The best messaging is already in your customers’ words

The language that sells a product is usually already out there, in what customers say when they explain why they chose you, what confused them, and what nearly sent them to a competitor. Marketing’s job is to listen closely enough to hear it.

Where I listen

I’ve built my research habits around the places customers and prospects speak plainly:

• Sales and support calls, where people explain their problem in their own words before anyone has framed it for them.
• Live chats and lead forms, which show what prospects ask before they trust you.
• Reviews and testimonials, which reveal what customers value enough to write down.
• Conversations with Sales, Support, Business Development and leadership, who hear objections and deal-breakers every day.
• Internal chat groups, where teams share the issues, concerns and requests that came up with customers that day.

What listening changed

Our positioning. When we repositioned our brands, I didn’t start with what we wanted to say. We asked our COO, Business Development, Sales managers and product team what made customers choose us over competitors, then checked their answers against customer chats, reviews and testimonials. The three pillars I landed on came from those patterns, refined over several rounds with leadership.

Our content. Every article we write answers questions that came up in real conversations. That’s also why our knowledge base grew from a support tool into a marketing asset: views tripled in two years because it answers what customers actually ask.

Our markets. Chats, calls and visitor data showed us a growing Spanish-speaking audience. We tested in Spanish first, then applied what worked to French and Portuguese. Our native-speaking colleagues brought something no translator could: the terms and phrases real customers use, because they’d already explained the product to them.

Our customers. Listening also showed us who we were attracting. Combined with tighter signup rules, business-first messaging helped shift new accounts from 30% to 84% business customers.

Where I’d push further

Listening only works if it’s a loop, not a one-off project. One gap I’d close is post-launch feedback: if Sales, Customer Success and account managers don’t always share how customers react to new features, it can be hard to know what’s landing. I’d set up a regular check-in with Sales and adoption tracking before launch, not after.

Why it matters

Buyers can tell when a company is talking about itself and when it’s talking about their problem. The difference usually comes down to whose words you used. When the message comes from customers, it doesn’t need much polish. It just needs to be heard, organized and said back clearly.