Positioning, Messaging, and Branding for B2B tech companies. Keep it simple. Keep it real.
A brand playbook is a must-have for B2B tech companies. It documents your positioning, messaging, and identity, getting everyone on the same page. And when you clearly and consistently align the stuff you make with the people you make it for, you generate awareness, confidence, and trust all around.
A B2B brand playbook is your company’s DNA on paper. For B2B tech firms, nailing your mission, positioning, messaging, and identity is what separates you from the masses. This guide walks you through the 5 steps to build a brand playbook that will set your organization up for success.
Each year, thousands of B2B tech companies struggle to stand out and get noticed. It’s not their tech that sucks, it’s their brand. Too often it’s an afterthought (or in some cases a no-thought), all over the place—messy, inconsistent, and missing out on creating awareness, confidence, and trust.
A brand playbook tells everyone why we exist—employees, customers, partners, and investors. It helps us document how to position, message, and visually communicate why our company and solutions are the right fit. It also helps us maintain our brand reputation as we grow the business.
TIP: Brand and culture are tied at the hip. Make your brand playbook part of your HR onboarding process, and start your company all-hands or town halls with a brand recap. It gets new employees off on the right foot and keeps your brand top of mind.
In this step-by-step guide to a B2B tech brand playbook, I’ll show you how to keep everyone on the same page and speaking the same language. We’ll follow a process inspired by years of helping tech firms get their brand together, plus lean on April Dunford’s excellent book, Obviously Awesome.
Ready? Let’s go.
Before we start talking, we need to know who we are, what we’re in, and why we exist.
Get these right, and you’ll have a solid foundation to build your brand playbook. Skip them, and you’re building a house of cards.
Need help nailing down your mission, vision, and values? Let’s talk!
By now, you should have completed a positioning exercise with your key stakeholders. If not, stop right here and head over to this guide before moving forward: How to Position B2B Tech Solutions: A Step-by-Step Guide.
Once you’ve nailed down your positioning, you’ll have everything you need to define how your solution fits in the market. A Positioning Canvas helps you map out your competitive landscape, unique strengths, and how you differentiate.
Now that your positioning is locked down, it’s time to put it into words that your audience will notice. Your messaging should translate your positioning into something meaningful for them and back up your sales and marketing.
Boilerplates:
Brand Pyramid:
This is where you show why your solution actually matters. The themes, capabilities, and benefits from your positioning exercise will feed into a Value Point Table. This will help you break down the value you deliver.
This is where the visual and physical representation of your brand comes into play.
Almost every tech solution starts here—at Step 5—instead of Step 1. That’s OK when you’re getting going, but if left unchecked it will bite you in the ass. Trust me. Do the work in the first four steps. Your future self will be grateful.
To make it easy for you to put all of this into action, I’ve created a free, customizable Brand Playbook Template based on the exact process we’ve just covered. It’s in Google Docs but easily downloadable as Word, PDF, RTF, or other formats.
Whether you’re just starting to build your brand or refining an existing one, this brand playbook template for tech startups gives you everything you need to ensure everyone is on the same page, speaking the same language, and pulling in the same direction.
However, if this feels too daunting, I’m happy to help. Reach out anytime.
Brand playbooks document how our organization and our solutions are perceived in the minds of the people we’re trying to help. Without it, we’re flying blind, hoping our solutions will be enough (spoiler: they aren’t).
A clearly defined and communicated brand makes everything easier. Our entire team knows the story we’re telling, our customers know why they should care, and the stuff we make becomes more than just another tech solution taking up space.
Start building your brand playbook today, and create a brand that sticks with people long after the first touchpoint.
Need help with your Brand Playbook?
Let’s chat—because you’ve got better things to do than fly blind.
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Trying to be everything to everyone in B2B tech means we’re already losing. Positioning is the critical first step—it’s our survival tactic in a market flooded with noise. With Martech growing at 28% YOY, standing out isn’t just hard; it’s friggin’ brutal. Focusing on customers and clearly differentiating our unique value is how we shift from being just another widget to being a solution that’s hard to ignore.
Getting on the buyer’s shortlist in B2B tech is very difficult when no one knows who we are, what we do, or what we stand for. With over 100,000 tech solutions out there, it’s easy to become just another face in the crowd. Many companies—especially startups—struggle to stand out. Without unique positioning, they risk blending in, forgotten and ignored.
And when 80%–90% of buyers already have a set of vendors in mind before they do a stitch of research, and 90% of them choose a vendor on day one, the chances of getting their attention is like winning the lottery.
As a founder or leader of a B2B tech firm, no doubt you’ve felt the heat. Launching a product in a saturated market feels like pushing a boulder up a mountain. The pressure to get noticed, attract leads, and generate sales is overwhelming. But here’s the thing: positioning is your lever. It’s how you turn the impossible into the inevitable. This is how B2B tech solutions like Monday.com was able to chip away at industry giants like Asana over 6 years. That’s 6 YEARS, by the way, not 6 months.
In this article, I’m going to show you how to shift from being solely product- or sales-led to becoming customer-focused and business-led. I’ll walk you through a step-by-step process, drawing on inspiration from April Dunford’s book, Obviously Awesome, to help you position your B2B tech solution for your best-fit customers.
NOTE: If you’re ready to do positioning on your own, go grab April’s book, and dive in. But if you’re looking for a little guidance, stick around and read on.
We’ve all been there—trapped in a product-focused mindset, cranking out salsey marketing because we’re excited about what we’ve built. The problem? Everyone else is doing the same thing. According to Clay Ostrom at Map&Fire, only 33% of B2B solutions have strong differentiation. That’s not just a stat; that’s a red flag.
Understanding our customers—their pains, needs, and motivations—is our best shot at positioning our solution as the perfect answer to their problems.
“A good doctor treats the patient, not the illness.”
Reiko Scott, FANOCRACY
Forget flashy marketing. It’s like a shiny new fishing lure that only gets nibbles. When buyers know exactly why they should care about our B2B tech solution, they don’t just nibble—they bite. And they keep biting. Just ask Monday.com or Slack or Canva.
Clarity comes from deep customer and market insight, not from guessing or copying trends. Our job isn’t to invent a message out of thin air—it’s to discover what our customers already value most about our product and make it impossible to ignore.
Just starting out? You’re probably tempted to dive straight into sales tactics. Be careful. Do you want to build a house on stilts or a house on solid footing? Get this right early, and everything—your messaging, marketing, sales, brand reputation, internal culture—will fall into place more naturally as you scale.
Effective B2B tech positioning is an outcome of digging deep into understanding who our solution is for, what it’s for, and why buyers should give a damn. It has nothing to do with these things:
What Happens After Positioning:
What does NOT Happen After Positioning:
Clear positioning strips away the crap and gets down to what truly matters to the people we’re trying to help. Anyone can cast a shiny new lure into a pond. It’s much harder to get the fish to bite. The right positioning is like the right bait—if it’s tasty, the fish will bite.
Step 1: Who Is It For?
FYI Startups: No customers yet? No problem. Interview potential candidates or colleagues who fit your target profile. You’ll learn more than you think.
Step 2: What Are You Up Against?
Step 3: What Makes You Unique?
“Be distinct or be extinct.”
Tom Peters
Step 4: What Value Do You Deliver?
Step 5: Who Cares a Lot About Your Value?
Step 6: Pick the Market That Will Give You the Best Chance at Success TODAY
Refer to April’s Positioning Styles to weigh your options:
Once you have completed these steps, you can create a positioning and messaging playbook. That document is super helpful and can serve as the opening for your brand guidelines. I’ve created these documents for a few clients and they literally become the “bible” for the sales, marketing, product and CX teams.
If you want to see this method in action, here are two stories worth checking out:
B2B tech positioning isn’t a checkbox on our to-do list—it’s the foundation of everything we do in marketing and sales. It needs regular review and validation, especially when you’re starting out and when markets shift. Get it right, and our product doesn’t just survive—it thrives. Fail at it, and we’re just another thing taking up space.
Effective positioning is a process of discovery, not invention, uncovering the value that already exists in our solution and making it crystal clear to the people who need it most. When we succeed at positioning, we can move from being just another look-alike to being the obvious choice.
So, are you ready to get it right? Book a 1-Day Positioning Workshop with me.
Need specific advice for your B2B tech firm? Reach out. I’m always happy to chat.
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PS: This article is also published and discussed on LinkedIn. Join the conversation!
In B2B tech marketing, lack of customer insights creates a product-focused vacuum that leads to ineffective tactics, wasted resources, and missed opportunities. Avoid this by making research the priority, revisiting insights, and ensuring marketing strategies are customer-driven and aligned with long-term growth. When insight stays rooted to the core of our marketing, we give our solutions the best chance to succeed.
In nature, vacuums are rare. Wherever a gap exists, something rushes in to fill it. The vacuum we’re dealing with in B2B tech marketing is a lack of insight.
When marketing operates without insight, it creates a void that gets filled with guesswork, mixed messages, and ineffective approaches. This vacuum doesn’t just cause small hiccups; it creates a chain reaction of issues that continuously waste time, money, and opportunities. Teams get caught in a spin cycle of short-term tactics that look good on the surface but fail to deliver real results.
Many tech firms don’t realize they’re creating this vacuum because during startup phase, it’s very common to be heads-down in tactics. With constant pressure to generate leads and keep up with the competition, it’s easier to stay in “Tactics Land” than come up for air and do the necessary research to scale the business. You don’t know what you don’t know.
In this article, I’ll show you how this vacuum forms, the problems it creates, and how to fill it with the insights needed to produce effective marketing.
Lack of insight stems from a failure to do our research and due diligence. Skipping this important first step means we do not have the context we need to make informed decisions. To compensate, we end up going to market blindfolded and guessing what to do and who to do it for.
When we don’t invest in understanding our best-fit customers, the specific market niche we serve, or the competitive alternatives we’re up against, we create fragmented views of the market. This leaves us guessing about who we’re speaking to, what they care about, and how our solution fits into their world.
Without this context, marketing becomes a game of darts played in the dark. We might hit the target occasionally, but more often than not, we miss it entirely. Worse, we don’t even know how far off we are because we lack the data and metrics to measure accurately.
This vacuum of context doesn’t just make marketing less effective; it makes it almost impossible to plan strategically. And when we don’t understand our audience, we fall into the trap of talking to ourselves, focusing on what we think is important rather than what our customers actually care about.
The first step in filling this vacuum is to commit to doing the hard work of research. And because it is hard, it is avoided. But understanding our best-fit customers, their needs, and our competitive alternatives gives us the best chance to confidently build a solid foundation to go to market. When we take the blinders off, we create positioning and messaging that hits the target every time.
Before we can think about scaling, we need to understand the playing field we compete in. Don’t skip the foundational research. The longer we put it off the longer it takes to scale.
It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day grind while we’re in growth mode. Make it a habit to step back and reassess periodically. Annually is the minimum, quarterly is ideal.
Every marketing decision, from messaging to channel selection, should be rooted in Insight. It impacts the effectiveness of our GTM strategy (Go-To-Market) and our creative execution. Skipping this step is almost always the root cause of failed marketing campaigns.
Marketing is rife with creative wannabes and experts. Without insight, it’s tempting to jump straight into creative design, invent a strategy based on what “we like,” and make up a bunch of nonsense to justify it. It’s why so much “good-looking marketing” fails to deliver.
Marketing is one of only two business functions that produce results. The other is innovation. B2B tech rarely invests in marketing as it does innovation. If you’re running a tech firm with stable marketing leadership at the table, you’re light years ahead of any competitor who is simply “product-led.”
Lack of insight creates a vacuum that wastes time, money, and effort. It’s avoidable if we prioritize research. Clarity is essential for any business. It drives better results, both in the short-term and the long-term.
As the famous Dilbert comic strip illustrates, marketing without insight is just liquor and guessing. But with the right data, we can steer the business in the right direction. Marketing becomes more effective because it’s not just eye candy. Everyone, especially Sales, become increasingly confident because everything works in unison.
Invest in research, build strategies rooted in insight, and avoid the costly mistakes that come from operating in a vacuum. Your future self—and your bottom line—will thank you for it.
If you need specific advice for your B2B tech firm, reach out. I’m always happy to chat.
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Building a reputable B2B tech brand is essential for creating the awareness, confidence, and trust that generates quality leads. Deep customer insights produce well-executed strategies that set the tone for communicating our unique value. And by showcasing our success with real-world customer stories, we gain the credibility we need to grow our brand reputation and win future business.
A reputable brand reputation is the key to generating quality leads. It give sales, marketing, customer service, and product teams the “air cover” they need to succeed today and tomorrow.
Brand reputation is earned, not bought. It can take 3-5 years to build it up, but too often, impatience kills momentum before it has a chance to stick.
Building a trusted reputation requires a commitment to the customer experience. Proof points—case studies, client testimonials, online reviews, and peer recommendations—establish credibility. For start-ups, it’s best to keep things loose and rely on existing relationships to generate early wins that can start building these proof points.
Start-ups also face the immediate challenge of needing leads ASAP. This creates a “chicken and egg” dilemma where brand reputation takes a back seat to quick wins. The problem with this approach is that we forget about brand and rarely fix it (out of sight, out of mind). It’s best to drive awareness through word-of-mouth early on while staying focused on building brand reputation.
In this article, I’ll break down how to create a “lead machine” by focusing on four key areas: Insight, Strategy, Creative, and Metrics. I wrote about these pillars in 2010 and they still form the foundation of a successful B2B marketing campaign. Get them right, and you’ll drive more leads—today and in the future.
Everything starts with insight. Better insight always produces better outcomes. And if you’re a subscriber, you’ve already heard me “beat the drum” about customer research. What customers think and see drives the positioning and messaging that resonates with them. Without insight, we’re just guessing (cue the Dilbert cartoons).
NOTE: You can also use surveys and focus groups but don’t go overboard or think they are good enough. Direct conversations are always better.
A Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy that’s rooted in solid customer insight is essential for generating quality leads. It ensures our brand message is consistent, clear, and relevant across all channels, making it more likely to attract and convert high-quality leads. Remember, brand reputation builds over time through a sequence of Awareness > Confidence > Trust and can take 3-5 years. Without insight, the business continues to struggle with each year feeling like Groundhog Day.
Creativity in B2B isn’t about flashy designs—it’s about delivering value. Content should differentiate our brand by addressing our audience's needs, not by how it looks. Yes, it should be well-designed and “on brand,” but that doesn’t mean going overboard with “artsy decoration.” Good design communicates. Bad design decorates. Too often, marketing creative becomes a committee project that ends in silly taste debates. Focus on showcasing value and credibility via proof points like case studies, client testimonials, testimonial videos, social proof, and online reviews. Leave the art to the galleries.
“If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.”
David Ogilvy
We can’t build and maintain brand equity without knowing what’s working. Tracking our marketing performance helps us refine our strategy and ensure our brand continues to grow. Causal analysis plays an important role by helping us measure and forecast brand reputation and understand marketing time lag, which directly impacts lead quality.
“What you see determines what you understand, and that, in turn, drives your decisions.”
Mark Stouse, CEO, Proof Analytics
Trusted brands get put on the shortlist. We don’t buy reputation, we earn it. The process of triggering awareness, confidence, and trust in our brand can take years, but it’s the foundation for winning new business now and in the future.
Remember: No one ever got fired for buying IBM for a reason.
To emulate IBM’s legacy, always put the customer first, deliver value, and build up case studies, testimonials, and online reviews. Update or replace success stories as you continue to build up your reputation.
Whatever you do, don’t wait or set your brand reputation aside. Every moment your brand lies dormant is like taking years off the life of your business. Start taking these steps now to build a brand reputation that will drive your company’s success today and tomorrow. Invest in brand equity as you would financial equity.
If you need specific advice for your B2B tech firm, reach out. I’m always happy to chat.
If you like this content, here are some more ways I can help:
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PS: This article is also published and discussed on LinkedIn. Join the conversation!
B2B tech leaders can drive growth by focusing on customers instead of products. Understand your buyers, use data and AI wisely, and align your entire organization around delivering exceptional customer experiences. The goal? Build credibility and turn customers into fans.
NOTE: This is a deeper dive than normal. I tried to do this in a 5min read, but it ended up being 3x that because there is so much to cover. So grab your fav cup of joe and let’s go!
Meeting or exceeding expectations is no longer enough; we must delight and amaze customers at every opportunity to turn them into loyal fans. With over 14,000 martech solutions alone, prioritizing customer experience (CX) can mean the difference between thriving and merely surviving.
In our pursuit to build the next big thing, we often neglect the voice of the customer and set aside our brand reputation. But standing out requires more than just a great product—it requires an unwavering commitment to the customer. Instead of focusing solely on product-led and sales-led strategies, becoming customer-obsessed and business-led elevates our brand reputation for future growth.
If there was ever one domain that could achieve better marketing results from customer research it would have to be B2B tech. Too often we end up building solutions for ourselves and subsequently create insular marketing.
Investing in customer research early and often is key to creating better CX. Here are a few things to consider:
As previously highlighted in The Product-Led Growth Trap, and The Foundation of B2B Tech Marketing Success, neglecting customer research can lead to developing products that no one wants or perceives as too risky.
Many B2B tech firms tend to be overly focused on products, often to their detriment. Shifting to a customer-obsessed approach can make all the difference:
Adopting a customer-obsessed mindset give us a better chance at sustainable growth and building credibility that product-led and sales-led strategies alone cannot achieve. This is also how we create raving fans, as described in Fanocracy by David Meerman Scott and Reiko Scott.
In B2B tech, the customer experience can be long and complex. Here’s how to navigate it effectively:
In the 1990s, Maximizer CRM was one of the top contact management solutions. But with Salesforce’s rise, the brand lost ground. However, by focusing on customer research, Maximizer uncovered that SMBs found Salesforce too expensive and lacked sufficient support. They didn’t want complex and pricey solutions—they wanted to grow their business with confidence. This insight led to the “Grow With Confidence” campaign, which rejuvenated the brand, resulting in 20% month-over-month growth and over $1.6M added to the sales pipeline. Five years later, the campaign’s impact still resonates.
Read more about Maximizer’s success story here.
Data is a powerful tool for understanding and enhancing customer experience. Here’s how predictive and causal analytics can elevate your CX strategy:
Use historical data to forecast future customer behavior and trends:
Go beyond predictions to understand the underlying reasons behind customer behavior:
If you’re interested in exploring predictive and causal analytics, take a look at Proof Analytics.
Generative AI—large language models (LLMs) and AI image generators—offers significant potential for enhancing customer experience in B2B tech. However, like any tool, AI can create a mess in the wrong hands.
Generative AI can enhance various aspects of CX:
While generative AI is powerful, it comes with challenges:
To deliver a seamless customer experience, our internal processes must align with business goals that are customer-centric across the entire business. Otherwise, we waste resources hoping our solution will eventually hit—hope is not a strategy.
Improving our business processes involves a few key steps:
Here are some tools to explore:
When it comes to CX, leaders have the most to gain and the most to lose because they set the tone and direction for the entire company.
Leadership’s Impact on CX:
Measuring customer experience is essential to understanding what’s working and where improvements are needed:
The transformation of BELLIN, a global enterprise treasury software brand, highlights the power of leadership in driving customer-centricity. Martin Bellin, the company’s founder, actively invested in customer research to understand their needs and align the organization around a shared customer-centric vision: elevating the role of corporate treasury.
By focusing on customer experience, BELLIN’s “Treasury That Moves You” campaign achieved significant success, contributing to its acquisition by Coupa. This commitment to customer-centricity not only differentiated BELLIN in the market but also elevated its brand reputation over several years.
Read more about BELLIN’s remarkable run here.
A strong customer experience is the cornerstone of brand reputation. The investments we make in our customers, processes, and tools like generative AI and predictive analytics will not only enhance current relationships but also lay the groundwork for future success.
Keep in mind that marketing efforts often have a significant time lag. The brand reputation we build today will provide essential air cover for future sales, helping us weather market shifts and competitive pressures. Prioritizing CX not only improves day-to-day interactions, it gives us the chance to keep our brand top-of-mind when prospects are ready to buy tomorrow.
Take action now to fine-tune your CX strategy, align your teams, and measure your progress. The work you do today will pay dividends in the long run, positioning your company as a trusted source.
If you have any questions or want to discuss any of these ideas, reach out any time.
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B2B tech companies tend to overthink their marketing, delaying action out of fear of imperfection. This stems from ego and insecurity (both tied at the hip). By focusing on action and experimentation, we can drive innovation and adaptability without needing to be perfect from the start. This approach balances short-term results with long-term goals, something many B2B tech companies lack.
B2B tech companies, especially those led by engineers, often aim for perfection in everything they do. This mindset can hurt their marketing. Product launches get delayed and opportunities get missed.
A recent MDPI study shows how a perfectionist mindset can hinder progress. While the study focuses on consumer intentions to purchase imperfect products, there are similarities with B2B tech products.
Say the average hall-of-famer hits .310. That means they strike out 69% of the time. Marketing is no different. Not every campaign will be a home run. There are many unknowns and many factors that rarely align the same way twice.
Forget trying to create flawless campaigns. Focus instead on deeply understanding your best customers and making solutions that fit their needs.
Perfectionism often comes from ego. Dig a little deeper and insecurity will rear its head.
In tech companies, especially those led by engineers, people sometimes think perfect execution equals success. This belief can create an authoritarian leadership style focused on perfection no matter what. But perfectionism can actually hold us back.
Perfectionists care more about looking perfect than doing excellent work. CEOs often inflate performance and progress for investors and board members, adding to the pressure on marketing. This focus on image leads to endless changes, delays, and mixed messages. When the goal is perfection, it’s easy to never finish a project because you can always make it better. That hurts productivity and efficiency.
Just like with innovation, we need to focus on continuous improvement with marketing, not perfect execution. When we accept that nothing will ever be perfect, we can move forward and make real progress. This mindset creates a better work environment and encourages innovation and adaptability.
Perfectionism doesn’t improve quality, production, or efficiency. It disrupts and destroys them. Perfectionism is a fancy cover for ego and procrastination.
Brian Kight, Daily Discipline
Be excellent at continuous improvement rather than flawless execution because perfectionism undermines progress and innovation.
Yes, of course, high-quality marketing materials build brand reputation and trust. However, we shouldn’t let the pursuit of perfection hinder progress.
Mistakes are part of the path to success. Launch campaigns, gather intel, and adapt based on your findings. Treat mistakes as opportunities to learn.
Experiment, take risks, and find alternative creative solutions. If you’re going to fail, fail forward.
If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn
Just like innovation, marketing needs experimentation. But unlike tech, marketing often lacks the freedom to experiment due to pressure for immediate results.
We need to afford marketing a culture of safety like we do for innovation. By testing different strategies and tactics, gathering insight, and iterating, we can create marketing solutions that produce consistent results.
For example, running A/B tests, trying new channels, and being open to change based on what our audience tells us gives us a better chance at achieving future success.
Experimentation leads to better marketing and builds a more adaptable team. It reduces the fear of failure and encourages creativity.
Real artists ship.
Steve Jobs
B2B tech companies are pressured to achieve results quickly. Marketing is often solely responsible for creating campaigns to generate fast leads.
Considering that B2B tech CMOs have the shortest leash at the CxO table, this might not be the best approach.
Focusing only on immediate results leads to a short-sighted view of marketing. Instead of understanding customers and building brand reputation, companies lean into short-term gains. But this rarely resonates with the audience or builds credibility.
B2B tech companies need to balance quick wins with long-term growth by balancing marketing and innovation. Set realistic expectations together with the CxO and invest in brand reputation.
B2B tech companies can overcome the obstacles of perfectionism by focusing on continuous improvement rather than perfect execution.
By testing different approaches through experimentation, we can quickly learn what works and pivot as needed, ensuring that our marketing strategies are both innovative and effective.
Take the time to do it right, yes, but don’t get stuck in making it perfect.
Keep testing. Keep iterating.
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