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Uncovering the Hidden Costs of Brand–Strategy Misalignment
Expose the hidden costs of strategy–brand misalignment by tracking price power, demand quality and loyalty, so you prioritise fixes and improve...
Summary
When you’re chasing growth, the instinct is to keep your messaging broad to reach more buyers. The real issue is a lack of focus on your ideal customer. The shift comes when your ideal customer profile anchors decisions and message architecture. That’s when relevance improves, pricing power strengthens, and velocity returns.
Watch The Video
In this video, Dipendra Mistry (CSO & Managing Partner) shows how to sharpen your messaging so the right buyers actually hear you.Our Perspective
What this means for leaders navigating growth, change or transformation in their organisation.
The Real Trade-Off
When leaders try to speak to everyone, they make it harder for the right buyer to recognise themselves in the story. The choice isn’t reach versus relevance; it’s signal versus noise. A tight message anchored in a clearly defined ideal customer profile (ICP) does three things at once: it clarifies the problem you’re best placed to solve, it frames outcomes in terms that matter to that buyer, and it sets credible proof on the table. That combination earns attention, shortens consideration, and protects price because your value is now specific, not abstract.
Decide Who Wins
An ICP is not a demographic sketch; it’s a decision lens for the next phase of growth. The point is to choose “who must win next” and, by implication, who won’t. Selection should be grounded in evidence, not intuition, and codified so every team understands the trade-offs.
- Urgency: the customer feels the problem you solve now, not someday.
- Advantage: your offer proves a repeatable edge versus alternatives.
- Access: clear paths to engage buyers through channels or partners.
- Economics: healthy margins, expansion potential, and low churn risk.
Most organisations we work with move faster when they commit to one primary ICP for the next two quarters and back it with visible trade-offs.
Message Architecture
Once you’ve chosen, build a message architecture that others can use, not just admire. Start with the buyer’s language, then move from problem to proof in a way sales, product, and service can all deploy consistently.
- Problem: name the costly friction in their words.
- Outcome: quantify the result they can expect.
- Proof: case stories, benchmarks, and metrics.
- Offer: the focused package aligned to this ICP.
Personalisation isn’t cosmetic; it’s performance. McKinsey notes that well-executed personalisation can cut acquisition costs by up to 50%, lift revenues by 5–15%, and increase return on investment (ROI) by 10–30% when done at scale.
Commercial Effects
Focused messaging changes deal dynamics. Buyers progress faster because they can map themselves to your story. Discounting pressure eases because differentiation is evidenced, not asserted. Internally, marketing stops fragmenting, sales stops rewriting, and product stops overbuilding to cover every edge case.
Leadership implications worth testing now:
- Concentrate pipeline on the ICP and track win rate, sales-cycle length, and average selling price.
- Equip teams with one shared message brief and retire off-brand variants.
- Tie investment to proof creation for that ICP: definitive case stories and quantified outcomes.
As markets tighten and expectations rise, the organisations that win will be those whose message functions as a decision system—one that helps the right customers say yes for the right reasons.
Sources:
- What is personalization? — McKinsey
Further Resources
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Messaging