Test how B2B customers understand your positioning and messaging

Positioning is about how customers understand your offering in relation to their needs and available alternatives. Messaging turns that positioning into the words you use on websites, in presentations and throughout the customer journey.

Before testing different messages, establish what stays the same:

• The product or service and what it actually does.
• The problem and customer situation you’re addressing.
• The capabilities, benefits and limitations you can substantiate.
• The customer role and business context you’re testing.

Then vary how you explain the offering.

One version might emphasize operational visibility. Another might emphasize coordination or reducing manual work. Both can describe the same product accurately while helping you investigate which explanation communicates its value more clearly.

If a message only becomes attractive when you imply capabilities the product doesn’t have, that isn’t a messaging improvement.

A useful message test goes beyond asking whether someone likes a headline.

What to explore · Questions worth asking

• Understanding: What do you think this product actually does? Who would use it?
• Terminology: Which terms feel familiar, unclear or open to different interpretations?
• Relevance: In what situation would this matter to you? What problem does it appear to address?
• Comparison and differentiation: What would you compare it with? What, if anything, appears different?
• Credibility and proof: Which claims would you want demonstrated or independently supported?
• Missing information: What would you still need to know before considering the offering?

The distinction between understanding and preference matters.

Someone might find a statement attractive while interpreting it as a promise of functionality you don’t provide. Another person might understand the product perfectly but see no meaningful difference from an existing tool.

These are different problems and call for different changes.

Start with two genuinely different explanations of the same offering.

1. Establish a common baseline. Describe the product, its actual capabilities, the intended customer and the alternatives customers might already use. Keep this information unchanged throughout the comparison.
2. Define the customer context. Select a specific role, industry, geography and company size. For example, a procurement operations manager at a UK manufacturing company with several production sites.
3. Explore each message. Use structured conversations with virtual customers to investigate interpretation, relevance, unfamiliar terms, implied capabilities and expected proof. Use the same core questions for both versions. Where practical, explore the versions in separate conversations to reduce the influence of earlier wording.
4. Record differences and uncertainties. Note possible misunderstandings, unsupported expectations and missing information. Separate what appeared in the simulated conversation from your team’s interpretation.

Avoid treating the result as a popularity contest. The useful output is a clearer understanding of what each message needs to communicate and what real customers must help you verify.

Illustrative scenario. The product, company and messages are fictional.

Imagine a B2B software company with an established supplier onboarding platform.

The platform stores supplier documents, records their status and lets employees assign responsibility for follow-up tasks. It does not automatically verify whether documents satisfy every compliance requirement.

The product team wants to improve its messaging for procurement operations managers at mid-sized UK manufacturers.

It prepares two descriptions:

Message A: Centralized information "Keep supplier onboarding documents and tasks organized in one shared workspace."

Message B: Clearer follow-up responsibilities "Track outstanding supplier documents and assign someone to follow up."

Both describe the same underlying capabilities. But they emphasize different aspects of the work.

The team can now explore questions such as:

• Does "supplier onboarding" clearly mean introducing new suppliers, or could it be misunderstood?
• Does "shared workspace" suggest replacing an existing procurement system?
• Does "track outstanding documents" imply automatic document checking?
• Which explanation makes the actual day-to-day work easier to understand?
• What demonstration or evidence would be needed to support the message?

The exercise does not establish which version customers prefer. It reveals possible interpretation gaps and competing hypotheses worth investigating.

After the conversations, create a short message-testing brief rather than declaring a winning headline.

For each important observation or possible misunderstanding, record the hypothesis and the next test.

Messaging hypothesis · How to investigate with real customers

• "Supplier onboarding" may be ambiguous.: Show the message without explanation and ask what activity the product supports.
• "Shared workspace" may imply replacing another system.: Ask which tools the participant would expect it to connect with or replace.
• "Track outstanding documents" may suggest automatic verification.: Ask what capabilities the wording leads them to expect, then compare those expectations with the actual product.
• Follow-up responsibilities may be a more relevant benefit than centralized storage.: Discuss a recent supplier onboarding task and which difficulties actually mattered.

In real interviews, show messages individually where practical and let participants explain them in their own words before asking leading questions.

Look for comprehension, relevant problems, credible differentiation and unexpected interpretations. Existing customer conversations, product demonstrations and observed behavior can provide additional evidence.

Use that evidence to refine the message, not simply the wording that received the most positive reaction.

Sometimes neither message works.

Perhaps the intended customer doesn’t recognize the problem. Perhaps the stated differentiation isn’t meaningful, or the product is being compared with an alternative the team hadn’t considered.

That may point to a positioning or underlying value question rather than a copywriting problem.

Virtual Customer can help you explore those possibilities, but simulated reactions cannot establish market preference, willingness to buy or the effectiveness of a campaign. Those conclusions require appropriate real-world evidence.

A useful test should leave you knowing whether to rewrite the message, investigate the positioning or return to customer discovery.