Hi, I’m James. Thanks for checking out Building Momentum: a newsletter to help startup founders and marketers accelerate SaaS growth through product marketing.
As product marketers, we often don’t hold budget and companies know that. So we don’t get cold emailed, cold-called, actively chased by anyone (except the spammy list sellers using Gmail accounts).
But it’s a different story for the rest of your colleagues. Message your demand-gen friends, your rev ops team, or your HR reps and find out.
They’re swimming in sales outreaches, ads, and marketing slop every week.
… now ask them how many they actually engaged with.
In this post:
The reality of modern marketing
The answer will be the same: They’ll archive emails, reject calls, ignore LinkedIn messages.
Now ask them how they react to paid marketing: Google ads for high intent keywords will be the only ads they’ll actually remember engaging with.
Social ads? Mostly wasted unless it’s super relevant, timely, and actually interesting. (Trust me, this is rare).
Sponsored content? They’ll feel cheated when they realise it’s an advertorial.
They’ll even visit website pages with preconceptions on what they’re looking for, and if they don’t see it, they’ll bounce.
The average B2B buyer (without speaking down about the general population) is smarter than the average consumer. They’re sharp. They’re critical. They clock the format, skim the tone, and make a snap call on whether it’s worth their time. If it feels low-effort or generic, they’re out.
This is the reality: your work has to earn its way. If you’re not meeting buyers on their terms with sharp positioning, relevant messaging, and an actual point, they won’t give you a second glance.
How this shapes your positioning and messaging
If you’ve read this newsletter before, you’ll have read this before: The definition of positioning is to ‘occupy a space in the mind of your customer’.
So your job as a product marketer is to know exactly what’s in your customer’s head to identify the gap that exists.
You can’t build positioning based solely on how your customer uses your product and the first-order outcomes: you have to consider your product is a tiny part of their overall lives.
One of the most common things I try to help PMMs understand when reviewing their messaging is that unless you’ve found something that catches the prospect’s attention, your positioning, even if the core message is great, is going to be ignored.
It’s like one of those ‘hook a duck’ games at a funfair. If you don’t make your positioning (the duck, in this stupid metaphor) eye-catching, attractive, persuasive, and unique with a huge hook, it’s just going to float on by and get lost amongst all the other ducks (in this case, the millions of other messages your prospect is subjected to each year).
So when you’re assessing your messaging, think: why would the buyer pay attention to your duck?
- What exactly does your buyer believe about this category? Not just what they say on sales calls — what do they really think? What baggage are they carrying from past tools, broken promises, or overhyped solutions?
- What assumptions are they carrying? What do they think they already know about your product type or approach? What are they wrong about — and how will you change that?
- What have they tried before? And why didn’t it work? If you’re not speaking to that pain, your value won’t feel urgent.
- What makes them ignore things? What words, phrases, formats, or ideas are they numb to? What do they associate with BS?
- What would make them stop scrolling? What hits hard enough that it disrupts the mental autopilot and makes them say: “Wait, that’s me.”
If your messaging doesn’t tap into that, it’s not differentiated… it’s invisible.
How this changes your sales narrative
Another oft-used concept on this newsletter: Focus + Confidence = Momentum.
A common error is thinking that ‘prioritisation’ is the sole definition of focus. Focus also means clarity. You need to know a niche, specific type of customer with extreme empathy and context.
Only then will you not just understand the customer, but be able to pre-empt their reaction. You need to embody their spirit, perception, and thought process.
Maybe it’s just how my brain works, but when I’m writing positioning or building anything, I’m running simulations in my head to imagine the conversations, figure out what happens next, and how my work influences the customer when you’re not in the room.
Being able to think in the customer’s shoes means your sales narratives aren’t reactive — they’re already anticipating what happens next.
- Can your narrative confidently explain why now? What’s the compelling moment or shift that makes this the right time to act — and how clearly does that come through in your deck, your one-pager, your demo flow?
- Does it paint the risk of doing nothing? Not just what your product enables, but what the buyer stands to lose by staying stuck in the status quo?
- Does it show you understand what already lives in the buyer’s head? Their internal blockers, priorities, pressure from leadership — and how your solution meets them where they are, without needing it spelled out?
If not, your narrative’s going to miss the mark.
How this should change your marketing
Your marketing isn’t fighting for attention in a vacuum. It’s scrapping for attention in a market that’s oversaturated with teams firing off campaigns, chasing MQLs, and clinging to whatever worked last quarter: SEO hacks, influencer collabs, and 12 variations of the same whitepaper.
So what wins?
Clarity. Relevance. Proof. Urgency. Distinctiveness.
It’s not just about running ads or publishing content. Your marketing has to answer the right unspoken question in the buyer’s mind. Not just “Why should I care?”, but “Is this actually for me, right now?”
And not in 400 words or a 12-slide carousel either; in the first glance, the first line, the first moment. Because that’s where most marketing dies.
Most marketing teams are under pressure to churn out deliverables. But connection is what earns attention. And attention is what earns action.
Too many teams start with the format, then work backwards. It’s not about how polished the carousel is. It’s about whether it says something the buyer already half-knows but hasn’t quite heard phrased like that before.
When you get that right, when you reflect their reality back at them in a way that feels fresh, specific, and grounded, the format almost doesn’t matter.
Great marketing starts with the buyer. Their context. Their problem. Their frustration. Their moment.
Start there. Because the buyer doesn’t care — not until your message stands out like the only duck with a hook worth grabbing.
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