Image by Nicole Todd
When it comes to tailoring marketing materials for specific industries (think healthcare, manufacturing, or financial services), there’s a quick-fix trap many teams use: find and replace. Swap “customer” for “patient.” Change “supply chain” to “retail.” Call it a day.
There’s just one problem: your audience can tell when you’re not quite speaking their language.
The results of this find-and-replace approach are serviceable, but we’ve seen them fall flat in the market—where every B2B product seems to be talking to everyone. Industry audiences expect more than cosmetic changes. They want tools and tech that make them better at their job. A healthcare CMO isn’t looking for a generic promise of efficiency; they want to know how your solution helps providers save time with electronic records or streamlined patient interactions. A financial services audience might be less interested in speeding up internal processes and more interested in how you maintain regulatory compliance. Without that level of specificity, your content risks sounding broad, like it’s for everyone. And when it’s for everyone, it’s forgettable.
Try building a better burger
The better approach is to create scalable assets that can flex across industries without losing its human edge. We think of it as building a hamburger: the buns are always the same, but the fillings and condiments can be easily swapped out to suit specific preferences. Extra cheese? Veggie burger? Just like different eaters have distinct tastes and dietary needs, different industries have unique expectations, priorities, and challenges.
In practical terms, this means the structure of your datasheet, ebook, or webinar can remain consistent across industries, while the middle layers—the use cases, proof points, customer stories, and more—can be tailored for each vertical.
- Bun: Intro that sets the scene and defines the customer’s challenge
- Burger: Use cases and proof point specific to the industry
- Toppings: Real-world customer success stories
- Bun: Conclusion that distills the value of your product
This repeatability gives marketers the best of both worlds: efficiency in production and authenticity in messaging. Instead of rushing to retrofit broad assets at the last minute, you’ve got a strategic messaging plan that scales and resonates.
Assets that adapt to every audience
It pays to speak the industry lingo. We’ve seen this firsthand. By interviewing subject matter experts, tailoring messaging to sub-personas, and recognizing how different verticals prioritize outcomes, audiences can better see themselves in the marketing.
We’ve seen clients get a lot of mileage out of our industry-ready approach, and the messaging and positioning frameworks (MPFs) behind it, for this exact reason. An MPF ensures each message reflects the right challenges, vocabulary, and value drivers for the audience, while scalable assets can be created quickly across verticals.
There’s power in speaking someone’s language like this. It builds trust and gives buyers the confidence to advocate for your solution inside their organizations. For marketers, that means moving beyond quick fixes and investing in a repeatable—dare we say delicious?—framework that balances efficiency with authenticity. And, for us at 2A, it means helping teams create materials that both reach and resonate with industry audiences.