The Importance of Specificity in Marketing

You know what they say—hazy generalizations only count in horseshoes. In other words, close doesn't count. So it goes in marketing. If you want to introduce your company’s service offerings and products to folks who could really benefit, you must be specific. This may sound obvious, and for Business-to-Consumer companies it often is. Do you need shoes to play tennis? We have tennis shoes.

But specificity can get muddled with Business-to-Business companies that offer an outstanding range of services. How do you market the service of a team of highly skilled engineers who could, quite literally, design and build any kind of (fill in the blank) for any industry? Or, a team of logistics technicians who are world-class experts in moving anything from point a (anywhere) to point b (also anywhere) and storing it (again, anywhere).

Specificity May Seem Like A Tall Task, But It Can Be Done

Narrowing down to a core focus and marketing specific product attributes or benefits is a seemingly impossible task for highly nimble companies that provide a wide and not-necessarily limited range of products or services. Companies are often worried that by creating marketing messages that call out specific product benefits or offerings, they will exclude many of their capabilities. That might be true—declaring a set of standard features for say, commercial vehicles, or solving certain shipping problems might not include all of a company’s capabilities.

But though it may be true that your company can offer a nearly unlimited range of services, it’s far more likely that your customers are generally looking for one aspect of that service. And it’s also likely that of the expanses of capabilities, there’s a specific part of those services that your company does best, perhaps better than anyone else.

How We Refined Our Own Value Proposition

Let’s take our own marketing and positioning for example. Strother Communications Group excels at marketing North American manufacturers to business. We’re a marketing agency with a specialty for navigating the technical communications required to communicate our clients’ solutions to the highly technical and specific needs of our clients’ customers. Our wheelhouse is helping sellers (manufacturers and makers) reach buyers, grow sales, and boost reputations. We’re sure of it and specific about it.

Do we also have a track record of creating compelling and award-winning Business to Consumer marketing programs as well? You bet. We’ve done outstanding work marketing figure skates, boat docks, worked on brand strategies for bakeries, won awards in the premium alcoholic malt beverage space. And our expertise allows us to navigate the space between B2B and B2C exceptionally well. We understand how to market products to buyers. And buyers are (always) people—whether the people work at another commercial business (B2B) or are part of our clients’ dealer network (also B2B) or are individual consumers (definitely people).

But we market ourselves as a marketing agency that specializes in manufacturing because connecting businesses that make things with other businesses is our specialty. It’s what we do best—and when it comes to marketing North American manufacturers, perhaps better than anyone else. Because of our expertise in vigorous market research, our skill to shape a message with a sharp eye for design, and our ability to learn our audience, and speak clearly to them, we’re the right firm to hire for a lot of sellers outside the scope of manufacturing marketing, too.

But if we just said we’d market everything, how could anyone know that we could in fact market anything? Specificity in marketing is about showcasing your specific expertise so potential customers have an easy time finding you and knowing exactly what it is that you can do.

If you’re a manufacturer looking to sharpen your message, grow your business and strengthen your brand, give us a call. We can help with that. If you’re not a manufacturer (butchers, bakers, candlestick makers and more), and you’d like help getting the right message and bringing new businesses to your brand—hey, give us a call too. We do excellent work in B2B and beyond.