Sometimes I wonder if complex products are actually that hard to understand or if we’ve just become bad at explaining them.
Simplify too much and you lose what makes the product interesting but explain everything and you lose the audience - where’s the sweet spot?
“Make the logo bigger” tells a creative what to do
“The brand isn’t coming through strongly enough” tells them what needs solving
Small difference. Much better creative outcomes - agree or disagree?
The brands I remember don't tell me everything upfront.
They make me curious enough to want to learn more.
Yet so much B2B marketing tries to answer every possible question before the audience even cares.
Have we forgotten that curiosity is part of good marketing?
The technology on display was incredible. Companies have clearly invested millions into developing genuinely innovative products.
But when you stopped to read the brochures, watch the videos or listen to the pitches, a lot of them struggled to explain why their technology mattered.
It made me wonder why do so many engineering and technical companies spend years perfecting a product, then leave the communication as an afterthought?
In our experience, the hardest part isn't making something look good. It's taking months (or years) of technical knowledge and turning it into something a customer understands in 60 seconds.
Curious whether others have noticed the same thing.
If you work in engineering, aerospace or B2B tech, what's harder:
or
I've been thinking about how much B2B marketing advice gets repeated without anyone really questioning it.
Mine is explaining every feature isn't the same as communicating value.
I've seen companies spend months refining what their product does, when buyers just want to know why it matters. Sometimes less information creates more clarity.
What's your B2B marketing hill to die on? What's an opinion you have that goes against the usual advice?
I've noticed something recently - the people building the product often know exactly how it works, but explaining why someone should care is a completely different skill.
Sometimes the challenge isn't marketing the product, it's agreeing internally on what the story actually is.
Have you ever worked somewhere where everyone described the same product differently? How did you get everyone aligned?
One thing we've noticed when working across technical sectors is that many B2B explainer videos jump straight into features, dashboards and technical capabilities.
They're often beautifully produced, but they can assume the audience already understands why the product matters.
The explainers that seem to resonate most usually take a different approach:
• Start with the challenge the customer is facing.
• Show why that challenge matters.
• Introduce the solution naturally.
• Then use visuals to make the more technical details easier to understand.
Whether it's SaaS, engineering, fintech or life sciences, people generally connect with the problem before they care about the product.
When you're creating B2B content, do you lead with the problem, the solution or the features? Have you found one approach consistently works better than the others?
Mine is that most messaging isn't unclear because the product is complex, it's unclear because the people writing it are too close to it The more expertise a company has, the harder it often becomes for them to explain what they do simply.
What other "silent truths" have people noticed??
If I can't explain what the company does after 10 seconds, the website has failed.
Surprisingly, most don't fail because of bad design.
They fail because they try to explain everything at once.
What's the biggest clarity mistake you see B2B companies make?
Not even from a “looks cool” perspective, just explaining something clearly, confidently and visually instantly makes a product feel more credible.
Especially in B2B/deep tech where most people are seeing the product for the first time - has anyone else noticed this??
After 10 seconds, could someone explain what the company actually does?
A lot can’t.
Usually because the messaging tries to include
every feature
every service
every detail instead of helping people instantly “get it.”
What’s the biggest thing that makes B2B messaging unclear in your opinion?