Defining B2B messaging comes down to one critical question: “Could your message belong to any of your competitors?”

What would this look like? It’s simple: remove the branding from your marketing materials, remove your name, and look at what’s left. if anyone in your industry could have written it, then your messaging is broken.

Messaging is a fundamental part of a B2B marketing strategy to define your company’s value and set you apart from the crowd. Effective messaging attracts your ideal clients, the ones who fit well with your company and the problems you solve. They are the customers and clients who make you love your job.

In B2B, this can feel like a challenge because, ultimately, doesn’t everyone want the same thing? Everybody wants to improve their ROI, reduce their down time, and decrease their stress.

How can you stand out from the crowd when everyone in the crowd is chanting the same thing?

We recommend you start by defining the critical components of messaging. Then, look at the tiers of messaging: high-level brand message, product messages, and individual marketing-asset messages. Each of these tiers is developed by the critical components that make up your brand’s message.

Messaging, Value Props, Positioning, and Branding: How They All Work Together

Your B2B message consists of several foundational elements: value propositions, positioning statements, and branding. Each of these reflects a unique aspect of your business and offering, differentiating you from competitors. When you combine the core elements, themes, and critical details, you find your ultimate message.

Value propositions are the most explicit articulations of the outcomes you deliver. They explain why your customers should care and what they can expect. Proof points back them up. Without proof, a value prop is just a promise. To get the greatest possible input from your team, we recommend taking a workshop approach to defining your value proposition.

Positioning statements tell your audience where you sit in the market. A clear positioning statement defines exactly who you serve, what you offer, and how you’re different. If value props are about benefits, positioning is about context.

Brand values define how you show up. They influence everything from the tone of your emails to the way your team handles support. If your values don’t come through in your messaging, they aren’t doing their job.

When you comb through these three assets, you should find your message:

• The key “hard” and “soft” ways you differ from your competitors
• Exactly how you help
• Precisely who you help best

These are ultimately defined by your Ideal Client Profile (ICP). Messaging isn’t effective if it’s for everyone. It has to speak directly to the people you want to reach. If you skip this, you’ll end up with messaging that’s broad and forgettable.

So what does your message actually look like in practice?

What B2B Messaging Looks Like

When we talk about B2B messaging, we’re talking about the full experience of how your company communicates its value. That includes what you say, how you say it, and how consistently you show up.

Brand Personality

Brand personality consists of the human characteristics people associate with your company, and it has very real impacts on your metrics. Your B2B brand personality is one of the soft ways in which your message shows up. 

Most B2B brands want to sound like experts immediately, which means sounding formal and technical. On the surface, this seems to work. However, there are a few problems with this approach. First and foremost, this is the best way to blend into the crowd and be forgettable. Second, it completely ignores the psychology behind defining a B2B brand personality.

The five dimensions of brand personality (sincerity, ruggedness, excitement, sophistication, and competence) are all uniquely related to certain key performance indicators (KPIs). Research shows that, on LinkedIn, “an increase in posts’ excitement leads to an increase in impressions and likes, an increase in posts’ competence leads to an increase in clicks, and an increase in posts’ ruggedness leads to an increase in new followers.”

So before you follow your gut and avoid all personality in favor of technical acumen, consider your goals. The tone you use to define your brand directly communicates your message and determines your reach.

Tone and Voice

If brand personality is who your company is, tone and voice are how you talk.

B2B messaging depends heavily on consistency here. Your voice should sound like it came from the same company whether someone is reading a landing page, a LinkedIn post, or a sales email. And the tone should adjust slightly depending on the context without losing your core identity.

Where most B2B companies get tripped up is in assuming that tone and voice don’t really matter—that as long as the value prop is technically correct, the words around it are just decoration.

That’s not true.

Tone is what determines whether someone keeps reading or clicks away. It’s what tells a buyer, “This company gets you,” or, “This isn’t for you.”

If your voice is flat, corporate, and cautious, don’t be surprised when engagement stays low. In crowded markets, people remember not just what you said but also how you made them feel when you said it.

The companies that get this right take the time to define their tone and voice intentionally. Then they align their teams so the message is consistent at every stage.

If you’re struggling with reach, retention, or recognition, your tone and voice might be the place to look.

Actual Message

Messaging works in layers. Not everything belongs in the same sentence, and not every message needs to say everything.

At the highest level, you have your brand message. This is the foundation. It defines what your company stands for and the value you bring to the market. It should feel broad but intentional. It creates alignment across teams and gives direction to everything else you produce.

Below that is your product messaging. This is where the message starts to focus. Each product or service needs to have its own message that speaks directly to the problems it solves. It should still reflect the brand, but with a tighter lens. Product messaging should help someone quickly understand what the solution does and why it matters to them.

Then, you get into the message of individual marketing assets. This is where precision matters. A paid ad should communicate one message. One landing page, one core value. Trying to fit everything in usually results in nothing landing: the more specific the message, the clearer the action. 

This does not mean one value proposition—just one cohesive message. It’s the difference between “This pump will save you time, improve your bottom line, move all your viscous fluids, reduce your headaches, and impress your boss while saving you on maintenance costs!” and “Built to keep your sludge moving.” If you make each of those value propositions compete for the top place instead of choosing one clear message that communicates the essence of the product’s value, your reader will only end up confused and put off.

When these layers are aligned, they support one another. Your brand creates recognition. Your product creates relevance. Your asset creates a response.

Most messaging problems happen when one of these layers gets disconnected. Either the asset feels random, or the product sounds like it belongs to a different company. The goal is to make sure every message—no matter how specific—stays connected to the larger story.

Customer Service

Most companies think about messaging as something that only lives in marketing or sales. But the real test comes after the deal closes.

Your support team, onboarding team, and account managers all play a role in delivering your message. If your message says you’re easy to work with but your customers are waiting days for a response or getting unclear answers, the message breaks.

Messaging doesn’t stop at conversion. It carries through the entire customer experience. When it’s done well, it shows up in how problems are solved, how instructions are written, and how people feel after working with your team.

This is where alignment matters. When tone, personality, and priorities stay consistent across every part of the business, messaging becomes a real advantage. It creates trust. It sets expectations. It makes the company easier to remember and easier to recommend.

When the pieces don’t match, it creates confusion. And in B2B, confusion slows everything down.

The Five Metric Impacts of Effective Messaging

Good messaging isn’t just a brand exercise. It has real, measurable impacts across the business.

Lead Generation

Clear messaging attracts the right people. If your value is easy to understand, more of the right buyers will notice. You don’t have to work as hard to get them in the door because your message is already doing the heavy lifting.

Click Through Rate (CTR) and Conversions

On digital channels, attention is short. Messaging that’s clear and focused helps people know what to do next. Your message should propel people forward, and you should see an improvement in your CTRs and related conversions when your messaging hits.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

When your message is doing its job, your sales and marketing efforts get more efficient. Fewer wasted clicks, fewer confused buyers, less time spent explaining the basics: all of these bring your CAC down.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Messaging that works turns more of your spend into results. Ads perform better. Content goes further. Sales conversations convert faster. Your marketing dollars stretch farther because the message is doing what it’s supposed to.

Morale

When your message is clear, your team knows what they’re working toward. They know how to talk about the company and the product. That alignment builds confidence.

But it goes deeper than that, because effective messaging brings in the right customers. These are the ones who actually need what you offer. When teams are working with good-fit clients, the job gets easier. Support tickets go more smoothly. Sales calls are more productive. People feel as though they’re helping. That’s what makes the work fun.

Bad-fit customers drain energy. Good-fit customers make people feel as if their work matters. Messaging sets the tone for who you attract.

Is Your Messaging Working?

If the message is clear and aligned, you’ll see it in the numbers: better leads, CTR increases, CAC decreases, etc. These are signs that your message is reaching the right people and giving them a reason to act.

You can also test it directly through the practice we mentioned in the introduction.

Start by removing your company name from your messaging statements and marketing materials. Do the same with a few of your competitors’ messages. Then put them in front of your team and ask them to match the message to the company. If they can’t spot yours right away, it’s not specific enough. It might be true, but it’s not differentiated.

You can also run the calorie test. Take a piece of your messaging and ask how many mental calories it takes to understand it. If someone has to work to figure out what you mean, the message is too heavy. It should be simple to digest without losing depth.

The goal is clarity, not complexity. If the message is easy to understand and hard to forget, it’s doing its job.

The Two Main Complicators of B2B Messaging

Most B2B messaging problems fall into one of two buckets.

First, it gets too technical. Messaging that’s written like a spec sheet starts to sound like internal documentation. This might feel comfortable on the company’s end, especially in engineering-heavy industries, but it’s not what buyers respond to early in their journey. The initial attraction of marketing materials comes from letting customers know you solve their problems. Then come the specs.

Second, it gets too complicated. Some teams try to say everything at once. They want to show the full value, cover every feature, list every benefit. The end result is a sentence so dense that no one finishes reading it. And if they do, they’re left with more questions than clarity.

B2B messaging is most effective when it’s clear

If you’re not sure where to start, or if you suspect your messaging might be off, our CEO Nate Maguire’s book The Blueprint for Industrial Marketing can help. This book breaks down the full B2B marketing system step by step, from defining your value proposition to aligning your digital presence. It’s built specifically for industrial companies, and it’s based on real-world experience.

Download the Blueprint for free and use it as a tool to get your team aligned, sharpen your messaging, and start building momentum.