s overloaded because they try to mention every angle, every service, every outcome, and every possible use case in one place.

Both lead to the same result:

People can’t understand what the service actually does or why it matters right now. And when someone can’t understand something quickly, they don’t investigate further.

They move on.

That’s why often messaging has nothing to do with copywriting. There can be great copywriting and yet bad messaging. It’s also why relying on AI to fix your messaging might not be a good idea.

Great messaging always starts with some of the most important pieces about your business:

• What problem you solve.
• Who feels it.
• Why it happens.
• What happens if they ignore it.
• Why your approach makes sense.
• And so on.

These pieces make people process the information with almost no effort. They feel like, “Hey, that’s me.”

They don’t have to figure it out, guess if it’s relevant, or read explanations to understand how you can help.

The moment the message clicks, they start paying attention.

It’s that simple.

Everything is built on top of messaging: content, outreach, website, ads, sales calls, and so on.

That’s why bad messaging kills great services.

— Sergiu