Mastering B2B Messaging & Copywriting with Diane Wiredu

A lot of companies think they have a copy problem, but the reality is they have a messaging problem.

My guest on this episode is Diane Weirdu. She is an amazing B2B marketing, messaging and copywriting consultant. She runs a company called Lion Words.

I don't see that messaging is just a marketing thing. I really think that, you know, messaging problems are leadership problems.

She's helped some of your favorite B2B SaaS brands improve their messaging and improve their copy. And that's what we talk about on this episode, including why maybe all the frameworks and methodologies you don't need, and you need to just focus more on finding your one key message.

To create messaging that resonates with customers, we need to actually go out and speak to customers and understand how they think, how they speak, how they feel.

If you feel like your story is not landing with prospects and customers, or if it could just get better, this is an episode you don't want to miss. Enjoy my conversation here with Diane. 1, 2, 3, 4, exit.

Yeah, so I'm Diane where adu. I am a messaging strategist, conversion copywriter, and the founder of Lion Words, which is a message messaging consultancy for B2B tech and SAS companies. So I help teams essentially create, you know, clear, compelling messaging that, you know, resonates with buyers. Right. So it's pretty niche, I think, but also the impact is kind of huge. So, you know, messaging is all about how can we make the value of your products and your services much easier to understand. So obviously you can get better results from marketing assets and so on. So, yeah, so the scope of my work is often split into kind of two parts. So one, the messaging piece, messaging strategy. So getting clarity on the core messaging itself, documenting that. So what is the unique value you provide? What are the most important relevant things about your product that we need to highlight? I like to also look at the context, the story, the point of view that you operate in, because I think that also sets the foundation for strong and effective copy. And then the second piece is the copywriting. So then how do we translate that into. How do we translate that messaging into copy for key marketing assets, which primarily the homepage and across the website. So now we know what. How do we say it, right? How do we organize those messages across the page using conversion, copywriting principles and so on? So, yeah, in many cases, phase one is actually where the engagement ends with companies that I work with, if you have the building blocks and the strategy to run with that. But with some companies, then I come in and help them Execute on that as well.

Do you help companies with positioning, or do they have a position and then you execute on the copy? Because there is an important relationship between those two. I'm curious to hear how you navigate that.

Oh, definitely. Yeah. So my position on positioning has shifted a bunch over the years. If you asked me, like, a year ago or two years ago, I was like, I don't touch positioning. I don't work with companies who don't have their positioning dialed in because it's a whole beast in itself. And I'm not a positioning consultant, really, where my zone of genius and expertise is around the messaging piece and then translating that into copy. But messaging is this bridge between your positioning in the market, what you do, who for, where you sit, that context setting, getting those messages super clear, and then how do we transform that? And so over the years, it's impossible not to touch the positioning piece. It's impossible because messaging, it's garbage in, garbage out. And so, yes, I have had to kind of adapt my process a little bit. I think that my messaging, that discovery process of just kind of getting under the hood of a business and understanding what they do, who for, and how there's. There's a part of that that is positioning refinement anyway, Right. And so I'm trying to make sure that it is as completely dialed in and as locked in as possible. I'm trying to make sure that, you know, who you say your ICP is, like, is as absolutely dialed in as it can be. Because, like, if a company comes to me and, like, oh, yeah, we, you know, we sell to, like, Fortune 500 companies. I'm like, a red flag, you know, Like, I can't. How can I message to those people? So, yeah, it's a roundabout way of saying yes. I kind of. I touch on it. You know, I love, you know, April Dunford's methodology. Like, it's brilliant. Right. So I kind of approach those. Those positioning pieces following that. Right. So I try to refine those different blocks of, you know, what are the competitive standards of who's the market you win in. And if all of that is refined and clear, then we build on top of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you might often uncover, you might be working on copy, and then you might uncover, like, a bridge to stronger positioning through copy.

100%.

Right. When I start, when I first, like, went out on my own, one of the things I did was positioning and messaging, and I didn't realize how different the two things were. And at first, I wanted to just do Positioning. I'm good at that exercise. And I found that companies find it valuable and you can charge good money for it. Right. Because it's such an impactful thing, although not enough. I, I wish the, the most gangster model would be like, if you could do it like the old school copywriters and be like, let me get some, if you really believe in this, let me get some percentage of sales.

Let me get. Yeah. Royalties. Yes.

But they don't. It's like, oh, we'll pay you five grand. We'll give you five grand to like, write our website copy. And I'm like, well, what if, hold on. What if, what if, like this new website brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars in revenue? They just don't think that way. So. But I found one of the challenges with positioning is, and even I've felt this as a VP of marketing is you bring in someone in, you do this great positioning, but then you just, it's just sits in this doc and it's like the messaging is the actual execution of it. And I've seen lots of companies where you have good positioning that lives inside of a Google Doc somewhere, but it needs to be on the homepage. You need a killer website. You need, you need to like, execute on the copy. And so there's this kind of weird relationship between the two that, that I think often lacks from a delivery standpoint.

What's interesting about what you're saying as well is I actually think that messaging is that bridge that you're. You're kind of talking about here. So, like, I don't really use the term like homepage messaging. Right. Because to me, even within that, there's a little bit of a, kind of a contradiction. And so what I think of when I talk about messaging.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What is the. What is the contradiction? What's the contradiction?

Okay, okay. So when we're looking at a homepage, we're looking at the copy. And often for many people who are assessing what you see on the homepage, they can't see past the copy. Right. There is messaging. Messaging. Essentially. If I'm going to break this down, because a lot of people ask me, okay, what's the difference between messaging and copy? Isn't it the same thing? So the way that I break this down is messaging is what you say about your product, your services, right? And then simply put, copy is like how you say that, right? So messaging, we need to really get down to the nitty gritty. It's all about articulating, you know, the value, the uniqueness of your product in a clear, relevant, differentiated way. What are the messages? What are the interesting things that we need to bring to the forefront? How can we articulate what you do and why that matters and who for in a clear way? Right. And so those are the kind of those key messaging blocks. And there are so many different ways that we can shape your messaging. And then that's what most people see when we're looking and we're going in and we're analyzing headlines, we're analyzing, you know, benefit messages and product and kind of the structure. But I think, honestly that a lot of companies think they have a copy problem, but the reality is they have a messaging problem. And so many companies are coming in, looking at the homepage and like, oh, tweaking. We want to tweak this and optimize and change wording and realize that actually you need to take a step back and figure out what is it that we're saying and why. And part of that prioritization, refining that, that's how I kind of approach messaging. So I don't think that's controversial. I just think that sometimes it's worth kind of clarifying that.

And I also think, I think bringing in someone like you into a company, I think is. Is perfect example of, like, when you should turn to outside help. Like we, we. You know, I often have basically there's kind of two. Two guests that I have on the show. There's either like CMOs and marketing leaders. And we talk about running a marketing team. And yeah, and then I bring on subject matter experts like you to talk about copy and messaging, or maybe there's an SEO person or maybe a product marketing person. And I think one of the mistakes I've made in, in trying to like, oh, someone on the team can do this because you paid for them and you want to have them do it. But I do think that especially with things like messaging and copy, you want to hire someone who. This is all they do, right? You have, you have 50 companies that you've worked with, and you can pull from all those lessons and you have a way and you have your framework. You might have a great writer on the team, but it might make more sense to bring in an outside, outside person. You know, we're thinking about how I really want to grow traffic to our website this year, and I want to do it through SEO, and we could certainly do that through the team. But I also think, like, bringing in someone who's helped grow you know, dozens of websites, you know, multiple growth, you know, levers of growth and traffic, they're going to have that level of expertise. You know what I'm trying to say. It's like there are areas we want to hire that specialist. And I think you're. You're an example of that.

Yeah, definitely. I think it is. I think it is a kind of unfair advantage when you just do one particular thing over and over again and getting to see so many different businesses and how they approach it. And I also think that's one of the reasons that messaging is so hard. Right. It's one of the reasons why it's so easy for me to kind of just sit here and talk about best practices and how to optimize it. Why messaging sucks. Xyz. But there is the reality that the reason that founders and marketers and product marketers find this so hard is because it is tough. Like you're building, you know, B2B. You have a product or a service that is solving a real valuable product problem.