What Makes B2B Copywriting Boring?
The Glorious Company Team
With over 470,000 words in the English language—why do businesses fixate on so few?
Does Bland, Uninspired B2B Copy Nauseate You, Too?
As Jason Fried pointed out in 2010, phrases like “full-service solutions provider,” “effective end-to-end solutions,” and “provider of value-added services” appear on hundreds of thousands of websites.
So let me ask this (cringey) question: If every business is an “agile, cutting-edge, expert, best-in-class game-changer,” then is any business really what they say at all? Cookie-cutter copy creates more problems than brain-freeze: it takes an ice cream scoop to a brand’s credibility and trust. No one recalls what was on the page—but the chilly sentiment remains.
The problem, Fried explains, is that “words are treated as filler—‘stuff’ that takes up space on a page.”
Lack of Imagination Plagues Modern Business Writing
Jean Tang, lawyer-turned-journalist and founder of NYC-based copywriting agency MarketSmiths, declared a “War Against Bland” at the inaugural TEDx, pointing out five critical areas where business writing becomes particularly unpalatable:
Corporate Bios: “Aren’t people’s backgrounds and viewpoints the very spice of life?”
We: “Why does the ‘who we are, what we’ve done, whom we serve’ feel so intangible?”
Competitor Copycat: “Why does the ‘what we do’ section sound overly commoditized?”
Telling Platitudes: “Why not use a story to show us what makes your brand real?”
Verbose: “Instead of an encyclopedic description of your offering, what if less is more?”
As a B2B copywriter, I’ve seen the genesis of the problem, how it’s unfolded over two decades, and precisely where it’s headed—and it looks like it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
From Copywriting for Bots to Copywriting for Blah: It’s Bleak
In the early days, the Internet was a new frontier for selling—and businesses were eagerly chomping at the bit to get noticed and break away from the pack. Search Engine Optimization promised a knowable way forward.
Mistakes were made.
Herein lies the problem: we all want the juicy sale. To borrow flavor from Lord of the Rings, the sale’s the “my precious”—and B2B brands have turned into the greedy Gollum, so obsessed and all-consumed with getting the “precious” sale that they’ve lost identity, heart, and soul in the process. They’ve forgotten about the people, the personal touches, the collective ingenuity that makes them human.
Websites became parking lots for every biddable buzzword on the block—“Buy discount shoes, get back to school shoe deals, and find affordable shoes online!”—making some early business websites downright unreadable.
The next step in business copy evolution could be thought of as a backlash to hammer-over-the-head sales tactics. Strategists surmised that they could hook and sell more subtly if they conflagrated the process with obtuse, vague intellectualism that appealed to the higher consciousness of their C-suite audiences. “Buy discount shoes” became “Buy luxurious, state-of-the-art pieces of handcrafted, artisan, genuine leather.”
B2B brands went all-in on perceived differentiators—which were the same perceived differentiators many of their competitors were touting. (GROUPTHINK—aghhh! It’s a real feel.)
Fast-forward to the present. Enter: Large.Language.Models.
Still looking to stand out from the crowd? Chat-GPT and friends promise you can saturate your market with MORE words FASTER than ever before. Now we’ve arrived at a new era of boring B2B writing that aggregates the most common writing conventions and pushes them out en masse.
Now we can “Embark upon a journey of artisan, genuine leather that elevates the senses with an exploration of hand-crafted excellence to level-up your life to one of unparalleled adventure.”
You can substitute any product, any brand, anything at all into the blanks, but it’s all mind-numbing gobbledy-gook.
In the Right Hands, Words are Crisp Engines of Action
We know words are so much more! Strung together in the right fashion, words change hearts and minds, inspire confidence, solve challenges. Whether it’s a novel or a snippet of ad copy, stories unite us, define our time, and drive us forward. Through shared sentiments, we arrive at moments of collective evolution.
From a business perspective, popular idioms like “Content is King” persist for a reason.
As the Content Marketing Institute reports, "Content marketing generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less."
Companies continue to invest deeply in filling pages with words—because words work.
Better B2B Writing Involves Soul-Searching
Beyond filling a page, B2B copy’s ultimate purpose is profound:
To connect audience to brand with the shared human wavelength
To show “We see your struggle and we can help” and share unique perspectives
To clarify offerings and show the impact that products and services can have
To inspire action, build a relationship, and cultivate lasting affinity
To get there, businesses need to:
Start asking the right questions (which may require an outside perspective or an agency partner to help make it happen).
Bring subject matter experts out of the back-room and into the spotlight (and explore shiny, new vehicles for thought leadership.)
Take a storytelling page from B2C. (Google makes it clear: that’s what people want!)
Beloved B2C brands like Patagonia, Samsung, Toyota, and Costco get all the love and praise for their creative marketing copy—but is there a place for zippy turns of phrase and storytelling aimed at corporate decision-makers?
Well, sure, B2B audiences may not be chasing “gifts for a good story” (like Patagonia fans) or “a little love this holiday season” (like Toyota drivers), but they are looking to do business with real people selling real solutions.
Instead of telling us how great your brand is, paint us a picture and show us the impact.
Business decision-makers care less about writing that conveys an IQ of 132 or a masters from the Harvard School of Business, and more about writing that delivers the clear, digestible, and perfectly parsed information they’re looking for—information that appeals to mind and heart, information that inspires confidence.
Working with an outsourced creative team can make all the difference.
This is a guest post by Jennn Fusion, a Senior Copywriter at MarketSmiths, a NYC based copywriting agency specializing in Copywriting for Humans® and bringing powerful brand stories to life.
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