Create Desire To Accelerate Sales

Everyone knows that Nike doesn’t use its ads to sell shoes.  They don’t mention them.

Yet their ads are good – most agree they feel drawn in and that they make you think.  The experts say they have the best marketing in the world. And they sell 800 million shoes a year.

What exactly are they doing? And how does it work? 

Here is a breakdown of why this Nike ad and the other ads shown below are effective. They are from print ads and web copy for ease of demonstrating how these companies initially engage their market.   But the principles apply to generate engagement in all communication in B2B SaaS – whether advertisements, marketing materials, corporate narrative, website copy, slide deck or any verbal or written communication. 

Three Rules for Constructing an Engaging Message

Effective engagement has three common characteristics: (i) defines a compelling market or business opportunity with a (ii) pattern interruption that is (iii) personal to the audience. 

1. Focus Initially on the Business Opportunity, not Product Value:

Sellers should avoid discussing their product value or outcomes and instead explain the business opportunity: the value potential and how Buyer’s organization will change for the better (because of your product without mentioning your product).  

Buyers operate for revenue and growth, not your product. It is easier to engage them on a business opportunity because they are already invested in their market.  Seller’s products are foreign, and Buyers are more likely to engage on what is of interest to them.  

In the Nike ad, the business or market opportunity is achieving your dreams.  Nike doesn’t talk about its products because it's irrelevant to emotional engagement and can even detract from it. 

Here's an example from IBM using business opportunity-focused messaging:

IBM is targeting companies with ESG-related goals and eliminates much of their competition through this framing.  IBM’s competitors are likely talking about data and analytics but IBM is the only one talking about the future their customers actually seek. 

2. Pattern Interruption

A message should interrupt the Buyer’s expectations to spark interest in the business opportunity. This does not mean you must create a new category or new market - but instead force the Buyer to appreciate a new perspective on the market they already think they understand. 

In the Nike ad, Nike creates a pattern interruption by violating Buyers’ understanding of the “market” – here, your personal dreams - by re-framing them as achievable. This is not how most people understand dreams (they consider them “crazy”).  

But the picture of a young Serena Williams supports their argument. This little girl with no business playing tennis based on conventional wisdom is the greatest women’s tennis player, and one of the greatest athletes of all time. 

Here’s a great example of pattern interruption from an old commercial for the company Qwest.  (A sign of its effectiveness is that I remembered this commercial while writing this article — 20 years after I saw it).

3. Personal is Emotional

Messaging must be personal to retain Buyer interest.  Humans are emotionally invested in their own well-being and success, and identifying with their personal needs will keep their attention.

While the Nike ad arguably can stir up emotions of dreams unfulfilled, messaging does not need to be tear-jerking to be effective.  Rather, effective messaging is emotionally engaging because it is personal.

Here’s an an example from Apple:

Culturally, there is significant fear about data privacy and the tradeoffs of free software and applications (i.e. “You are the product”).   Apple frames the market opportunity as privacy, and simply brands its phone as private. The picture makes the personal nature of the opportunity clear  – YOU get the benefits of the IPhone while retaining anonymity.  

In B2B, messaging is personal when the value you provide affects individual roles at the company.  Your buyers have invested their time and careers in their job – they care about personal and business success. 

B2B Sellers are thus incentivized to frame their value to be personal to the largest number of people in an organization, given the variety of roles of differing seniority that have decision-making power in an enterprise sale.    

The easiest way to accomplish this is to align Seller’s value with C-level business goals like profit, revenue and customer growth. 

“Better data pipelines” may be a real market opportunity, but will only be personal to those employees specifically focused on data pipelines.  People outside the data team – even if they are directly affected – will not engage because the product is more for “data people”.  

Focusing initially on how Seller’s product helps generate profit, revenue, growth or other business goals is advantageous because these goals are personal to senior management AND operational teams. Operational teams must manage and justify operational value to senior management in those terms.

Examples of Emotional Messaging in B2B SaaS

Here are some examples of effective messaging that emotionally engages its audience. None of these ads mention the Seller’s product, but they all (i) focus on the market opportunity, (ii) use a pattern interrupt and (iii) are personal to their prospective buyers.   

Figma:

Market Opportunity:  Building great products

Pattern Interrupt:  Collaboration not normally tied to design, which often is seen an individual artistic endeavor

Personal:  Everyone is focused on making great products.

Figma is known as a “product led growth” company, meaning it uses its product as the primary driver of sales.  Nonetheless, its value framing on its website is extremely effective messaging to emotionally engage its market.  

First Party Data:

Market Opportunity: Make money from your data

Pattern Interrupt:  Violates the conventional wisdom that only certain companies can derive revenue from their data

Personal:  Data leaders and Senior Management care about new revenue streams

Zuora:

Market Opportunity: “new paradigm” in business

Pattern Interrupt:  Everyone is aware of the increasing importance of subscriptions, but it's intriguing to see it labeled as a new, “subscription economy”.  

Personal:  Zuora is defining a new world – senior management will seek to understand this “new” economy to win.

And finally, here is an example of a message that is (in my opinion) ineffective.

Slack:

Not focused on market or business opportunity: Focuses on an interim operational goal, teamwork, together with their product –  a “digital HQ”.

Pattern interruption seems implausible: It's a stretch to say that great teamwork is dependent on Slack’s digital HQ.

Personal to a Few: This is personal only to operational members focused on teamwork.  It is unlikely to capture attention as a transformational product (even if it is one).