WayeCreative

The Blog

Frameworks for B2B messaging that works.

Field notes on positioning, copy, and the psychology of B2B buyers, written by Dean Waye.

September 29, 2026

50 Lessons for Selling to Strangers

Fifty short lessons on how B2B buyers decide, what first contact messaging has to do, and why creativity is the only advantage left.

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August 25, 2026

Asymmetrics: Twenty-Four Lenses for Finding the Move Your Competitors Can't Copy

A complete field guide to structural B2B advantage — 24 lenses plus the Assumptions to Asymmetrics to Assertions method.

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August 21, 2026

THE FIRST WORD: Why Marketing Always Leads

The full book on how prospects decide to read in three seconds, with six frameworks for getting there first.

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August 17, 2026

Seven Ways to Hook a Reader in Two Seconds

Most headlines fail before the reader even decides to read. Here's what actually works.

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August 13, 2026

Ten Things B2B Buyers Won't Tell You (But Your Copy Needs to Know)

Writing for a buyer who is professionally rewarded for saying no.

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August 9, 2026

When Your GTM Story Stops Working

Your message didn't fail because it was wrong. It failed because the market moved.

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August 5, 2026

What Great CMOs Actually Think About Marketing

A synthesis of 17 CMOs on what separates momentum-builders from campaign-runners.

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August 1, 2026

The Assertion Spectrum: Why Your B2B Copy Is Either Boring or Threatening

Most B2B copy sits at two extremes. The sweet spot in between has a name.

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July 28, 2026

Why Your Buyers Stop Reading After the First Line

The keep-reading decision happens in under two seconds. Here's what's happening in that window.

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July 24, 2026

The Uniqueness Trap

Unique versus different — most companies think they're unique. They're just different.

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July 20, 2026

How Internal Consensus Kills B2B Messaging

Committee-safe language offends no one, and moves no one.

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July 16, 2026

The Primer: What You Say First Is Not What You Think It Is

Your first job isn't to sell. It's to make the sale possible.

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July 12, 2026

Writing Copy When You Cannot Afford to Be Wrong

A small addressable universe plus long test cycles means different rules for writing.

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July 8, 2026

First Say This: The Order of Your Message Is the Message

Order determines whether anything downstream of it ever gets heard.

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July 4, 2026

How to Write to Someone Who Has Never Heard of You

Writing to strangers is structurally different from writing to warm leads.

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June 30, 2026

The Hook: How to Find the One Line That Unlocks Your Whole Message

Every strong message has a hook underneath it. Here is the process for finding it.

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June 26, 2026

Why B2B Ads Are Boring: A Diagnosis in Four Parts

Boring by committee, by habit, and by a misunderstanding of what buyers actually respond to.

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June 22, 2026

Nine Fixes for Nine Webinar Problems You Think Are Unfixable

Low attendance, no questions, and dead air are copy and structure problems, not technical ones.

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June 18, 2026

Be the One They Want to Watch

What separates attended webinars from tolerated ones.

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June 14, 2026

Everything You Actually Need to Know Before Hiring a Copywriter

Most companies hire for the wrong reasons and brief badly.

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June 10, 2026

Reliable, Dignified Prospecting

An approach that earns a response without cringe-outreach.

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June 6, 2026

Why Prospects Ghost You (Not About Follow-Up Timing)

Ghosting is a message problem surfacing late, not a timing problem.

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June 2, 2026

Write Headlines That Hit

The mechanics behind subject lines that actually get opened.

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May 29, 2026

Not the Also-Ran

How to position when you're not the category leader.

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May 25, 2026

How to Brief a Copywriter for Outcomes Instead of Output

The difference between a good brief and a bad one.

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May 21, 2026

What Desire Has to Do With B2B Marketing

B2B buyers decide emotionally and justify rationally.

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May 17, 2026

The Questions That Change How You Write

The brief questions that actually matter.

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May 13, 2026

What Makes a Webinar Worth Completing

The architecture that holds the room past minute fifteen.

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May 9, 2026

Three Levels of Messaging

Informational, aspirational, transformational — most companies default to the lowest.

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May 5, 2026

The Credibility Problem

Why buyers don't believe you even when you're right.

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May 1, 2026

What the Follow-Up Is Actually About

Follow-up is a positioning problem, not a persistence problem.

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April 27, 2026

The Voice Problem: Why B2B Companies All Sound the Same

The process that produces sameness, and how to break out of it.

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April 23, 2026

The Scope of a Message

What copy has to accomplish versus what it merely has to say.

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April 19, 2026

Test Your GTM Message Before It Costs You Anything

Finding out the message is wrong after launch is the wrong order of operations.

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April 15, 2026

How to Test GTM Messaging Without Running a Single Campaign

Getting the buying committee in a room before you spend anything.

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April 11, 2026

What a Tested Message Is Actually Worth

The value of knowing where a message breaks before buyers do.

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April 7, 2026

The Shortcut Is the Ballgame in B2B

Buyers already know the problem and the future. You're evaluated on the mechanism.

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April 3, 2026

The Cold Outreach Split

Your CRO wants to stand out. Your AEs want to blend in.

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March 30, 2026

Three Ways Cold Sales Messages Actually Cut Through

Three legitimate cut-through approaches, and one that doesn't work.

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March 26, 2026

Who Your First Contact Should Come From

Marketing outbound comes from a company. Sales outbound comes from a person.

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March 22, 2026

You Are Actually in the Entertainment Business

You compete for attention, not for information delivery.

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March 18, 2026

Nobody Does What You Do Not Ask Them To

CTA avoidance is fear of making a real ask.

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March 14, 2026

Why Your Testimonials Are Doing Nothing

Testimonials written for the company that earned them, not the buyer reading them.

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March 10, 2026

The Follow-Up They Don't Delete

Most follow-ups fail from having nothing new to say.

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March 6, 2026

What to Do When They Go Quiet

Re-pitching is the wrong instinct when a deal stalls.

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March 2, 2026

The Pricing Conversation You Keep Avoiding

Price only shocks when it arrives before value does.

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February 26, 2026

Why Your LinkedIn Posts Are Talking to Themselves

Most B2B LinkedIn content is written for the writer and the algorithm.

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February 22, 2026

The Demo That Decides the Deal

A demo wins by feeling built-for-them, not by showing more.

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February 18, 2026

The 90 Percent Rule

Do 90% of the prospect's thinking and feeling for them.

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February 14, 2026

Write to a Person, Not a Persona

Stiff C-suite copy is built on a wrong assumption about how executives want to be talked to.

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February 10, 2026

Nobody Cares About You. Use That Freedom.

Your prospect's life is full without you. That's liberating, not a problem.

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February 6, 2026

You Are a Distraction. Get Good at It.

Accept and optimize for the glance instead of resenting distraction.

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February 2, 2026

Why Your B2B Copy Is Really About You

Most B2B copy is written to make the writer feel good.

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January 29, 2026

Every Weakness Is a Strength. Reframe.

The practice of reframing a supposed weakness into an advantage.

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January 25, 2026

Artists, Artisans, and Assemblers

Three types of copywriter. Hiring the wrong one produces irrelevant work.

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January 21, 2026

Prevention, Mitigation, or Suffering

Naming a problem's lifecycle stage changes everything downstream.

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January 17, 2026

Why Your B2B Buyer Is Not Responding to Logic (They Are Responding to Threat)

The SCARF threat-detection framework, applied to vendor evaluation.

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January 13, 2026

Your LinkedIn Page Is a Message

Your About section and headline are the first thing a stranger reads.

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January 9, 2026

The Prospecting Gift

A well-written PDF does more prospecting work than a cold email sequence.

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January 5, 2026

Showing Beats Telling

Live events show expert thinking in real time instead of telling people about it.

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January 1, 2026

The Four Bad Assumptions Every Cold Message Makes

Four false assumptions cold outreach makes about the reader.

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December 28, 2025

Your Opening Twenty Words Are Worth More Than the Next Thousand

Effort is misallocated — the first twenty words are the whole game.

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December 24, 2025

The Opening That Breaks Something

The best openings identify something wrong in the audience's world and name it.

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December 20, 2025

Your Subject Line Has One Job. It's Not the One You Think.

Subject lines have exactly one function: get the open. Not describe the contents.

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December 16, 2025

Telling Them It's Not Their Fault Is a Strategy, Not a Gesture

Naming that the negative present isn't the prospect's fault changes how they listen.

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December 12, 2025

What Your Buyer Cannot Say Out Loud

Every prospect carries an unadmitted fear. Your copy has to name it first.

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December 8, 2025

The Four Resistances Every B2B Buyer Brings to the Room

Distrust of claims, reactance, inertia, and scrutiny — before you've said a word.

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December 4, 2025

The Twelve Questions Every Buyer Is Secretly Asking

Buyers evaluate you against a hidden checklist of trust, risk, and timing questions.

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November 30, 2025

Three Openings That Always Work in B2B Marketing

Three frames to reach for when you don't know how to start.

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November 26, 2025

Attention Is Not Free

Attention is a scarce business asset that most B2B marketing treats as a gift.

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November 22, 2025

Hope Starts the Sale. Safety Lets It Continue.

A future worth wanting, plus reassurance that pursuing it isn't reckless.

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November 18, 2025

Urgency Without Yelling

Fake urgency destroys trust. Real urgency shows the actual consequences of delay.

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November 14, 2025

Claims Create Debt

Every claim you make asks the buyer to loan you a little credibility.

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November 10, 2025

The Story Your Market Actually Wants to Hear

The market wants the relevance story, not the founder's origin story.

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November 6, 2025

How to Help the Buyer Who Has to Resell You Internally

Your champion needs a one-sentence pitch, a business case, proof, and a risk answer to resell you.

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November 2, 2025

An Offer Is Not a Menu of Tasks

Strong offers are promises of movement, not lists of deliverables.

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October 29, 2025

The Client Does Not Experience the Same Project You Do

Clients think in risk, confidence, and outcomes. Providers think in time and effort.

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October 25, 2025

Different Is Not Enough

A difference has to be tied to something the customer actually cares about.

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October 21, 2025

When Your Best Argument Is Not "We Are Better"

A position built on a changed reality, not on product superiority.

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October 17, 2025

One Page, One Argument

A template for the single page that has to make the whole argument.

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October 13, 2025

The Webinar Skeleton

A webinar is a structured argument for belief change. Every section has a job.

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October 9, 2025

Repurposing Is Not Chopping Content Into Fragments

Real repurposing translates the argument for a new attention environment.

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October 5, 2025

Good Editing Is Not Making It Shorter

Editing removes what stands between the reader and belief.

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October 1, 2025

The Buyer's Words Are Better Than Yours

The best copy is collected from sales calls and support tickets, not written cold.

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September 27, 2025

The Awareness Mismatch

Sending the wrong message to the wrong awareness-stage buyer is a top failure mode.

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September 23, 2025

A Workshop Is a Trust Format, Not a Teaching Format

A workshop's job is letting prospects feel the quality of your thinking.

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September 19, 2025

Service Businesses Sell Trust Before Output

Deliverables aren't what clients buy. Confidence is.

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September 15, 2025

If You Sell Expertise, Your Message Is Part of the Product

For consultants and advisors, the message is a sample of the paid thinking.

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September 11, 2025

Events Are Not Only Content. They Are Reasons for Contact.

The underused part of an event is the legitimate excuse it gives you for outreach.

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September 7, 2025

The CTA Ladder

Not every buyer is ready for the same commitment.

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September 3, 2025

Ten Questions to Ask Before You Publish Anything

A ten-question buyer-centricity test to run before anything goes out.

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