Do you like pineapple on your pizza?

We're trying to sell margherita pizza when what we should be selling is pineapple pizza. Many businesses have decided that broader appeal equals better marketing, so they aim to be everything to anyone while offending no one. On the face of it, you might think that that logic seems sound. I mean, why wouldn't we want to appeal to as many potential buyers as possible? But the problem with this thinking is most of our competition have made the same bet. Walk through any B2B website, for instance, and you'll see the same generic vanilla nonsense phrases of, you know, innovative solutions, best-in-class, customer-centric approach, trusted partner, and all the nonsense that comes with that. We're all saying the same things because we're all afraid of saying something that might turn someone away. As far as buyers are concerned, most of us look and sound the same. We've become interchangeable because we're chasing the same fictional average buyer. By optimizing for mass appeal, we've sanded down anything about us that's distinctive. Think about how memory actually works. We don't remember things that blend in, do we? We remember things that stand out, that surprise us, that break a preconceived pattern. When every business is in a category and sounding identical, none of them stick in memory. And if buyers can't remember us when they're ready to make a purchase, we may as well not exist. The bigger issue with targeting the middle of the curve is our category leaders have that part of the market pretty much sewn up. Their business model mandates owning the largest market share, but also staying safe and generic with their messaging. Even if they wanted to stand out, they can't, since they'd risk losing what made them successful in the first place. They're locked into being Margherita pizza for the rest of their lives. It's no longer a choice. But that creates an opening for the rest of us. There's plenty of research out there about this. I mean, behavioral science looks at how buyers actually behave rather than how we think they behave, right? One of its most consistent findings is that distinctiveness beats differentiation. Being memorable matters more than being marginally better on some feature list that most buyers won't remember anyway. But distinctiveness requires specificity. It requires standing for something in particular. Which therefore means not standing for other things. As a business, that feels dangerous, right? What if we alienate potential buyers? What if we pick the wrong positioning? What if the market we're targeting turns out to be smaller than we thought? Now, these are all legitimate concerns, but the bigger issue is that playing it safe guarantees we stay invisible. Walk on the right side, walk on the left, but if you walk in the middle of the street, you're gonna get squished. When we try to appeal to everyone, we're creating messaging that could apply to anyone. We create case studies that showcase results but without showing how we think we're different. We put out content that avoids any position that might be controversial. But in short, we've become a collection of platitudes. But buyers don't choose platitudes. They can't even remember them long enough to consider them. Our commercial opportunity exists in the margins, not in the middle. It exists in being specific about who we serve and how we serve them. Not in a niche for the sake of niche way, but in a way that makes our point of view clear. Some businesses get this. They don't try to be everything. They pick a lane and they own it. They use language that resonates with their actual buyers, even if it confuses or alienates everyone else. They make claims that are specific enough to be memorable, which also makes them specific enough to be wrong. Yes, that last part is what stops most of us. Being specific means possibly being called out if we're full of BS. If we say we're best for 'Enterprise software companies struggling with technical debt' for some reason, okay? Someone can check whether that's true. But if we say we deliver innovative solutions, no one can prove us wrong because it doesn't mean anything. We've optimized for unfalsifiability— is that even a word?— instead of memorability. Then there's the 95/5 rule to consider, right? Which I've talked about before. Most of our potential buyers aren't in market right now. They're not actively looking for whatever we're selling. They won't be for weeks, months, maybe years. And when they finally do enter their market, they're going to consider the providers that come to mind. Not the ones that were objectively best, but the ones that stuck in memory. Building that memory requires consistency over time, requires saying the same distinctive things repeatedly until they become associated with us. It requires resisting the urge to smooth out our edges every time we worry that we might be too specific. So those big, uh, dominant, uh, players, the 80 the 800-pound gorillas, the category leaders, the ones who are dominating that middle. They've already built that memory. They did it over decades. They can afford to be generic now because everybody knows who they are, and we can't afford that luxury. Which brings us back to pizza. Margherita pizza exists because it offends no one. Tomato, mozzarella, basil, you know, a bit of seasoning. That's it. It's the choice you make when you don't know what everyone wants. Pineapple pizza, on the other hand, is polarizing. People either love it or they hate it, which is why it works as positioning. Because the people who love it really love it. They remember it. They seek it out. They argue about it. Not many people passionately argue about margherita pizza unless it's an exceptional one-of-a-kind margherita pizza made by an artisan with exceptional ingredients and so on, in which case I'd argue that we're no longer talking about something that's margherita pizza. We're talking about something distinctive. We're talking about something that stands out. This is no longer margherita pizza. Standing out means standing for something in particular, which is the risk, but it's also the opportunity. We can try to outbland the businesses that have already won the blandness competition, or we can find the buyers who are actually looking for pineapple pizza and make it clear that's what we're selling. And most businesses won't make that choice. They're going to carry on keeping trying to optimize for the broadest possible appeal. They're going to keep using the same language as everybody else and then keep wondering why their marketing's not working. The middle of the market will stay crowded with interchangeable options, which leaves room for the rest of us at the edges with a stuffed crust. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, please pass it on. I'm not saying I'm right, I'm saying many out there are wrong. Please subscribe, share, comment, whatever works for you. Find out more at kexino.com, that's K-E-X-I-N-O. Hope to see you again here soon.