The B2B BRAND180 Podcast with Linda Fanaras

Building Effective USPs for B2B Brands with Chris Fox, Founder of Ideas-Led Growth

• Linda Fanaras

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In this episode of the B2B Brand180 podcast, Linda discusses the development of Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) with Chris Fox, founder of Ideas-Led Growth. Chris explains the process of identifying and refining a USP, starting from understanding the fundamental change a product or service brings to the world. He emphasizes taking a step back from traditional marketing approaches to focus on the underlying passion and unique value that drives a business. 

The episode also covers strategies for breaking down the USP into actionable marketing plans, including thought leadership content and targeted communication efforts.


01:42 Understanding Unique Selling Propositions (USPs)

04:51 Breaking Down USPs into Strategies

09:45 Implementing Thought Leadership in Marketing

17:04 Rapid Fire Question

More on Chris:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophergfox

Linda's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/

Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: https://mill.agency

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency/

Linda's Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/


Linda Fanaras:

Welcome to the B2B Brand180 podcast where we discuss branding and marketing tools for business. My goal today is to provide transformative, innovative approaches that can help you make a 180-degree shift in your marketing efforts or complete reversals in brand strategies. Hi, I am Linda Fanaras and I'm the owner of Millennium Agency, a branding and growth strategy firm, and the host of the B2B Brand180 podcast. Today I'm bringing in Chris Fox, founder of Ideas-Led Growth. Chris is focused on amplifying voices. He's a ghost writer, mentor, does strategies, and he is skilled in developing messages that influence and inspire. Prior to his corporate world career, Chris taught literature and culture at the undergraduate and graduate level, and he holds a PhD in French literature from the John Hopkins University. So in this episode, you'll learn a few things. You'll better understand how to determine a unique selling proposition. Why is thought leadership still relevant in the world of B2B content and what are the best strategies or approaches companies can use to publish thought leaders? Those are just a couple of the topics that we'll be covering today. So now with our conversation with Chris, welcome Chris. It's great to have you here today.

Chris Fox:

Great, Linda. Thank you. I'm, I'm really looking forward to the conversation. And I guess, uh, since we're on video, the audience has already met one of my best interns and we had a little animal visitor over my shoulder. That's great. But, uh, I've, I've sent him off to go do some other tasks and we can, uh, focus on our conversation.

Linda Fanaras:

Fantastic. So we'll just get started. So let me ask you, Chris, so how do you determine, how do you determine a value proposition and what is the actual process that goes with that?

Chris Fox:

Yeah, so I, I think that's a great question because there, there's a lot of topic and talk about this, this idea of generating a, a, a value proposition or, or a USP and. One of the ways that I like to work with clients is, is let's kind of put all of that aside and take a further step back and use that as your starting point. And that step back is, and I, and I really believe this, I've seen this from very large B2B organizations that I've worked with that are established and they've been in business for decades to startups that have just gotten the ball rolling. There's something really special that can anchor a USP. That is, I believe that any product or service is based on an idea about change. And what I mean by saying that is that business owners or product leaders just don't spend all of the time and energy and all the intensity of developing a new product or a service unless they really believe that it's going to do something better somehow. And so the first place to start on that USP is take a step back out of building mode and even take a step back out of marketing mode and think about, I am committing to this idea because I believe that a change is necessary in the world and it can be a very microscopic change. So I devote my business ideas led growth to changing the way financial institutions. Do their thought leadership. Now, if you look in the world around you, that's not a really huge niche, but it works really, really well. And a lot of the clients that I work with, they're developing a, a very specific B2B product to help hedge funds do their accounting or to help portfolio managers run their investments or these often very, very niche topics.

Chris Fox (2):

Mm-hmm.

Chris Fox:

But underneath that, the reason why they're dedicating all this time and energy is because they believe. A, that something needs to be changed, and B, that they have a, a set of tools and approaches and solutions for making that change happen. So when I start with clients and when I would really talk to anyone about A USP, I always start there as put everything away for now, and let's talk even on just an emotional level. Why do you care so much about this thing that you're building? And that's often the. The most valuable thing because everything else can be replicated in the market. But that underlying passion in that I have an idea for change and making something better is very difficult to replicate by any other company.

Linda Fanaras:

So when you go through the process or when a company determines what their unique selling proposition is, what is the next step for them? What do they do with that?

Chris Fox:

Yeah. So then I think that's when it starts to break down into some areas that are a little bit more recognizable as traditional marketing or traditional strategy. So let's say, I mean, it's, it's really easy to use my own example and I think it's maybe more approachable than some of the very obscure institutional finance stuff that I do with clients. So I, so I will talk about my own business, but only as an example. 'cause I, I think it will be helpful to listeners. So, you know, I, I, I started off with this idea. That I have about a better and more impactful way to do thought leadership in the financial industry. Right? So you take that, that's my idea about change. And then I decompose that into, what does that mean strategically? It means I need to work with a solid mixture of. Top tier and established companies and startups because I have to understand the full cycle of innovation in the industry and it means I have to understand what marketing teams within these companies, or sometimes a smaller company, what the founders, how are they doing it now? Mm-hmm. Breaking it down into that sense of like, alright, so my strategy is a lot of these companies. Have internal writing teams that struggle to handle the very complicated and technical financial ideas, or they've worked with content agencies that are great at doing things like SEO content or ad copy or some of these other things, but they really struggle if you're talking about something complex around regulation or. You look at like a hedge fund, and there are these real, these obscure financial instruments that they trade in. That's what the product leaders want to talk about,

Linda Fanaras:

right? Marketers.

Chris Fox:

Marketers are great at marketing sometimes when you're talking about a very technical field like fi, finance. Uh, early in my career, I had some experience with this in healthcare as well. The, the things that the people building the product or service care about and the things, the marketing care. Team cares about don't always come together.

Chris Fox (2):

Right. So that

Chris Fox:

was another element of like, if I believe that's the change, then break it down and figure out, well, I have to get inside that mix. I have to be able to step between the marketing team and some of the content agencies that they've been using to show, like when you're doing the thought leadership, there's a better and different way instead of like multiple and multiple drafts and. Executives and subject matter experts get frustrated. Oh, it's still not right. It's still not right. You're not getting it. You're not getting it. It's because they don't have that expertise. So what I'm really saying is because I understood the change that I wanted to create, then it was looking for those strategic opportunities. Like I have to position myself as a top tier strategic advisor to some of these large institutions. Now, my company is very small. I have eight. Team members. I'm sometimes dealing with companies that are 50, 60,000 employees. So the, the breaking down the USP into figuring out well how to get to be part of those conversations with my clients, I think that kind of model works really well for other businesses too, where once you know what change you want, you have to figure out, well. Who delivers that change? How? How are things working now and how can I intervene and create some space for myself in there that then I start to build up the credibility. My, my industry is very word of mouth based, so my strategy from a marketing perspective as well, now I have to create all that word of mouth through relationships, through client work, all of those different aspects, right? And so that's what I mean about how you start to break it down into. Pieces, like, okay, if I say I want to change the world of thought leadership, you have to break it down to say, okay, well, what that means is I have to be in the conversation when they're doing the planning around their product launches. And in order to do that, I need to know these people and have them aware of what I offer. And in order for them to be aware of what I offer, I have to, I have to run a certain set of marketing campaigns that gets that messages out there. And so that's really what I mean about like. It sounds like, oh, wow. Like you're, you're talking about these big philosophical things, but that's what you do. You start to break it down into like, well, how would I do that? How would I get there? How would I get there? How would I get there? And by the time you're like five or six levels down, you have some very specific and actionable things about, all right, well, that means I need to be. Posting on these four topics on LinkedIn on a weekly basis. And I have to make sure that I'm following these types of people with this profile.

Linda Fanaras:

Yeah, and I think, you know, from our audience's perspective, to give them a little bit of context around this let's take a technology firm as an example, or manufacturing firm. When they're developing their unique selling proposition or their value proposition, whatever you wanna call it, they're determining either some uniqueness or emotional factor. That really helps differentiate them in the market. So let's say manufacturer's making widgets while they have a certain process that they use that is so unique and different. And then all the other companies out there, they can stand on that and and use that to position themselves in the market. The beauty about something like that is they're able to take that topic and if they can develop some strategy or abstract or concepting around how they can bring a subject matter into the market around that point, can help them elevate themselves as a thought leader. In the market. Yeah, and I think to your point, you know, if you take, you figure out, okay, how am I unique? like these companies, let's say, let's say our audience, for instance. For example, technology firms, manufacturers, whatever, architectural firms, how are they unique? Why are they different? It's not like we're great, but maybe they have a unique offering. Maybe they're different mm-hmm. In some sort of capacity. But taking that differentiator and being able to connect it to some sort of. Thought leadership perspective, which then allows them to build content around that. And then to your point, build maybe LinkedIn posts around that, especially on the B2B side and being able to create a strategy or PR strategy to get some of the material published. Through publications or mm-hmm. Other, other ways to get their name out there, white papers. It could, that could, it could, it could be everything. It could be all of those. Some of those or all of those. So are there any strategies that companies or maybe a, an approach that companies can use to publish the work that they do? They have to have credentials, right? Can't just jump up and be a thought leader. You can on the internet if you want, but to actually have some legs. You wanna make sure you have some cred credentials behind you. So can you speak to that a little bit?

Chris Fox:

Yeah. I like your example because it, it might show something a little unexpected. So if, if you're in the manufacturing space and you have a better widget, maybe it's a certain. Piece of a machine that runs on a production line, but you believe that your piece is, is faster to produce, that it has fewer failure rates, that it prevents the, the, the assembly line from stopping as often as it does, or it reduces accidents or, or some, like, all of these different things that are the benefit of your new widget or you, your new part. Or you're adding a special guard that reduces injuries that that are, that are possible on a manufacturing line or something like that.

Chris Fox (2):

Mm-hmm.

Chris Fox:

Your thought leadership, like, yes, you want to talk about the benefits of your product, but you might also wanna help those manufacturers understand, well, what are the causes of breakdowns on their, on their manufacturing line? What are some of the causes around injury rates? And things like that where you could then say that becomes one of those things that you talk about. So you're not just educating your customers about the thing that you make, but you're helping them understand the problems that they have in a different and more fact-based way. Right? So like that example that, that we're talking about with, you know, let's say it's something that improves the it, it lowers the error rate on. Different items that are being passed through, let's say, like a stamping grid mm-hmm. On a manufacturing line. So one of the things that you might want to educate plant, plant executives about would be things like what causes those flaws and what are the costs of, you know, if, if you are turning out. One out of every 10,000 items needs to be rejected versus one out of every 4,000. That's a pretty big improvement for something that has a lot of throughput. So just helping people understand the costs of letting things be the way they are today, so that you can then create that excitement and energy around the change that you're delivering. So then you break it down and say, all right, well if this, you know, if we've done some research, maybe we've done some of our own studies, we have some case studies with our customers, uh, we have all these things, then you can block those out on a, on a, I mean, literally on a calendar and say, well, week by week we're going to talk about these things. And, and it's, you know, now it's April, right? And our theme of the month is going to be, uh, reducing safety incidents. And we're gonna do that by maybe publishing one longer article that really talks about the whole thing and 15 LinkedIn posts that highlight different aspects of it. And maybe a graphic that shows the data and you know, other social media if you're using it. And if you have, if you have email capability, you're gonna send that email out to all of your clients and prospects. Around this, you know, potentially new or unique way to look at manufacturing failures. And you make that your anchor, uh, that's your anchor for the month or for the quarter. And everything you do is around that one topic, right? And then the next one you move on. So maybe one month or quarter, the theme is health and safety. The next month or quarter it's error reduction.

Chris Fox (2):

Mm-hmm.

Chris Fox:

And you, you kind of go from there. But the thing is, and why I kind of went on a little bit at length about the whole, like what's the idea for change? Is that if you don't know your idea for change, you don't really know which of those angles you should be talking about.

Linda Fanaras:

To just, I think summarize for the audience, I, what we're really talking about today is companies should all have a unique selling proposition or a value proposition, and I am all about the perspective of having it from the emotional. Viewpoint, not just this is what we like, we have a great product because of X, Y, Z. That doesn't really resonate with the markets like an emotional connection would using a value proposition. And once you determine what that is, maybe start to think about how you could craft some messaging around that and maybe an article or some sort of abstract that would help. Push that out into the marketplace. So to your point, Chris, if you had a company, they had a unique selling proposition, they did something differently, they were able to build out a thought leadership piece around that and use that as maybe a long form piece. And then from there, start to extrapolate that out into different marketing messages or strategies, being LinkedIn. You know, social media posts. It could even be an email where you're allowing them to download this piece. Or it could be paid search or other strategies where you have it as gated community. So it's a great way to figure out why are we different, number one, and what can we build around that that's different? So I think that's what we're explaining to our listeners today. I'd love to ask you a couple, a few more. Questions real quick? Sure. I think it's helpful. You know, I call 'em rapid fire questions, which means that, you know, if you can kind of answer in a few few sentences, that's, that'd be helpful.

Chris Fox (2):

Absolutely.

Linda Fanaras:

Keep them short and sweet and then, and then we can give our audience some great takeaways. So tell me what you think the number one communication mistake is from businesses.

Chris Fox:

The number one communication mistake for businesses is. Just going by the playbook with without, without really putting it in terms of those things that really matter the most to your business, whether it's product, service, aftermarket service, how the, you build client relationships. If it's not based on that, it's just generic content and everyone else is already doing it.

Linda Fanaras:

And then what would you say the biggest communication strategy that gives businesses the biggest ROI.

Chris Fox:

I would say it's focusing on narrow casting. I think any business at any point in time, there are maybe like 10 or 15 clients that would change the quarter or change the month in terms of sales. Figure out how to focus just on those instead of focusing on getting a hundred thousand impressions on your website. And maybe one or two of them are the right people. Right. Just focus on those right people and come up with ways to get things in their hands.

Linda Fanaras:

That's great. And then do you have one piece of advice to A CEO or a CMO or a top marketing leader?

Chris Fox:

Yeah, the, the one piece of advice I would say is that we're at a point right now, especially with. Artificial intelligence that like the wave is still coming. There's this massive wave of content. Slop people aren't even less, there's already way too much content out there in the world. Imagine that a hundred or a thousand times these machines that can produce, produce it infinitely. The thing that I would say is you really need to emphasize a strategy like, you know, I'm describing it as a wave. You have to be a good surfer and figure out how to ride that wave and be on top of it, not swamped underneath it.

Linda Fanaras:

Well, that wraps it up. Well, thank you, Chris. I appreciate all of the valuable information you have shared with us today. Again, you are Chris Fox, the founder of Ideas LED Growth. I would love for you to tell the audience how they can get in touch with you.

Chris Fox:

Great. Really, two, two things. I, I love connecting with people on LinkedIn, even if you're not in my industry, if you're just generally interested. Find me on LinkedIn, Christopher Fox, and if you're watching the video, you'll see my face on my LinkedIn profile. The other thing is our website, ideas led growth.com. You go to the website, there's actually a sign up for a weekly newsletter. Uh, I write every week on sometimes very specific and sometimes more theoretical aspects of the whole process of marketing content, thought leadership, and how to get your message out there.

Linda Fanaras:

Great. Fantastic. Well thank you for listening to the B2B Brand 180 podcast today. And if you like what you heard, we'd love for you to share or subscribe, and if you wanna connect with me directly, you can go to LinkedIn or visit https://mill.agency/ or https://lindafanaras.com/. Thank you for listening today.