Why Manufacturers Get Stuck Competing on Price, and How Messaging Changes That
This article by Lauren Kwedar Cockerell, founder and president of Kwedar & Co., explains why manufacturers and B2B industrial companies get stuck competing on price, and how strategic messaging breaks that pattern. Kwedar & Co. is a Fort Worth-based strategic PR and communications firm that works exclusively with manufacturers and B2B companies to excavate their narrative truth and build messaging that supports premium positioning. Their proprietary methodology, The Thread™, moves through four stages: Excavate, Surface, Articulate, and Activate.
There’s something I always look for early on in a client relationship: if I were to take away your logo from your website headline, could that sentence apply to any other company in your industry?
Most of the time, the answer is yes. (Or, worse, it could apply to any industry at all.) And this simple test tells me a lot about how comfortable this company is with owning and claiming their niche, their story, and their competitive advantage.
Manufacturers — and B2B companies broadly — are often exceptional at what they do while simultaneously being genuinely unclear on how to say so. What makes them distinctive is so embedded in how they operate that it’s become invisible to them. They’re so close to the magic that they can’t see it.
I was on the Manufacturers’ Network podcast recently with host Lisa Ryan, and we spent most of our conversation pulling on this thread. What follows is the substance of what we covered.
“Our People” and “Our Quality” Are Not Differentiators
Every manufacturer I’ve ever met leads with people and quality. So does every one of their competitors.
That’s not a criticism; those things are genuinely true and important. But they’re table stakes, not differentiators. When every company in your category is saying the same thing, sameness becomes the default, and price becomes the only remaining lever.
The real differentiator is almost never the first answer. It’s not the second either. It lives several layers deeper: in the specific problem you’re unusually good at solving, in the way your team shows up when something goes wrong, in the type of client relationship you’re actually built for. Finding it requires asking the questions nobody thought to ask, and then being willing to sit with the answers long enough to recognize what’s actually there.
The Things You Dismiss as Obvious Are Often the Most Compelling
Here’s something I’ve learned after 23 years in the storytelling business: the most powerful story in a company is usually the one the team has stopped noticing.
It’s almost always the offhand comment someone makes in our discovery conversation, something they almost apologize for, because it seems too simple. “We just don’t walk away from hard problems.” “We’ve never lost a client we didn’t choose to lose.” “Every person who runs a line here could run the whole plant.” These moments, the ones the team dismisses as obvious, are often the most compelling to buyers, prospects, and the talent they’re trying to attract.
On the podcast, Lisa Ryan called this the “yeah, duh” trap — that instinct to wave off what feels self-evident. The challenge is that what’s obvious inside your four walls is often exactly what someone outside is looking for and can’t find anywhere else.
This is the core of what we do at Kwedar & Co.: excavate what’s already there, name it, and make it impossible to ignore.
The Thread™ Methodology and How It Works
We’ve built a proprietary four-stage methodology called The Thread to do this work. Here’s what it looks like in practice:
Excavate. We start with deep discovery — stakeholder conversations at every level of the organization, competitive landscape research, audience analysis, a close look at everything the company has built. We’re listening for the thing that keeps showing up and the well-worn patterns you’ve stopped noticing.
Surface. This is where we identify the through line: the single narrative truth that makes the company unmistakably itself. It often lives in the offhand comment someone casually makes as we’re wrapping up. We find it, and we name it.
Articulate. We translate the story into a messaging architecture that holds up across every channel and every audience, from a sales conversation to a media pitch to a job posting. The message has to work for customers, prospects, partners, and the team itself.
Activate. We put the story to work: media outreach, LinkedIn content, website, sales enablement, internal communications. The Thread pulls taut and stays taut.
The methodology doesn't end at the messaging document. That's where most brand projects stop, and it’s why many brand projects remain sealed on the shelf after completion.
Where AI Fits and Where It Definitively Does Not
This came up on the podcast: AI can help you iterate content once you have a strong narrative. It cannot create one for you.
Without a distinctive source document — a real point of view, a genuine story, language that reflects how your company actually thinks and operates — AI just produces volume. And volume nobody’s listening to compounds a messaging problem; it doesn’t solve it.
There’s a second dimension to this that manufacturers need to understand right now. The trade journals you’ve always pitched, the podcasts you appear on, the consistent digital content you publish are more than marketing. Today, they’re signals that AI-powered search uses to determine relevancy and authority. When someone asks an AI tool who the leaders are in your category, it’s pulling from the body of content that exists about you. If your messaging is inconsistent or generic, the algorithm can’t distinguish you from a competitor. If it’s specific, consistent, and substantiated, you become citable.
Specificity is the mechanism. It makes you categorizable, which makes you citable, which makes you recommended.
The Signs Your Messaging Problem Is Costing You Real Money
This isn’t abstract. Here’s what a messaging problem actually looks like in operation:
Perhaps your salespeople are delivering inconsistent pitches — different versions of the story depending on who’s in the room. You’re competing on price alone, even when you know your value justifies a premium. You’re attracting candidates who don’t fit the culture because your employer brand doesn’t reflect who you actually are. And the marketing firms you’ve hired keep missing the mark because nobody gave them the right source material to work from.
So if you’re struggling with sales, recruitment, or marketing, you likely have a messaging problem that’s costing you real money. A crisp, clear message isn’t a fluffy, nice-to-have thing; it’s a revenue and retention strategy.
The First Thing to Do This Week
Pull up your website headline and mentally take away your logo. Ask yourself: could this apply to any other company in your industry?
If the answer is yes, you have work to do. And the work starts with excavation to find your story.
Questions Manufacturers Ask
Why do manufacturers struggle with messaging and differentiation?
Manufacturers are often so close to their own operation that what makes them distinctive has become invisible. The things that set them apart — the specific problems they’re best at solving, the way they show up under pressure, the standards they hold that competitors don’t — feel obvious internally, which makes them easy to overlook. The result is messaging that defaults to surface-level claims like quality and people, which every competitor is also making.
What is the difference between a tagline and a messaging strategy?
A tagline is an output. A messaging strategy is the architecture underneath it: the positioning, the proof points, the language that holds up across every channel and audience, from a sales conversation to a media pitch to a job posting. Very few companies have a messaging strategy that the whole team can actually use.
Can AI write my company’s messaging?
AI can help you iterate and produce content once you have a strong, distinctive narrative. It cannot create that narrative for you. Without a genuine source document — a real point of view, specific language, an actual story — AI produces generic volume. And in an environment where AI-powered search is determining relevancy and authority based on the specificity and consistency of your content, generic volume makes the problem worse, not better.
How does PR support manufacturing companies specifically?
PR for manufacturers works on multiple levels simultaneously: building credibility with customers and prospects through third-party media coverage, attracting talent through employer brand visibility, and establishing leadership positioning that supports premium pricing. It also builds the body of consistent, specific content that AI-powered search uses to identify authoritative voices in a category. For manufacturers who’ve historically relied on relationships and referrals, PR creates the visibility infrastructure that sustains growth beyond your personal network.
How can a manufacturer stop competing on price?
The path out of price competition starts with messaging, not pricing strategy. Most manufacturers get stuck competing on price by default because they don’t yet have the language to convey their value. The work is excavation: finding the specific, true things that make the company distinctive, naming them, and building a messaging architecture that holds up across sales conversations, media, recruiting, and internal communications.
About The Author
Lauren Kwedar Cockerell is founder and president of Kwedar & Co, a Fort Worth-based PR, messaging, and strategic communications firm serving purpose-driven B2B companies. She is also the firm’s lead PR and marketing strategist, host of our podcast The Impatient Entrepreneur, as well as a frequent podcast guest.
Over the past 20+ years, she has worked with 100s of leaders and organizations to create PR and marketing strategies and tactics that support visions and reach goals.
To connect with Lauren, please book a consultation.