A customer can live with a "pain point" for years. The purchase decision is often prompted by a specific trigger event—like a factory acquisition, a new hire, or a site migration. Marketing should focus on identifying and aligning with these triggers, not just the underlying pain.
Differentiation is proving you're the best choice with unique features. Distinctiveness is simply being memorable and standing out. Many B2B brands over-index on differentiation while blending in visually and tonally, failing the crucial first step of being noticed.
Instead of inventing a completely new market, position your product as a sub-category of something people already understand (e.g., "like live chat, but for sales"). This "horseless carriage" approach makes innovation digestible by grounding it in a familiar concept, as Drift did.
Marketers often fail by trying to educate customers on a superior solution (e.g., strategy) instead of first meeting their immediate, stated need (e.g., tactics). The "Trojan Horse" approach involves selling the initial request to build trust, then introducing the more impactful solution.
The term "demand generation" is often a misnomer. You can't make people care about something they don't already need. A marketer's job is to identify an existing stream of demand for a category and create a channel to direct some of that flow to a specific product.
Don't adopt a contrarian stance just for attention. A true point of view serves as a beacon for your target audience. It shows them you understand their struggles and are there to protect them, building trust and coherence across all your marketing efforts.
Avoid clichés like a fountain pen for a copywriting service. Instead, choose a distinctive asset (mascot, sound) that has no inherent meaning in your category. This prevents confusion with competitors and makes your brand easier to recall, like Gong's bulldog mascot for sales intelligence.
Instead of trying to convince skeptical leadership with a presentation, carve out a small part of your budget to run a real-world test of your creative idea. Present the superior results from your experiment. Data from a live campaign is far more persuasive than a theoretical argument.
Don't try to market all ten of your product's features at once. Identify the one feature with the most existing demand—like Hotjar did with heatmaps. Dominate the conversation around that single entry point to acquire a large user base, then introduce them to your other capabilities.