Scaling B2B Messaging Across Personas: Why You Should Scale Ideas, Not Copy
- Caroline Warnes
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
There's a persistent belief in some B2B marketing circles that you can create one message to rule them all. The idea is seductive: a set of magical key messages that will resonate with the CEO, CFO, CIO, board, end user, procurement... you get the picture. For those of us who like efficiency, it's a very appealing idea indeed.
Unfortunately, in my experience, it's usually a fantasy. When you stretch one message across every persona, it loses its edge and speaks to no one.
In other words: You don't scale messaging. You scale ideas.
The myth of scaling one message across personas
Marketers chase a single message for a few reasons: efficiency and fear of inconsistency being the main ones, although I suspect that many of us also like the neatness of a single pack that can be stored on a drive and handed around the business.
The trouble is, those efficiencies come at the expense of relevance. When the CFO and CIO in our target organisations receive the same three-to-five key messages, sliced and diced in various ways, it usually presents as the classic piece of marketing content: looks great, aligned with the key messages but unfortunately, doesn't land. Why? When the CFO is worrying about cost of capital and the CIO is weighing integration risks, neither really cares that much about the key messages you want to get across to them.
Why you should scale ideas, not B2B messaging
The scalable unit in really great B2B content strategy is the idea. An idea is the spine of the narrative; the central truth that holds the story together. I wrote more about why a narrative spine is so critical in the context of LLM search in this recent article.
Messaging is how that idea is translated into language that matters to each persona. The CFO needs to see the financial levers. The CIO needs to understand the operational control points. The end user cares about usability. This feels fairly obvious when you spell it out, but I see this get missed all the time.
When you scale the idea, each of these audiences can be addressed directly, in their own terms, without losing the thread of the story.
Consistency and opportunity lie at the idea level, not the messaging pack level.
How to scale B2B content across personas
If scaling messaging across personas feels unwieldy to you, it's usually a good sign that you've cast your net too wide. As much as we would like to, most B2B marketers simply don't have access to the time and resources to talk to every persona who interacts with our buying process in a really meaningful way. (You can talk to as many personas as you like in a superficial way, but manage your expectations about how much influence you will have with all of them.)
For most of us who sit in small teams with finite resources, it's okay to start with the most critical personas. Focus, then expand.
Spend time not on the messaging, but on distilling the core insight. Write down what each persona cares about in relation to that idea. For example:
Core insight: Data only has value when it drives better decisions.
For CFOs: “Your data is only valuable when it improves the quality of your forecasts and capital allocation. It gives you confidence that financial decisions are based on evidence rather than assumptions.”
For CIOs: “Data is only valuable when the architecture and governance make it usable across the business. Without trust in the systems, there is no trust in the decisions.”
For sales leads: “Data is only valuable when it helps you see the customer more clearly, shortening sales cycles and giving you the edge to close deals.”
Or to give you an idea of how that looks in my world... at Only Good Content, our core idea is simple: great B2B content is always human-first content.
That principle doesn’t change. What changes is how we might talk about it with our different audiences.
For CMOs:“Human-first content means we stop talking in the language of the org chart and start talking in the language of your buyers. That's we get your content moving customers through the pipeline and proving its value to sales.”
For founders and CEOs:“Human-first content gets your story out of the pitch deck and brings it to life. Let's build a narrative people can connect to, and make it the reason investors back you, customers choose you and partners trust you.”
For heads of investor relations and ESG:“Human-first content means reports that don’t read like compliance exercises. They read like credible, transparent updates to intelligent humans making decisions about your business.”
It really can be that simple. Hold the narrative spine steady, then build out from it. Each story remains aligned to the same strategic idea, but no one feels like they are being fed recycled copy.
Why key messages don't drive B2B content
Key messages have a role in most organisations. They make sense if you are preparing talking points for a spokesperson. They are not what drives effective B2B marketing content.
In content marketing, key messages quickly become stale. When you repeat a different version of the same lines month after month, your audience switches off.
What you need instead are key themes and ideas. A strong idea can be expressed in different ways, expanded as part of a months- or years-long narrative and scaled across personas, without getting stale.
Final thought
The next time someone from outside marketing sidles up to you to ask where the latest key messaging pack is, feel confident in letting them know that's not how we scale messaging across personas these days.
We start with the idea. We invest time in building a narrative spine. Then we translate for each persona in their language.
The message pack will not save you. The idea will.
Ready to scale ideas, not just key messages?
If you’re wondering how to create a clear content narrative that everyone in your business can use, the Narrative Sprint is built for you.
Over four-to-six weeks of focused activity, we’ll build the narrative foundations that carry through every channel; from marketing and sales to investors and partners. That includes:
Audience priorities
Story pillars
Core ideas and the narrative that scales across content
A 12-month plan for campaigns and content ideas to support your narrative
It’s a fast, focused way to align your business around a story that builds trust and converts.
