Why So Many Businesses Struggle to Explain What They Actually Do
With too many years in marketing that I’m happy to mention! – across startups and established businesses of all shapes and sizes; the thing I keep coming back to, time and time again, is how genuinely difficult it is for most businesses to articulate what they do – even when what they do is brilliant.
A Few Industry Trade Shows Later
I’ve been visiting a few industry events recently. You know the ones – busy halls, networking areas, free coffee, seasoned speakers and exhibition stands in multiple rows. And I keep having the same experience, each time, which has prompted me to write this.
I slow down at a stand. I look at the banner. I read the tagline. I pick up a leaflet. And I still have absolutely no idea what the company does.
So, I get chatting to some lovely friendly people and one of the first things I say is, “What is it that you do?”
And here’s the thing, although it’s an ice breaker and good to get them to explain, you shouldn’t really have to ask.
It’s Not Just at Events Though
The stand is just where it hits you most obviously, because you’re physically standing there in real time, reading the banners, trying to put two and two together.
But the same thing happens everywhere:
- Websites where you scroll through three pages of beautiful design and still can’t work out what the company sells.
- LinkedIn profiles stuffed with phrases like “driving transformational outcomes” or “strategic growth enabler” – which sound impressive until you realise they mean absolutely nothing.
- Email subject lines that don’t register.
- Pitch decks where you zone out in the first few slides, none the wiser.
Anywhere a business needs to communicate, and that’s everywhere – unclear messaging is quietly doing damage. Most people won’t bother or are too awkward to ask. They won’t drop you an email saying, “I didn’t understand your website.” They’ll just leave. Click away. Walk past. And you’ll never know it happened.
So, What Does “Lost in the Weeds” Actually Mean?
It’s what happens when you’ve been living and breathing your business for so long that you forget the person in front of you hasn’t. You know every process, every product detail, every bit of industry shorthand. And that knowledge, genuinely brilliant and hard-won as it is, starts to work against you when it comes to communicating with the outside world.
It creeps up on you gradually without you noticing. The language of your sector stops feeling like jargon because it’s just how you talk. You forget that not everyone knows what SLA, ERP, or “end-to-end pipeline visibility” means. You assume a level of understanding that simply isn’t there.
And the person on the receiving end? They’re usually too polite to say they’re lost. They nod. They smile. They move on. And here’s the bit that often gets missed – they frequently feel faintly embarrassed, as though they should already know what you mean. That’s not their failure. That’s yours.
The Jargon Problem is Costing You More Than You Think
This is especially common in B2B – tech, professional services, manufacturing, finance, logistics. I’ve seen it at every level, in businesses of every size. These worlds run on technical language, and fair enough, in the right context, precision matters.
But the right context is not your homepage. It is not your exhibition stand. It is definitely not the first sentence out of your mouth when you meet someone new.
Insider language can feel authoritative from where you’re sitting. From the outside, it often just feels like a wall. And when people hit a wall, they don’t climb it, they turn around and find someone easier to understand.
The really frustrating part is that most of these businesses have something genuinely good to offer. The product works. The service delivers. The team knows their stuff inside out. But the messaging is standing in the way before anyone even gets close enough to find that out.
Try the “Explain It to a Child” Test
Here’s something worth applying to all of your communications.
Imagine you had to explain your business to a curious ten-year-old. Not because your customers are ten, but because the discipline of stripping things back to their simplest form is genuinely powerful.
Just three questions. That’s all you need:
What do you do? Who do you help? What problem do you solve?
Answer those three things in plain, ordinary language – no acronyms, no assumed knowledge, no industry shorthand – and you’re most of the way there.
Take a cybersecurity company whose tagline reads “End-to-end threat mitigation through AI-powered detection.” Technically accurate. Completely meaningless to anyone outside that world.
Now try: ” “Every business is a target. Cybersecurity that keeps the hackers out, before they ever get close.”
That’s it. You know exactly who it’s for, what it does, and why you should care. No degree required.
The principle is simple – if you removed your company name and logo, would anyone know what you do? If the answer is no, start again. Lead with the problem you solve, not the mechanism you use to solve it. People buy outcomes, not processes.
You can always follow with the AI detection message later, when you go into the ‘how.’
The Elevator Pitch: Everyone Knows About It, Few People Actually Have One
The idea of the elevator pitch; being able to describe your business clearly and quickly.
But after years of working with businesses across many sectors, it still surprises me how many don’t have one that actually does this well.
It sounds easy. In practice it’s genuinely hard, because every instinct pulls you towards adding more. More context, more features, more nuance, more caveats. And before you know it, you’re three minutes in and the other person’s eyes have glazed over.
Your opening line – whether it’s on a banner, a website, a business card, or just coming out of your mouth at a networking event – has one job. Make someone want to know more.
That’s it. It doesn’t need to explain everything. It just needs to open the door.
A simple test: if someone heard your pitch, walked away, and could accurately describe your business to a colleague five minutes later, you’ve nailed it. If they’d struggle, or resort to “something to do with tech, I think?” then there’s work to do.
Marketing Has Changed. Yet it Hasn’t.
I’ve watched marketing transform over the course of my career. The channels, the tools, the data, the technology; all of it has shifted dramatically and keeps on shifting.
But here’s the thing. The fundamental premise hasn’t changed at all. It has never changed. Good marketing is about human connection. It’s about making someone feel understood before you’ve even started explaining what you sell. And you cannot do that if the first thing they encounter is a wall of terminology they don’t recognise.
The detail absolutely has its place. Technical specs, case studies, features, commercial nuance; none of that disappears. It just comes later, once you’ve earned someone’s attention and they actually want to know more. Think of it like meeting someone at a dinner party. You wouldn’t introduce yourself and immediately recite your product catalogue at them. You’d start with something human. Something that invites a response. Something that makes them think, “oh, tell me more.”
That’s what good messaging does – across your website, your social channels, your emails, your printed materials, your stand, your pitch. It starts simple, it starts human, and it builds from there.
Clarity Has to Live Everywhere
One thing I see, particularly in early start-ups, is that a clear message exists somewhere, usually in the founder’s head or buried in a brand document nobody looks at, but it never makes it out into the world consistently. The website says one thing, the sales team says another, the brochure says something else entirely.
Clarity isn’t just about finding the right words once. It’s about making sure everyone in your business is saying the same thing, in the same spirit, across every single touchpoint. That consistency is what builds recognition, trust, and ultimately customers.
Where to Start if This Feels a Bit Too Familiar
Ask someone outside your industry. Show them your homepage, your LinkedIn bio, or your brochure and ask them to explain your business back to you. What they say, or can’t say, will tell you everything.
Try this simple framework.
Start with who it’s for. Then the problem they have. Then how you solve it.
One sentence if you can. Two at a push. If it takes five, keep editing until it doesn’t.
Hunt down the jargon. Read through everything your customers see – website, brochures, social profiles, email templates. Highlight anything that requires insider knowledge to understand. Then rewrite it in plain English.
Read it out loud. If it sounds like a corporate brochure rather than a human being talking, it needs another pass. Good messaging should feel natural to say and easy to absorb.
Be honest about the homepage test. Could someone who’s never heard of you understand what you do at a glance? If the truthful answer is no, that’s exactly where to start.
It’s not Dumbing Down
Clarity isn’t dumbing things down. It never was. It’s respecting the person you’re trying to reach enough to make their life easy.
The businesses that can say what they do simply, warmly, and without making anyone feel like they’re missing something will always cut through – regardless of budget, regardless of channel, regardless of what the algorithm is doing this week.
Lead with simplicity. Lead with human. The jargon, the detail, the technicalities – they all have their place, just not here, not yet. Earn the conversation first. Everything else follows naturally from there.
This is something I work on with businesses every day; helping them find the clarity that was there all along, just buried under years of inside knowledge. If your messaging could do with a fresh pair of eyes, feel free to get in touch.
And if you’ve stumbled across a stand, a website, or email recently that left you genuinely baffled – I’d love to hear about it.