I've watched hundreds of marketing campaigns fail. Not because they lacked budget or creativity, but because they couldn't answer two simple questions. After 15 years advising B2B SaaS companies, I've found that 80% of marketing failures stem from the same root cause: vagueness that creates chaos instead of clarity.

Here's what I've learned: Marketing isn't about being louder. It's about being clearer. And that clarity starts with answering two deceptively simple questions that most companies can't answer precisely.

Why Most Marketing Creates Noise Instead of Signal

Last year, I sat with a CMO who'd just burned through $2 million on campaigns that generated almost nothing. Their messaging? "We help businesses transform digitally." Their target? "Growing companies."

This is marketing entropy in action—disorder and confusion that wastes resources and attention. When your positioning is vague, every dollar you spend adds to the noise instead of cutting through it.

In my experience working with hundreds of B2B SaaS companies, I've discovered that their marketing execution falls into two camps: entropy creators (adding to the chaos) or syntropy generators (creating order and clarity). The difference? The syntropy generators can answer two questions with surgical precision.

The Two Questions That Change Everything

Question 1: Who's it for? Not "businesses" or "marketers" or "teams." WHO, specifically?

Question 2: What's it for? Not "productivity" or "efficiency." What specific job does it do?

These questions sound simple because they are. But simple doesn't mean easy. I've watched executive teams spend days debating these answers. And that struggle is worth it—because vague answers create entropy that compounds across every marketing activity, while sharp answers create syntropy that multiplies your impact.

Let me show you exactly what I mean.

How Vague Positioning Creates Marketing Entropy

When you can't answer these questions precisely, here's what happens:

Your targeting becomes "spray and pray." I worked with a cybersecurity company targeting "all businesses concerned about security." Their Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) was very high. After narrowing to "Series B SaaS companies with customer data in AWS," it dropped to a third.

Your messaging confuses instead of converts. One other example is a homepage that said they were "the all-in-one platform for modern teams." Conversion rate: 0.8%. After changing to "Project tracking for distributed engineering teams building in React," it jumped to 4.2%.

Your content attracts the wrong audience. I've seen companies with 50,000 blog visitors and 10 qualified leads. Why? Their content answered questions their buyers never asked.

Your sales team wastes time on bad fits. When marketing can't articulate who you're for, sales talks to everyone. One company I advised had their enterprise sales team spending 60% of their time with startups who'd never afford them.

Real Examples: From Chaos to Clarity

Let me show you how this plays out with real positioning examples:

Example 1: Project Management SaaS

Entropy Version:

• Who: "Teams that need to manage projects"
• What: "All-in-one project management"
• Result: Competing with Monday, Asana, ClickUp, and 50 others on features

Syntropy Version:

• Who: "Non-technical marketing teams at B2B SaaS companies (10-50 employees) who manage multiple campaigns simultaneously"
• What: "Visual campaign planning that connects marketing activities to pipeline impact—replacing spreadsheets and generic project tools"
• Result: 3x conversion rate, 70% demo-to-trial rate, premium pricing

Example 2: B2B Payments SaaS

Entropy Version:

• Who: "Businesses that need payment processing"
• What: "Fast, secure payments"
• Result: Race to the bottom on processing fees

Syntropy Version:

• Who: "Mid-market distributors selling to SMB retailers on net terms"
• What: "Automated invoice-to-cash reconciliation that eliminates 90% of AR follow-ups"
• Result: $5K/month platform fees plus processing, 18-month contracts

Example 3: Cybersecurity SaaS

Entropy Version:

• Who: "Companies worried about cyber threats"
• What: "Comprehensive security platform"
• Result: 9-month sales cycles, heavy discounting

Syntropy Version:

• Who: "Healthcare SaaS companies preparing for SOC 2 Type II certification"
• What: "Continuous compliance monitoring that generates audit-ready documentation automatically"
• Result: 45-day sales cycles, 2x industry-standard pricing

Example 4: Seth Godin's Purple Cow in B2B Context

Here's how being remarkable works when you're specific:

Entropy Version:

• Who: "Businesses wanting to stand out"
• What: "Innovative marketing solutions"
• Result: Another marketing agency in a sea of thousands

Syntropy Version (real example from my practice):

• Who: "Venture-backed B2B SaaS companies 6 months before Series A"
• What: "Position your company to show inevitable market leadership to investors—not just growth"
• Result: 6-figure engagements, 3-month waitlist

Example 5: Collaboration SaaS

Entropy Version:

• Who: "Teams that need better collaboration"
• What: "Modern workspace for productive teams"
• Result: Competing with Slack, Teams, Notion, and everyone else

Syntropy Version:

• Who: "Customer success teams at B2B SaaS companies managing 50+ enterprise accounts"
• What: "Customer collaboration rooms that reduce churn by making customers feel heard between QBRs"
• Result: Sold as retention insurance, 3x competitive pricing
  
  

Additional Examples from Different Industries

Example 6: Tesla's Perfect Positioning

When everyone else was positioning electric cars as environmental compromises for eco-warriors, Tesla answered differently:

• Who: Performance-minded luxury car buyers who also care about the future
• What: The fastest, most advanced cars that happen to be electric

Result? They didn't compete in the "electric vehicle" category. They competed in the "premium performance" category and won.

Example 7: Gong's Category Creation

Instead of being another "sales tool," Gong created crystal clarity:

• Who: B2B sales leaders who know their reps' conversations contain gold but can't access it
• What: Revenue intelligence that captures and analyzes every customer interaction to show what actually drives deals

Result? They created and now own the "revenue intelligence" category, commanding premium prices while competitors fight over "conversation intelligence" scraps.

Example 8: Linear's Radical Focus

While everyone built project management for everyone, Linear chose differently:

• Who: High-performance product and engineering teams who find Jira painfully slow
• What: Issue tracking that's as fast as your thinking—no loading screens, instant search, keyboard-first

Result? $400M valuation with just $35K lifetime marketing spend. When you're that specific, your customers become your marketing.

The Downstream Impact: How These Answers Drive Everything

Once you nail these two questions, watch what happens:

Your ICP Development Becomes Surgical

Instead of "companies with 50-500 employees," you get:

• Series B SaaS companies
• 50-150 employees
• Engineering team of 15-30
• Using AWS and GitHub
• Selling to enterprise
• With distributed teams across 3+ time zones

I've seen this precision drop customer acquisition costs by 70% while increasing lifetime value by 2x.

Your Content Strategy Writes Itself

When you know exactly who you're for and what you solve, content ideas flow:

• The specific problems only they face
• The unique constraints they operate under
• The language they actually use
• The outcomes they measure

One client went from publishing 50 generic posts monthly to 10 specific ones. Traffic dropped 40%, but qualified leads increased 300%.

Your Campaign Messaging Hits Different

Generic: "Streamline your workflow" Specific: "Ship features 2x faster without hiring"

Generic: "Better team collaboration" Specific: "Stop losing deals because sales and CS aren't aligned"

The specific messages I've tested consistently outperform generic ones by 3-5x on every metric that matters.

The Framework: Your Positioning Precision Canvas

Here is a framework we developed at Kalungi after testing dozens of approaches. It forces the precision that creates syntropy:

Section 1: The WHO (Be Ruthlessly Specific)

Company Demographics:

• Industry/Vertical: ________
• Company Stage: ________
• Size (Revenue or Employees): ________
• Business Model: ________
• Geographic Constraints: ________

Team Specifics:

• Department: ________
• Team Size: ________
• Role/Seniority: ________
• Technical Sophistication: ________

Situational Triggers:

• What just happened? ________
• What are they trying to achieve? ________
• What's blocking them? ________
• What have they tried? ________
  
  

Section 2: The WHAT (The Job to Be Done)

Core Job: In one sentence, what job are you doing that they're currently doing manually/poorly/not at all?

The Switch:

• FROM (current state): ________
• TO (desired state): ________

Unique Mechanism: How do you deliver this transformation differently than alternatives?

Success Metrics: How will they measure success? (Be specific: time saved, revenue increased, costs reduced)

Section 3: The Litmus Test

Can you complete these statements with zero ambiguity?

"We help [SPECIFIC WHO] achieve [SPECIFIC OUTCOME] by [UNIQUE METHOD]"

"Unlike [ALTERNATIVE], we [KEY DIFFERENCE]"

"You know you need us when [SPECIFIC TRIGGER]"

"Success looks like [MEASURABLE OUTCOME]"

What to Do in the Next 48 Hours

Here's exactly what you can do if you recognize any of the challenges discussed here:

Hour 1-2: The Reality Audit

Pull your last 5 pieces of marketing content. For each, try to answer: Who specifically is this for? What specific problem does it solve? If you can't answer in 10 seconds, you have entropy.

Hour 3-4: Customer Investigation

Call 3 customers who love you. Ask:

• "When you explain what we do to a colleague, what do you say?"
• "What were you doing before us?"
• "What almost stopped you from buying?

Their language is gold. I've built entire positioning strategies from these calls.

Hour 5-8: The Who/What Workshop

Get your team in a room (or Zoom). Set a timer for 2 hours. Don't leave until you can answer both questions in one specific sentence each. No committee-speak. No hedging. Choose.

Day 2: The Messaging Test

Rewrite your homepage hero section using your new Who/What. Split test it against your current version. I've never seen the specific version lose.

Day 2: The Content Audit

List your next 10 content pieces. Ask: "Would our specific WHO care about this?" Kill anything generic. Replace with content that only your WHO would need.

Day 2: The Sales Alignment

Share your Who/What with sales. Ask them to qualify every lead against it for one week. Track the difference in close rates between "perfect fit" and "maybe fit."

The Uncomfortable Truth About Choosing

Here's what nobody tells you: Answering these questions means saying no. No to the enterprise deal that doesn't fit. No to the feature request from the wrong WHO. No to the partnership that dilutes your WHAT.

I watched a client turn down a $200k deal because it wasn't their WHO. Six months later, they closed $800k from companies who were. That's the power of syntropy—when you're crystal clear on who you're for and what you do, the right customers find you and pay premium prices.

From Entropy to Syntropy: The Competitive Moat Nobody Talks About

Most companies think their moat is their technology, their team, or their funding. I've learned it's none of those. Your moat is the clarity of your positioning.

When you can answer "Who's it for?" and "What's it for?" with precision, you create syntropy—order from chaos. Your marketing costs drop. Your sales cycles shorten. Your customers become evangelists. Your team aligns. Your product roadmap clarifies.

Meanwhile, your competitors continue creating entropy, spending more to achieve less, confusing their market, exhausting their teams.

The choice is yours: Add to the noise or cut through it. Create chaos or create clarity.

Your Next Move

I've shared what I've learned from 15 years of watching companies succeed and fail based on these two questions. The frameworks, examples, and actions I've outlined aren't theoretical—they're battle-tested with hundreds of B2B SaaS companies.

But knowledge without action is just entertainment. So here's my challenge: Before you click away, before you move to the next task, answer the questions:

Who's it for? What's it for?

Write them down. Make them specific. Feel the discomfort of choosing. Then watch as that clarity transforms everything else you do in marketing.

Because in a world drowning in noise, clarity isn't just powerful—it's your only sustainable competitive advantage.

The companies that win don't have better features or bigger budgets. They have better answers to two simple questions.

What are yours?

Bonus Content: Worksheet "What's it for/Who's it for?"