A best practice is usually just the average of what everyone already did, wrapped in a confident LinkedIn carousel and sprinkled with just enough data dust to make it feel scientific. Follow enough of them and you and other marketers converge on the exact center of your category: the safest, most defensible, most forgettable spot available.

You know the spot.

Hero headline about “accelerating growth.” Subhead about “unlocking potential.” Button that says “Book a Demo.” Three-benefit grid. Logo bar. Customer quote. Some abstract illustration that looks like a lava lamp got promoted to VP of Brand.

All defensible. All borrowed. None of it makes a buyer remember you.

And that’s the problem.

Best practices prevent disaster. They don’t create preference.

Let’s be fair for a second, because I’m not here to start a bonfire and throw every UX guideline into it. I talk about best practices a lot with clients. Some best practices exist because humans are impatient, distracted, and weirdly committed to not reading.

Navigation should be clear. Forms should not feel like applying for a mortgage.

Your CTA should be findable. Your website should not require a treasure map and a blood oath.

Good UX matters. Baymard’s 2025 benchmark, for example, found that most leading ecommerce sites still have mediocre-to-poor homepage and navigation performance, which means many companies are not even executing the basics well. So yes, some best practices are useful because they keep you from being obviously wrong.

But “not obviously wrong” is not the same as memorable.

That’s where companies get into trouble. They take tactical usability advice and mistake it for brand strategy. They treat the category average like a creative north star. Then act surprised when buyers say, “Wait, which one were you again?”

Best practices are guardrails. They are not a point of view.

The category center is where brands go to nap

Every category develops a house style.

SaaS companies love gradients, dashboards, and phrases like “single source of truth.” Agencies love bold manifestos about being “built for what’s next.” Consulting firms love photos of confident people pointing at glass walls, because apparently strategy only happens near transparent surfaces.

At first, these patterns feel smart. Buyers recognize them. Stakeholders approve them. Sales feels comfortable. The homepage looks “like a real company.”

But over time, everyone copies everyone else’s homework. The market becomes a beige buffet of acceptable choices. Nobody is embarrassing themselves, which is nice. Nobody is being remembered either, which is expensive.

The LinkedIn B2B Institute calls this the “sea of sameness,” noting that many B2B brands look and sound alike across ads, websites, and even products. That sameness is not a design quirk. It is a business problem.

Because buyers do not choose from every company in the category. They choose from the companies they can recall, trust, and explain to someone else without needing a 47-slide enablement deck and a tiny prayer.

Memory beats compliance

Here is the part marketers love to forget while rearranging their homepage modules for the sixth time: most buyers are not ready to buy right now.

LinkedIn’s 95-5 rule argues that only a small portion of your potential buyers are in-market at any given moment, while the vast majority are out-market today but may buy in the future. The implication is uncomfortable but obvious: your marketing has to build memory before it captures demand.

That means your brand needs to be easy to remember before the buyer needs you.

Not easy to approve internally. Not easy to benchmark against competitors. Easy to remember.

B2B International describes brand awareness measurement through top-of-mind recall, spontaneous recall, and prompted awareness. In B2B studies, respondents often recall only about three to four brands in a category, making the fight for mental space brutally competitive.

Three to four.

That’s the buyer’s mental shortlist.

Now ask yourself: is your “modern, clean, conversion-optimized” homepage doing anything to get you on that list? Or is it politely whispering the same thing as everyone else while wearing a slightly different shade of blue?

Buyers remember the company that broke a convention on purpose

I spent a lot of time in the sales promotion business for clients like Kraft, P&G, Frito-Lay, and one of my favorite terms? “Violator” That’s what we called the banners or bursts that interrupt the corner of a package or point-of-sale display. You know, the ones that pimp a special offer or prize inside.

Why’d we use them? To interrupt and grab attention. You know: a microtactical expression of advertising at its most basic.

It’s likewise in B2B marketing. The companies that buyers actually recall usually broke a convention.

Not randomly. Not because the CEO said, “Can we make it pop?” which is less creative direction and more spiritual vandalism.

They broke a convention on purpose.

They knew what the category expected and chose where to depart from it.

Maybe they used humor in a category addicted to corporate malaise. Maybe they named the problem in a sharper way. Maybe they rejected the predictable hero section and opened with a brutally specific customer truth. Maybe they used a visual system nobody else would dare present in a quarterly business review.

The point is not to be different for the sake of being different. That’s how you get a mascot, a ukulele jingle, and a brand team quietly updating their resumes.

The point is to be specifically right.

Best practices make you generally acceptable. Distinctive choices make you specifically useful to a specific buyer in a specific situation.

That distinction matters.

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute contends that strong “mental availability” means being easily thought of in buying situations, and that category entry points are the thoughts buyers have as they move toward a purchase. In plain English: buyers remember brands when those brands are linked to real buying moments.

So the question is not, “Are we following the best practice?”

The better question is, “What buying situation are we trying to own in the buyer’s mind, and what will make us easier to recall when that moment happens?”

That is a much harder question. Naturally, fewer companies ask it.

Best practices are averages. Strategy is choice.

A best practice says, “Most companies put the CTA here.”

Strategy asks, “What does our buyer need to believe before they click anything?”

A best practice says, “Use three benefits.”

Strategy asks, “Which three truths will make our buyer feel seen, challenged, or relieved?”

A best practice says, “Add a logo bar.”

Strategy asks, “Will this proof reduce risk, or are we just decorating the page with other people’s credibility?”

A best practice says, “This is the accepted structure.”

Strategy asks, “Where should we follow convention so the experience feels intuitive, and where should we break convention so the brand becomes memorable?”

That last one is the money question.

Because conventions aren’t inherently bad. Some are useful. Buyers should not have to learn a new interface just because your brand team got bored. But if every part of your story follows convention, you haven’t built a brand. You’ve assembled a category costume.

Congratulations, you’re now dressed as everyone.

The convention audit

The next time you review your homepage, pitch deck, positioning, or campaign, do not start by asking whether it follows best practices.

Start with a convention audit.

Look at five to ten competitors. Not casually. Put them next to each other. Screenshot their hero sections. Pull their headlines into a doc. Compare their CTAs, benefit grids, proof points, visuals, claims, and tone.

Then ask:

What does everyone say?

What does everyone show?

What does everyone avoid saying?

What does everyone assume the buyer already believes?

Where is the category using polished language to hide a painful truth?

Where are we copying the market because it is strategically smart, and where are we copying it because we are scared?

That last one stings a little. Great! That means it’s doing what it should.

Once you see the patterns, you can make intentional choices. Keep the conventions that reduce friction. Break the conventions that create sameness.

For example, maybe you keep the “Book a Demo” button because buyers understand it. Fine. Not every hill needs a dramatic last stand.

But maybe your headline stops sounding like it was generated by committee. Maybe your proof section leads with a customer’s ugly before-state instead of another shiny outcome metric. Maybe your brand voice gets sharper. Maybe your category narrative names the thing your buyers complain about privately but never see in vendor messaging.

That is where memorability lives.

Not in being louder. Not in being wacky. In being more precise than the market expects.

The safest choice can become the riskiest one

The irony of best practices is that they feel safe inside the company and become dangerous outside it.

Inside the company, best practices are easy to defend. Nobody gets fired for recommending the familiar homepage structure. Nobody has to have a tense meeting about why the brand sounds different. Nobody has to explain why the campaign does not look like the competitor everyone secretly envies.

But outside the company, buyers are moving fast. They’re comparing options. They’re half-reading. And asking peers about what they like or use. They’re trying to reduce risk, but also remembering whatever made a mark.

If your brand blends into the category average, you’re forcing buyers to choose based on price, features, timing, or the charm of whichever sales rep gets there first. Is that a strategy? Nope. That’s a cage match with better fonts. And a recipe for mediocrity that leads to mediocre or sub-mediocre results.

The companies that win memory do something ballsier. They use best practices where clarity matters and break conventions where recall matters.

They are not weird everywhere. They are distinctive somewhere important.

Be wrong on purpose, not average by accident

The goal is not to abandon best practices. The goal is to stop worshiping them.

Use them to remove friction. Use them to prevent confusion. Use them to make the buying journey easier.

But do not confuse them with the reason someone chooses you.

A best practice can tell you where the button usually goes. It cannot tell you why anyone should care enough to click it.

That part is your job.

And if your market is full of companies saying the same thing in the same structure with the same tone, the opportunity is not to be a little more polished. The opportunity is to be more meaningfully distinct.

Break one convention on purpose.

Then be able to explain exactly why.

That is the difference between being “on brand” and being remembered.

And remembered is where the money is.

FAQ

Are best practices bad for branding?

No. Best practices are useful when they reduce friction, improve clarity, or help buyers understand what to do next. The problem starts when brands treat best practices as strategy. Best practices can help you avoid being confusing, but they rarely make you memorable.

Why do best practices make brands look the same?

Because best practices are usually based on what many companies in a category already do. When every brand uses the same homepage structure, benefit grid, CTA language, proof points, and visual style, everyone drifts toward the category average. The result is a market full of companies that look polished, professional, and painfully interchangeable.

What does “brands become beige” mean?

It means brands lose their distinctiveness by copying the same safe patterns as everyone else. They may look credible and competent, but nothing about them sticks. Beige brands are not necessarily bad. They are just easy to forget, which is a brutal place to be when buyers are comparing options.

Should companies ignore best practices?

No. Companies should use best practices where clarity matters and break conventions where memorability matters. Keep the pieces that help buyers navigate, understand, and act. Challenge the pieces that make you sound like every other company in the category.

How can a brand stand out without being gimmicky?

Start by understanding the conventions in your category. Look at competitor headlines, visuals, CTAs, proof points, and tone. Then decide which convention you can break on purpose. The goal is not to be weird for attention. The goal is to be more specific, more useful, and more memorable to the buyers you actually want.

What is a convention audit?

A convention audit is a simple review of the patterns everyone in your category follows. You compare competitor websites, messaging, campaigns, and positioning to identify what everyone says, shows, and avoids. Once you see the sameness clearly, you can decide which conventions to keep and which ones to break.

What does it mean to be “specifically right”?

Being specifically right means making sharp, intentional choices that connect with a real buyer, problem, or buying situation. Being generally acceptable makes your brand easy to approve internally. Being specifically right makes your brand easier for buyers to remember and choose.

Where should a company break convention first?

Start with the parts of your brand that shape first impressions: your homepage hero, positioning statement, category narrative, proof points, and visual identity. You do not need to reinvent everything. Often, one sharp departure from category norms is enough to make the brand feel more alive, more relevant, and less beige.