If you are thinking about taking your marketing strategy to the next level, think first about the message you want to send. In business-to-business (B2B) marketing for professional services organizations like accounting firms, SAAS companies, staffing firms and fractional services companies, six messaging strategies are commonly used. These are: emotional, unique selling proposition, generic, positioning, brand image or preemptive. Knowing which messaging strategy best suits your offerings and your target audience is a big first step toward creating a successful marketing campaign. 

A good messaging strategy can also help position your brand for scalability and big wins. According to Spellbrand, “One of the fundamental differences between Fortune 500 companies and Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is the clarity of marketing messages and the importance placed on strategic marketing using brand storytelling.”

1. Emotional 

An emotional message strategy uses feelings to sell. Campaigns using this tactic make the target audience feel an emotional connection to the service or brand. Emotion is more than just a handy tool to sprinkle throughout marketing tactics, it has a very real, scientifically proven impact on consumer decision-making. 

Antonio Damasio, a professor of neuropsychology at the University of Southern California, conducted extensive studies wherein he examined the decision-making capabilities of individuals whose brains had been damaged or affected in such a way as to hinder their ability to feel emotion. Ostensibly, one might think these individuals would have an easier time making decisions than those bogged down with emotions; after all, they could look at situations logically with an almost pure sense of objectivity. 

However, Damasio discovered they had significantly more difficulty with decision-making than their emotionally charged counterparts. He suspected that this was because they could not decide how they felt about each option despite having all the information they might need to decide. 

How does this apply to marketing? It means that marketers can throw all the facts, logic and features they want at consumers, but it will ultimately be emotion that drives their decisions. 

Translation: People act and purchase more based on their emotions and the way the message makes them feel.

2. Unique Selling Proposition 

This strategy highlights something unique about your product or brand that others do not offer. What is the brand promise and supporting differentiators that sets your company apart from your competitors? Unsure? When we build brands, we ask our clients’ customers, “What does this company offer that you cannot find elsewhere?” 

Here are a few examples of Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) we have developed for clients over the years to give you an idea of true differentiation based on voice-of-the-customer surveys: 

• Golden Software is a scientific graphics software company inviting customers in mining, oil and gas, engineering, applied science and university settings to explore the freedom of its solutions.
• AVL Growth Partners is a fractional finance and accounting services company supporting organizations in pivoting from grow to scale. 
• Vannin Chief of Staff is a global consultancy offering precision guidance in attracting and developing full-time and fractional Chief of Staff talent as well as increasing impact and maximizing the influence of existing Chiefs of Staff. 

When writing your USP, experts advise breaking up the process into these 3 steps:

• Put yourself in your customers’ shoes (this is a great time for voice-of-the-customer surveys)
• Analyze your competitors to ensure true differentiation 
• Brainstorm emotional concepts for your business based on the data on hand

3. General 

When a marketing approach makes use of the generic strategy, it focuses on selling the category rather than the specific brand. For example, we often highlight in marketing materials for our client AVL Growth Partners, mentioned above, why hiring a fractional finance and accounting services company is a generally a smart choice rather than why hiring from their firm in particular is a good choice. 

Still, specificity can go a long way. As Forbes contributor Pia Silver says in her blog: “Without making some bold decisions about where you are going to draw a line in the sand and what you want to build a solid reputation on, writing copy or coming up with your brand message is going to be a lot of fluff.” 

We find a tiered approach best: the General strategy works well with top-of-the-funnel (awareness) marketing like website and podcast and middle-of-the-funnel (nurture) marketing like content and social media. Then specificity is needed for bottom-of-the-funnel (intent) marketing like advertising and social selling.

4. Brand Image 

This strategy focuses on creating a psychological or emotional connection with the audience by associating the brand with values, feelings or a lifestyle, rather than highlighting specific product features or benefits. It helps build brand personality and long-term loyalty. 

A strong brand image example from a well-known B2B/professional services company is IBM’s “Smarter Planet” campaign. Instead of focusing solely on selling specific IT products or services, IBM positioned itself as a company that enables global progress and innovation. The campaign emphasized big ideas like creating a “smarter” world through technology – smarter cities, smarter transportation, smarter healthcare – tapping into values like innovation, intelligence and global impact. 

This approach built a powerful emotional and psychological connection with business leaders and governments by aligning IBM’s brand with forward-thinking solutions and a better future, even if it didn’t promote a particular product or service directly. 

Your brand image plays the most important role in how potential clients perceive your brand. It encompasses everything from the colors in your logo to the imagery in your marketing materials. It’s crucial that you stay consistent in your messaging, imagery and brand so that people think of you when they see it.

5. Preemptive 

A preemptive strategy means being the first to make a specific claim about your product or service – one that might also apply to competitors but has not yet been clearly communicated by them. By being first, your brand can own the message in the minds of your audience and position itself as the leader in that space. 

For this strategy to be effective, you need to thoroughly research your competitors to ensure your claim is truly unique in how it’s presented, even if the benefit itself isn’t exclusive to your offering. 

Salesforce was one of the first software companies to boldly claim “No Software” in its early marketing campaigns. While other companies were also beginning to explore cloud-based platforms, Salesforce was the first to position itself as the alternative to traditional software installations. This simple, preemptive message helped Salesforce define the category of cloud-based CRM and stand out in a crowded enterprise software market. 

Across all five messaging strategies, success depends on first finding the right message then effectively distributing the message. Unsure where to start? Get details. 

Since 2007, Big Buzz® has helped Stage II to Stage III organizations systemize marketing to achieve growth goals. Founder and CEO Wendy O’Donovan Phillips is the author of two books available on Amazon, Kaboom and Flourish, multiple data-driven eBooks, has been published in McKnight’s, in Forbes, and has been quoted in The Washington Post, ABC News and Chicago Tribune. She has lectured dozens of professional organizations in front of audiences ranging in size from 25 to 6,000. She has been honored by the American Marketing Association for excellence in her field and has been named a Gold Key Award Winner by the Business Marketing Association. In her two-decades-long career, she has consulted with hundreds of organizations globally to support improved marketing clarity, strategies and outcomes. Get details: visit www.bigbuzzinc.com and follow Wendy.