Clear messaging isn’t enough to win customers

I can often tell how successful a brand will be at attracting and converting their ideal customers based on one element:

How well they communicate what makes them unique.

Most brands don't know how to talk about what they do.

"We're the industry leader"
"We optimize the collaboration between..."
"Reliable partner for..."
"Single source of truth..."
"Awesome products for your business..."
"We build websites that sell"

I ripped those messages directly from B2B websites.

Boring, unclear, confusing.

It's no wonder they struggle to attract and convert high-quality, high-paying, qualified leads.

No one understands what they do or what makes them different.

A stock message will never work.

Psychology of Messaging

How you communicate what you do speaks volumes about your brand and business.

When your message is convoluted (we optimize the collaboration), generic (reliable partner), unverifiable (industry leader), or copyable (websites that sell), it tells your ideal customers a few things:

You don't know what you're doing (yikes)
You don't have a solution for them
You provide the same value as everyone else
There's no reason to choose you

It's all about perception.

The right message moves your ideal customers.

The wrong message makes them move on.

Taking time to nail down your message is one of the most important things you can do for your business.

Tips to Create a Message that Converts

So, how do you write the right message?

I run every message I write through these 4 requirements:

Tip 1: Speak about Your Customers, Not Your Business

Most B2B messages are promotional: "We are..." "We do..." "Look at how great we are."

That's like meeting someone at a party who does nothing about talk about themselves. No one wants to stick around and listen for long.

When your brand message is about you, people bounce.

Make your message about your ideal customers.

The easiest way to do this:

Start your message using "You" language
Never use "We" language

Tell me which one feels more aligned with ideal customers:

"We are a reliable partner for..."
"Turn Your Data into Action"

The first is all about you. The second is all about what they get.

Huge difference.

Tip 2: Highlight the Transformation

Your ideal customers care about one thing: What's in it for me?

Consumers don't care about your product/service or how awesome you think it is.

They want to know how your product/service changes them — makes their business easier to run, more profitable, streamlined, growing.

Most B2B businesses bury the transformation.

You have to dig through multiple pages to get even a vague idea about how they change your business.

Your brand message should make the transformation clear from the start.

Take these two messages:

"Become the Only Choice"
"Most creative brand agency"

Which one makes the transformation clear?

If you said number one, you're right — it makes the transformation clear and implies that the agency makes that transformation prossible.

Number two talks about the agency and makes you guess at the transformation:

Will it make you stand out?
Will it make you more creative?
Will it make you money?
Will it make running your business easier?

That transformation isn't clear.

Tip 3: Be Clear & Compelling

Most influencers will tell you to be clear — as if that's the holy grail of messaging.

Don't get me wrong: your message needs to be clear.

If people don't get it, if it's too convoluted, if it confuses the crap out of them and requires too much mental processing to understand, your message won't convert.

People need to understand what you do.

But clear alone is often boring and copyable.

Take this message: We build websites that sell.

It's clear. I understand what that company does in 5 words. There's no confusion about what they think makes them different.

But it doesn't compel me to buy.

Any website developer could use that message.

Now, whether or not their websites actually sell is another story. But there's nothing unique about a website that sells.

In fact, I've seen variations of that message on the websites of 13 developers.

So if I'm a prospective customer, and I've looked at 5 of those developers' websites and seen the same, clear message, I still have no idea which one to choose.

Clear is great. But your message needs to be compelling.

Tip 4: Highlight Your Uncopyable IP

Your message should communicate one main thing:

Why customers should choose you.

That only comes when you highlight the one thing you do that your competitors can't or won't do — process, operation, deliverable, or methodology.

When that is clear up front, your message is both clear and compelling.

Take these two one-liners:

From equipment data to actionable insights—we turn your OEM data into prioritized to-do lists with our custom remote monitoring strategies and IoT systems.
Whether you’re an enterprise expanding globally or an MNO launching IoT services, [brand name] gives you the confidence, control, and clarity to deploy, manage, and scale connected solutions anywhere in the world.

One highlights the company's differentiator — turning data into a prioritized to-do list.

The other could be copied and used on any IoT remote monitoring vendor's website.

There's no promise, no transformation, no real reason to choose them over any other competitor.

Your message should put your Uncopyable IP at the forefront.

Additional Resources

These resources will help you write a message that converts:

Brand One-Liner Templates: Craft a message to use at the top of your homepage to communicate your uncopyable element in a clear and compelling way.
One-Liner Roast GPT: Roast your one-liner and get advice to make it clearer and more compelling for your ideal customers with this free GPT.