Most B2B companies would rather sound acceptable than unmistakable.
They keep saying the same safe things their competitors say: strong service, good people, solid quality, responsiveness, innovation. Then they wonder why the market shrugs.
That is exactly why Battle 5 in The B2B Marketing Revolution® matters. Battle 5 is this: You OWN an opening in the brandscape. It means you stop trying to sound slightly better than the competition and start identifying a position in the market that is both meaningful to buyers and underclaimed by everyone else.
This is where too many leadership teams get stuck. They treat differentiation like a branding project.
It’s not.
It’s a marketing intelligence issue first. Then it becomes a strategy issue. Then it becomes a speed issue.
If you spot the gap early and move decisively, you can own it. If you wait, somebody else will.
That is one of the biggest ideas behind the 12 Battles™ Framework, which is my research-backed framework for building marketing that is scalable, repeatable, predictable, and accountable. It gives leaders a way to focus on the battles that actually drive guaranteed outcomes.
Why Most B2B Brands Miss the Real Opening
The hard truth is this: most executive teams are too close to their own business to see the market clearly. That closeness makes objectivity hard. And when objectivity goes, false confidence walks in.
You start believing your biggest differentiator is the thing you’re proudest of. That’s not the same as the thing buyers care most about.
That gap matters.
A brandscape isn’t just a cute marketing word. In the book, I define it as the territory your brand occupies in the market, online and offline. Your job is to find the space your brand can own in a way that actually matters to buyers.
And let me be blunt: if your leadership team hasn’t done the work to map where competitors are planted and what buyers actually use to make decisions, you are guessing.
Guessing is expensive.
The First Red Flag: You Sound Like Everyone Else
Here is the simplest diagnostic I know.
Pull your homepage copy, your sales deck, your LinkedIn company description, and your top three competitors’ messaging. Put them side by side.
Now ask one question:
If I removed the logos, would my prospects know which company is which?
Usually the answer is no.
That’s a problem because, as I wrote in The B2B Marketing Revolution®:
“Companies that simply echo the sentiments and differentiators of others often fade into brand irrelevance. But those that dare to be different, that identify and embrace a unique position, rise above the noise.”
— The B2B Marketing Revolution®
That line matters because it gets to the heart of why so many middle-market B2B companies waste money on marketing. They keep funding campaigns built on interchangeable positioning. Then they look downstream for answers to a problem that started in the message.
No amount of disciplined optimization, which is Battle 9, can fully rescue weak positioning. And no attribution model, which is Battle 4, can make muddy differentiation look strong. Those battles matter. But Battle 5 is where you decide whether your brand has a real place to stand.
How to Find the Gap Before Competitors Do
This is where leaders need to stop admiring their assumptions and get to work.
A strong brandscape analysis isn’t complicated, but it does require rigor. In the book, I lay out five steps for conducting one. Let me translate that into the practical version I would use with a CEO or marketing leader sitting across the table from me.
Start with who buyers think your competitors are
Not who your team thinks your competitors are.
Who your buyers think they are.
Those aren’t always the same. Internal teams usually name the obvious players. Buyers often include niche alternatives, adjacent providers, lower-cost workarounds, or newer entrants that leadership has barely noticed. If you don’t know who is actually showing up in the consideration set, your positioning work starts on a cracked foundation.
Identify the decision criteria that actually drive the purchase
This is where market research earns its keep.
You need to know what buyers rank as important when they choose. Speed? Risk reduction? Technical depth? Accessibility? Strategic guidance? Ease of implementation? Industry specialization? Service model? Price structure?
Don’t answer this from the conference room.
Answer it from interviews, surveys, lost-customer insights, and transaction patterns. Battle 3 exists for a reason. Done right, research becomes one of the strongest competitive tools you have.
Plot the market visually
This is the part too many companies skip, and it’s where the gaps start to appear.
Take two buying criteria that matter most. Put one on the X-axis and one on the Y-axis. Then plot your brand and your top competitors based on how the market perceives them.
That’s the brandscape.
It sounds simple because it is. But simple doesn’t mean easy. A brandscape graph helps you compare your positioning against competitors on the decision criteria buyers care about most, but doing it honestly requires you to accept that your current position may not be as distinctive as you had hoped.
Separate open space from useful space
This is where smart leaders pull ahead.
Not every gap is worth owning.
Some open spaces are empty because buyers don’t care. Some are empty because the economics are terrible. Some are empty because occupying them would require a promise your business cannot actually keep.
That’s why an opening is only valuable if it sits at the intersection of four things:
- Buyers care about it.
- Competitors are not fully claiming it.
- You can credibly deliver it.
- You can move fast enough to make it yours.
That last one matters more than people think.
Because once you reposition into a viable opening, competitors will notice. This creates a domino effect. Markets shift. Others follow. A clear opening today can become crowded tomorrow, which is why brandscape analysis should be revisited regularly, even quarterly.
The Mistake That Kills Good Openings
Once leaders identify a gap, they often blow it in one of two ways.
The first is hesitation.
They see the opening, debate it for six months, socialize it to death, and lose the advantage.
The second is overreach.
They claim a position that sounds strong but is still aspirational inside the business.
That second mistake is brutal because the market will punish you for it. If your positioning promises what your delivery can’t back up, you may win attention in the short term and destroy trust in the long term. I have seen that movie before, and it ends badly.
A viable brand opening has to be real.
Not flattering. Not exciting. Real.
What Proactive Leaders Do Differently
Proactive leaders don’t wait for the market to tell them they’re invisible. They go looking for weak spots while there is still time to do something about them. Here is what that looks like in practice:
They treat market research like intelligence, not decoration
They build a fuller picture of the market by combining qualitative perspective with quantitative proof. They want to know what buyers say, what buyers do, where buyers hesitate, what they value, and what competitors are leaving exposed.
They connect positioning to customer value
A real opening sharpens how the market understands why you matter.
If your new position doesn’t sharpen buyer preference, shorten decision-making, increase trust, or strengthen pricing power, it’s not much of an opening.
They move with conviction
If you identify a positioning adjustment that is easy for competitors to replicate, you had better flood the market with your new messaging so you can steal as much share as possible before they catch up. Speed to market wins here. Delay gives competitors time to close the gap.
The Brandscape Bottom Line
Openings close fast. Safe messaging blurs you into the pack. And when leadership lacks a clear view of the market through the buyer’s eyes, bad decisions get made with a lot of confidence.
Your brand needs a clearer place to stand in the market.
“In your brandscape lies the promise of a unique position in a crowded marketplace and the promise of a voice that is not just heard but also remembered.”
— The B2B Marketing Revolution®
That’s the challenge.
Find the opening. Validate it. Claim it. Then move before somebody else does.
By Lori Turner-Wilson, RedRover CEO/Founder, Internationally Best-Selling Author of The B2B Marketing Revolution®: A Battle Plan for Guaranteed Outcomes
Taking Action
The above insights are part of hundreds of best practices found in The B2B Marketing Revolution®: A Battle Plan for Guaranteed Outcomes — the playbook that middle-market B2B CEOs and marketing leaders lean on to scale. Backed by a groundbreaking research study, this book offers time-tested best practices, indispensable KPIs for benchmarking, insights on where your dollars are best spent, and, above all, the proven 12 Battles™ Framework for generating guaranteed marketing outcomes. The B2B Marketing Revolution® is a battle-hardened approach to becoming an outcomes-first leader who’s ready to shake up the status quo, invest in high-payoff market research and optimization, and — yes — even torch what’s not serving your endgame. Download more than 50 templates, scripts, and tools from the book on the Battle Reader Hub.
If you’d like to talk about how to build a marketing engine that delivers predictable results — whether you want to build it yourself or tag in our team to lead the way — we’d be delighted to help you get started.
