Do you still use these scarily generic B2B copy clichés?
Four meaningless things to stop saying immediately
The UK was projected to spend £1bn on Halloween this year. Just over two decades ago, we were only spending £12m. Mental.
With this wave of seasonal spending in mind, I tried compiling the limpest Halloween-themed B2B promotions I could find. But, thankfully for the dignity of the marketing industry, there wasn’t enough to fill an entire post.
Instead, here are four B2B copy clichés that you should stop using ASAP.
After all, what’s scarier than finding out the copy you spent loads of time or money on is the same as everyone else’s?
1. Made by [x], for [x]
Imagine getting ready to board a flight when you notice that your plane has ‘Boeing: Built by passengers, for passengers’ on the side of it. Comforting!
Having lots of experience using a product doesn’t mean you’ll be any good at making your own one.
For example, you use your fridge every day, and maybe you have some cracking suggestions for how to improve it. But could you build one from scratch? Do you understand why your great ideas haven’t already been implemented? Would you know how to make them technologically, logistically, and financially viable? And what makes you so certain that everyone else in your demographic would automatically agree with them?
Then again, ‘Made by designers, for users’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it…
2. [x]-grade
Aside from food-grade and medical-grade, ‘[x]-grade’ phrases don’t mean anything.
And yet B2B brands love using them. If I had a pound for every time I’ve been asked to describe something as enterprise-grade, I’d have at least five quid.
Yes, it’s a quick way to suggest that something can be used by loads of people at the same time. But, beyond that, what quality defines a service as beneficial for enterprises in particular? Aside from user capacity, what about your product was specifically designed to accommodate the needs of enterprises over small or medium businesses?
You’d be better off listing these features out in full — after all, the staff within those enterprises will need to demonstrate to their CFO why your solution is the best possible investment. Being specific instead of saying ‘[x]-grade’ makes that easier for them.
3. Bleeding-edge
According to the Cambridge dictionary, bleeding-edge means ‘so modern that it’s still being developed’.
That could apply to almost anything. AI. DevOps. Blenders. Burgers. Lipstick. Almost every human invention is constantly evolving, if slowly.
Sure, a certain technology might be ‘state of the art’ at the point of conception. But by the time a start-up has developed, tested, reviewed, validated, branded, funded, and launched it as their product, it’ll be ancient history to Big Tech.
Pioneering experimental surgical procedures are bleeding-edge. Completely autonomous self-driving cars are bleeding-edge. A new HR solution that automates payroll is not bleeding-edge.
4. 'Best-in-class/breed', 'market-leading', etc.
Says who? Who says you’re the best? Who says you lead the market?
Without some sort of official ranking or qualification to back up your claim, you might as well say that you offer ‘the best software in the entire world’. Hey, there’s no way to prove that you don’t!
Phrases like these without evidence are worthless because anyone can — and will — use them.
For example — get this — I saw a tampon brand of all things describe itself as ‘best-in-class’ the other day. Gone are the days of ‘comfort’, ‘security’ and ‘feeling fresh’, soon it’ll be ‘accelerating absorption of endometrial tissue at scale’. If Emmeline Pankhurst had had the vocabulary of a B2B marketer, women would be ruling the world by now.
Anyway, thank you for reading my market-leading newsletter. Have a best-in-breed week, all.