Case study
We helped HM Cargo to understand their buyers better and develop a more relevant messaging for their email campaigns.
HM Cargo expanded their Business Dev team and were looking for growth opportunities. Despite their outreach efforts, they weren’t getting replies to their emails and sales reps were frustrated. The CMO hypothesis was that the messaging wasn’t working.
We researched the core needs and motivations of HM Cargo’s buyers by:
We completed our research with a messaging analysis of HM Cargo’s direct competitors and the global industry leaders to identify positioning opportunities.
We found out that their current messaging was failing due to a lack of alignment with the buyer’s pain points and expectations. HM Cargo’s most valuable clients were mature companies, concerned with process optimization, digitization and data visibility and not so much with prices.
Based on our research, we created new data-informed personas and redefined the company’s value proposition. We documented our findings in a messaging playbook with key messages and email templates to be used by the Sales team. As a result, email reply rate improved, and the reps reported being less frustrated.
When trying to optimize the messaging, many marketing and sales teams often choose a brute-force approach. They come up with a message they feel it’s ok and start testing and iterating until they get a decent amount of conversions.
The brute-force approach gains adoption because of how cheap, fast, and easy it is. But when used in tailored B2B services, it comes with huge hidden costs. On the one hand, sending the wrong message to a potential customer puts you at risk of burning a bridge to their entire company. On the other hand, a wrong message that’s answered makes your reps waste time in the wrong conversation and pay the opportunity cost.
The easiest path to nailing the messaging is going to the source: talk to your most valuable customers. Listen to their needs and reasons for choosing you over everyone else and use that info to write human-centered content. Good messaging is just your value prop in action. Anything else is putting lipstick on pigs. It might look good, but it won’t last.
Wondering if we are the right fit? We too. We can do an intro video call and discover it together. If we are not what you need, we can help you find a more suitable partner.