Tradeshift
Instigation:
Tradeshift is a B2B start-up offering a free invoicing platform and a growing web-based business network. Like many start-ups, its vision was grander than its reality. It quickly found itself in a sea of small companies offering commoditized e-invoicing services. Frustrating to employee and founder alike was the challenge of navigating between here and where they want to be. Their marketing had become muddled.
As the new CMO John Eng observed, “Our vision was so big it was hard to communicate. Our messaging had to speak to a range of small to large companies. The challenge was that we’d never really codified a company-wide story or the messaging that conveyed that story.”
Insight:
To guide Tradeshift through these elemental waters, he wanted a true strategic partner who could bring together marketing excellence, expertise in qualitative research, and an active creative mind that can channel this into effective messaging.
John called on B2P to
- Build-out Tradeshift’s story based on the vision of the founders and leaders
- Explore the needs and perceptions of key enterprise and vendor prospects
- Determine and build consensus around the positioning and messaging that builds in the required vision, values and marketing insights (Key Prospect Insights).
Impact:
Tradeshift gained a positioning and messaging for the company, their prospects, and vendors, that resonates, distinguishes them from the competitors, and unites the company internally. This was based on Key Prospect Insights (KPIs) about their enterprise and vendor prospects, prospect journey maps for those in the buying center, and a map of the positioning landscape.
In addition, several prospects we interviewed as part of our Explore process opted to follow up with Tradeshift about their needs. And most satisfying of all, the founder adopted the new positioning immediately and wholeheartedly.