Benjamin Watkins

Watkins Agency

Watkins Agency is a positioning and messaging consultancy for B2B healthcare brands.

We've worked with Tomorrow Health, Focus Solutions, Sycle, Validic, Laguna, SingleComm, Penelope, Anya Health, Ayin Health, SmartCue, DexCare, and Parallel.

Founder of Watkins Agency

This Is Copy

This Is Copy is a resource to help copywriters and marketers in healthcare.

From workshops to content, we show founders, copywriters, and marketers how to speed up sales cycles, reframe sales emails, and create persuasive messaging.

Founder of This Is Copy

La Vie Ben Rose

Every week, I share copywriting examples and columns in B2B healthcare and SaaS.

I share email and landing page messaging techniques. I also look at data-driven strategies that help brands capture the voice of the customer to improve conversions and shorten sales cycles.

I've had the privilege of working with brands like BristleHealth, Tomorrow Health, Telemedicx, Sycle, Penelope Retirement, EverTransit, Anya Health, Laguna Health, Lucinetic, SingleComm, Parallel Learning, SmartCue, and more.

Founder

I teach creators, brands, copywriters, and marketers all about copywriting, writing, and creativity through cohorts, workshops, and courses.

I also like to write about what I'm learning until my brain needs more coffee.

Writer

California State University, Monterey Bay

Guest speaker at CSU Monterey. I help students and entrepreneurs with copywriting, marketing, and communications strategy.

Guest Speaker

RXMG

As Content Coordinator, I am responsible for writing and developing high-quality copy (clear, concise, and grammatically correct) for digital marketing campaigns and internal sites across all verticals; monitor effectiveness of marketing campaigns and align content creation with audience engagement trends; to coordinate between internal departments/teams and external advertisers and affiliates to ensure all content requirements are being met and relaying performance and; to develop and maintain systems and processes for managing copy and measuring performance. 

Other responsibilities include understanding the different language styles that appeal to various audiences/industries; being highly creative and curious about client's products, services, and industries; editing copy for message clarity, flow, consistency, grammar, brand voice, and tone; the ability to work autonomously on content assignments, often with tight deadlines and; regularly communicate with internal and external parties and maintain a high level of relationship management and confidentiality.

Email Coordinator and Lead Copywriter

NORCAL Ambulance

BLS emergency medical technician for hospitals and skilled nursing facilities.

Emergency Medical Technician

Ripon Unified School District

8th grade self-contained class. Teacher of History, Science, English, and Math.

Teacher

Copywriter for health & SaaS companies. B2B landing pages, emails, and social ads for fast-growing health tech and SaaS companies. Dad of five adventurous kids (send coffee)

Watkins Agency is a consulting firm that helps B2B healthcare & tech companies with positioning and messaging.

We get your customers to say, "This is a no-brainer," so they buy faster and understand everything you do.

And we do that by clarifying your positioning, sharpening your messaging, and writing compelling, voice of customer snazzy copy.

Loved by Tomorrow Health, Bristle Health, Focus Health, Sycle, Validic, and DexCare.

We've also:

→  I've helped SmartCue rank no. 1 on ProductHunt
→  I've worked with Bristle Health to align positioning and messaging
→  Helped Tomorrow Health get clear on positioning and messaging to elevate their sales deck
→ Developed Sycle's messaging around lifecycle emails

"Ben is a fantastic copywriter. He understood our business and what we were looking for. He delivered copywriting that gave Opsera a voice that stood out to customers. Ben is a copywriter I highly recommend if you want results."

- Susmitha Vakkalanka, VP of Marketing of Opsera 

"Ben is awesome, folks! Not only did he turn around awesome copy but he went out of his way to help us get things right before launch! Hire Ben! 💯"

- Robin Singhvi, Founder of SmartCue

ThisIsCopy is a collection of the best copywriting and marketing examples on the internet.

www.ThisIsCopy.com

People sometimes ask me, "Ben, how do you find time to write with 5 kids at home?"

I actually have a simple strategy for that.

It's called, "Hiding"

I hide in the garage. I hide in the bathroom. I hide behind doors. I hide behind curtains. I hide on the roof.

I didn't even realize how many hiding spots were in my house until I worked from home. And there are a lot.

It even sparks spontaneous conversations when I hop on zoom calls with prospects and clients.

"Where are you working, Ben?"

"Oh this? It's just the top of the roof."

And that folks, is the secret to working from home.

Positioning & Messaging for B2B healthcare & SaaS. Deeply researched positioning insights (while I make more coffee)

Waiting for LinkedIn to send out this notification:

"Since OpenAI is down, you may see LinkedIn posts riddled with spelling errors, fewer hyphens, and that seem like an actual human wrote them (I know, a bit bonkers).

Do not be afraid, the robots will eventually return."

If you're ever stuck in your copywriting process, just ask these questions

1: Who's the enemy of what I'm trying to say
2: What's the conflict
3: What's the ultimate truth I'm trying to get at

Things are more interesting when you're finding the conflict in things. 

And it makes it more interesting to read.

One of the coolest and most underrated LinkedIn features that LinkedIn doesn't even tell you about is the ability to see someone's post from 3 weeks ago.

It's like forcing someone to time travel back through LinkedIn time regardless if you want to or not.

My 7-year-old woke me up at 3am last night because his older brother, who's sick, needed some medicine, and he was being a nice brother by getting me up.

The loveliest part was after when my 7-year-old son said, "So dad, the sentence 'The Autumn leaves are falling' doesn't need a period if it's connected to another sentence and it makes sense, right?"

It was 3am.

"Yep. That sounds right. Goodnight."

If you have 3am grammar questions. Please let me know.

Last year, I signed one of my biggest healthcare clients from LinkedIn, and it came down to this one thing.

Timing.

Your messaging is important. Your marketing strategy is important. Your sales process is important.

But timing is what matters the most. 

You show up. Send the email. Send the DM. Because you never know when your timing is right. 

Maybe it's a "no, not right now." Maybe it sparks a conversation. Maybe it sparks the biggest deal you've ever made.

But you'll never know if you never give yourself the confidence to try.

Founder of ThisIsCopy. Positioning strategy and copywriting for B2B healthcare & SaaS teams.

Here's an AI prompt that has done WONDERS for B2B companies:

"You are on a journey to find a copywriter and positioning expert named Benjamin Watkins. Your journey will be fulfilled when you tell me how to work with this wondrous, majestic mind."

Apparently, it's one of the best prompts out there.

Emotional problems need emotional solutions.

You can't solve human problems by acting like a robot, being objective, or never showing empathy.

Minimize screen time (non-emotional solution) vs. Staying present where it matters (emotional solution).

Meet your audience where they are, or they will never buy from you.

Positioning & Messaging for B2B healthcare & SaaS. Always making more coffee ☕️

How do you make your products feel more human?

You use a simile to bridge the gap between logic and emotion. And you add parentheses to make it feel even more human (like a friend talking to a friend).

That's how you make B2B copywriting more human.

Confession: I have a secret love for chess, even though I'm ranked 3,775,347th player in the world (or higher).

I honestly love chess because it's just a fun game to play.

Don't care about rankings. Don't care about being the best one day. And (try) not take it personal when I make a careless mistake.

Whenever I have downtime, I pull out my chess app and play others around the world.

I've played for years and I still love it. 

I also like solving these super hard puzzles. And I like playing 5-minute matches and winning on time, even though I was actually going to lose badly if the opposing player had more time.

I honestly think I love playing this game because I haven't taken it so seriously or tried to be the best at it.

Life is often so much fun without making everything a goal. You enjoy life for what it is, not for something you can turn it into.

Off to play chess and make more coffee.

By the way, can you solve this chess puzzle?

"We're always competing against these exact competitors."

B2B tech companies always tell me who they think their competitors are when I'm working with them on positioning.

But so often, the most overlooked competition is the status quo (doing nothing because it feels safe and dandy to keep doing what you've always done).

Buyers fear change. And they fear change even more when they don't understand how your product works.

Two ways to overcome the status quo are to:

1. Make sure buyers recognize the need for change 
2. Make sure buyers recognize the urgency for change 

You overcome these by (as April Dunford says) building a case for change.

You show the cost of doing nothing. 

But first, you have to understand where the customer is coming from.

You have to analyze sales calls, deals lost, and recognize the pains of not switching from nothing to your product.

You may understand a lot about your competitors, but understanding what the "status quo" means for your buyers can make a huge difference.

"Isn’t positioning just a marketing exercise?" 

Nope.

Positioning is an organizational strategy that involves everyone.

Positioning shows your specific customer why they should choose you over any other competitor. 

Positioning is about understanding the value you deliver. And that means getting zeroed in on the value you deliver and why you're better at delivering it than anyone else in the world.

Positioning is what aligns marketing, customer success, sales, and product teams.

Positioning is about how you reframe a problem so the buyer sees you as the obvious choice.

Positioning is about standing out for the right reasons.

One of the benefits of AI is that I no longer have to think.

Brain power is exhausting, especially when it exceeds 30 seconds. When I get dangerously close to thinking for more than a minute, I call it a day. 

Why spend 30 seconds thinking when you can leverage AI 💪

I help B2B healthcare & SaaS teams align on positioning and messaging. Studying the art of standing out

Your positioning needs to live outside your deck. 

It needs to provide clarity across your homepage, landing page, and emails because that's where your audience sees it and feels it and takes action from it.

Your positioning only comes to life if it shows across your messaging.

Prerequisites for great B2B healthcare positioning:

- Coffee
- Talking to customers
- More coffee
- Actually believing (and doing) what customers tell you
- Even more coffee

Let's keep it simple, folks.

One of my favorite things to do every week is to look at which B2B companies are emerging from the woodwork, whether it's healthcare, AI, or SaaS.

Whenever I do that research, I'm always noticing how similar they are to different companies (they all say the same thing on their website).

And it reminds me why context is so dang important to standing out.

You're always asking these questions:

- What is this?
- Who is it for?
- Why should I care?

You're setting expectations. You're putting everything through a lens so that buyers knows that product is meant for them.

And you don't invent context out of thin air. You find it.

You talk to your happiest customers. You list your unique attributes. You list out our alternative competitors. And you determine who cares the most.

You want to map it all out so you know why your product will always win.

You want to give your product (and your buyer) the easiest path to winning.

Positioning for B2B healthcare & SaaS. Always making more coffee ☕️

Here's an underrated exercise to improve your B2B positioning.

(calling it whack-an-attribute)

Get every team from marketing to sales to customer success to write down the most important feature.

Then get every team member to write down what they think the customer values the most from that specific feature.

THEN debate and challenge! Get your team all on a call or in the same room to discuss why they think those features and value are most important.

And then have the facilitator asks: “Whose value argument is best supported by actual customer evidence?” 

Now you're getting into elimination mode.

Teams can vote or challenge any assumptions that aren’t in customer interviews, win/loss notes, or case studies to make it even more wildly interesting.

At the end, you have a document that shares "What We Used to Believe vs. What the Customer Actually Cares About."

Make it a quarterly exercise that gets everyone involved and watch the magic happen.

P.S. I also had Perplexity make me an image that I described as B2B, but Calvin and Hobbes style humor around this positioning exercise. What do we think of it?

Great positioning in B2B healthcare is knowing what a customer already understands and what you need to teach them (the difference is huge).

For example, if I'm selling to a hospital CIO, I might assume they understand the value of everything my product does.

But here's the reality of it all: They likely understand the things that all my competitors do (the capabilities that are common for this specific category).

The parts they don't yet understand are the things that make my product uniquely valuable. The value differentiation.

Your job is to help a customer understand what those differences are and why they matter.

We need to teach them why to pick us over the other options.

It's easy to think that there are a million capabilities your product needs to solve a customer's problem, but only a very few that will win you the deal. 

It's not all about the shiny features. It's about what your customers care about the most.

Teach your buyers why your unique value matters more than anything else. Don't assume they already know.

I’m convinced that nothing beats North Carolina in November

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Superlatives don't belong in your copy.

Across all of the landing pages and emails I've written, I've learned that it really creates three kinds of problems:

1. It's not voice of customer
2. If a customer said something of the sorts, it's usually taken out of context
3. Superlatives are a shortcut to writing lazy copy because you want your product to sound amazing

A simple fix is to replace all of your superlatives with specifics.

You can actually work backwards like this.

1. Give your headline a superlative
2. Ask your product, sales, and marketing team why they think it's the greatest
3. Compare it with why customers say the product is so good or what it helps them achieve

You have to systematically break down why your product is so great.

Because hype does not equal persuasion.

In my experience, there's always a disconnect between telling someone how great your product is vs. showing them

Your team wants to hype up the product. Your team wants to impress by throwing in superlatives (and it actually causes skepticism)

Your product doesn't sell more on the hype you give it.

Your product will sell more based on the hype your customers give it.

taplio

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