Most B2B companies don’t lack for messaging. Instead, they have too many messages. Multiple stories. Competing narratives. Elevator pitches that change depending on who’s talking, where they sit and what slide deck they grabbed that morning.
The solution is a centralized, strategic framework that becomes your single source of truth — one that every team can actually use and every story can flow from. It takes work to get it right up front, but trust us, it pays off when everyone is reading from the same playbook. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Good brand strategy is good business strategy.
What is a B2B messaging framework?
A B2B messaging framework is an internal tool — a strategic foundation that guides external communications. Think of it as your messaging roadmap, informing everything from website copy to sales presentations to marketing campaigns. While customers will never see the framework itself, they’ll experience its impact through consistent, compelling communications across every touchpoint.
The framework gives your teams the building blocks they need to craft messages that are both on brand and appropriate for specific contexts, audiences and channels. For instance, your brand promise might be articulated differently in a technical white paper versus a social media post, but the core truth remains consistent since both draw from the same framework.
It’s not your end destination, but you can’t get there without it.
Know where you stand — and where you can win.
Before developing your B2B messaging framework, take time to thoroughly analyze your current market position. Understanding this landscape reveals where your genuine opportunities exist. This requires:
- A competitive analysis that examines positioning strategies, value propositions and key messages across your market. Look for patterns in how competitors communicate, and more importantly, identify the gaps they’ve left open.
- An internal audit of your current messaging, from sales presentations to website copy to customer communications. This baseline understanding helps identify what’s working well and what needs to evolve.
Generic claims about being “outcomes based,” “innovative” and/or “customer centric” crowd the B2B space. Your B2B messaging framework needs to establish distinctive territory that authentically reflects your strengths and resonates with your audience.
Tap into your internal expertise.
Internal stakeholder conversations provide valuable insights into how different teams understand and communicate your brand’s value. While perspectives may vary across departments or functions, each viewpoint contributes to a fuller understanding of your brand story.
Spend time with:
- Your leadership team (who probably have strong opinions about everything)
- Your sales team (who are out in the field and know what makes customers sign)
- Your product team (who know what’s under the hood)
- Your customer success team (who hear the unvarnished truth every day)
These perspectives help identify where your brand message resonates most strongly and where it might need refinement. Pay particular attention to patterns that emerge across departments — they often signal core truths about your brand’s value. Take notes.
Learn what really resonates with your customers.
Understanding how your message lands with your target audience is essential. While internal perspectives provide valuable context, external research reveals how your brand truly resonates in the market. This research might include:
- In-depth interviews with current clients to understand what drives their loyalty and how they perceive your value
- Focus groups with potential customers to test messaging concepts and gather unfiltered feedback
- Targeted surveys to gather quantitative data about messaging effectiveness
Pay attention to the specific language your audience uses to describe their challenges and objectives. This natural vocabulary should inform your B2B messaging framework’s terminology and tone.
Mind the gaps.
Now comes the moment of truth: analyzing where internal and external perspectives meet — or don’t. This is where you’ll find gold, such as:
- The value proposition your team loves that customers couldn’t care less about
- The benefit customers rave about that your marketing never mentions
- The messaging disconnect that’s making your sales team’s job harder than it needs to be
Steps to developing an effective B2B messaging framework.
We’re not here to gatekeep — and anyway, the template isn’t the hard part. There’s more than one way to build a B2B messaging framework, but here’s how we do it.
Hone your brand promise.
A clear, compelling statement of who you are and the value you deliver. This is your highest-level commitment to customers, and it should actually promise something. Not “empowering success through innovative solutions,” but what you really, truly deliver, such as Salesforce’s “the world’s #1 CRM, bringing companies and customers together.” Make it specific. Make it meaningful. Make it true.
Solidify your value proposition.
A more detailed articulation of what makes you uniquely valuable to customers. This builds on your brand promise by specifically addressing what solutions and benefits mean customers should choose you over alternatives.
Build out your brand pillars.
The three or so core themes that support your promise and value proposition. These could be your key differentiators, your primary offerings or your fundamental beliefs about how you deliver value. Each pillar should be distinct and memorable, working together to tell your complete brand story. And like all good pillars, they should hold some weight.
Craft your key messages.
Under each pillar, develop three key messages that bring that theme to life. These should be compelling statements that resonate with your audience and support the pillar’s main idea.
Supply proof points.
Finally, support each key message with three concrete proof points. That is: tangible evidence that backs up your claims. These might be statistics, client success stories, outstanding features or unique methodologies.
Make this B2B messaging framework your own.
Your messaging framework doesn’t have to look like ours. Here’s the beautiful thing about frameworks: They’re not one size fits all. Maybe your brand story works better organized around:
- The problems you solve (because your market is pain-point driven)
- Your unique approach (because how you work is why you win)
- Your audience’s journey (because different stakeholders need different stories)
The structure should serve your story, not the other way around. The best framework is one that feels natural to your teams and reflects how your customers understand your value.
Test your B2B messaging before you bet on it.
Before you chisel this messaging framework into stone, test it. Run it by your sales team. Try it out with some friendly customers. See if your product team can explain it without rolling their eyes. If it doesn’t work in real conversations, it won’t work in your marketing either.
Put your B2B messaging framework to work.
A B2B messaging framework that sits in a beautiful PDF on somebody’s hard drive enlightens no one. Create guidelines that people will actually use. Share the document internally. Train your teams. Check in regularly to see what’s working and what needs tweaking.
Your B2B messaging framework should be solid enough to keep your brand story consistent yet flexible enough to evolve as your market does. It’s not about creating rigid rules — it’s about giving your team the tools they need to tell your story clearly, consistently and convincingly.
At the end of the day, that’s what a good B2B messaging framework does. It turns your brand story from something you have to remember into something you can’t forget.
Ready to build a B2B messaging framework that works as hard as you do? Let’s talk.
