How to Build Messaging that Resonates
Use real customer insight to shape positioning people feel, not just read.
Hi! 👋
If you’ve ever stared at a pile of customer feedback and thought, “Cool, but what am I supposed to do with all of this?”, welcome to this week’s issue!
So today we’re unpacking something every marketer, CX leader, and product storyteller wrestles with: How do you turn scattered feedback into messaging people actually feel?
A quick thank-you to this week’s sponsor: an AI-powered feedback analytics platform that helps teams turn raw customer comments into structured insight. You’ll see how that fits into the story in just a second.
Let’s dive in. 👇
1. Messaging Starts With What Customers Actually Say, Not What We Hope They Say
Brands often build messaging by starting with what they want to talk about: features, roadmap highlights, big shiny value propositions.
But customers speak in real-life language:
“I just want it to work.”
“This saved me three hours.”
“I didn’t realize how stressed I was until this fixed it.”
“That step made zero sense.”
The gap between brand-speak and customer speak? That’s where messaging fails.
Your job is never to invent a story. It’s to excavate the one already alive in your customers’ words.
The trick is recognizing patterns: the repeated phrases, emotional beats, unexpected use cases, and “aha moments” that show up across feedback. That’s where AI feedback analytics platforms shine: they surface the themes humans would miss or spend hours manually sorting.
If your narrative doesn’t sound like your customers, it won’t resonate with your market. Period.
2. Look for Emotion Before You Look for Data Points
Most teams skim customer feedback like they’re scanning for errors in a spreadsheet: “positive, negative, bug report, feature request”
But messaging isn’t built from sentiment scores. It’s built from emotion.
Use the sentiment scores as signals. But dive deeper and look for:
The frustration behind the complaint
The joy behind the success story
The insecurity hidden in a question
The relief behind a solved pain point
The surprise when something “just works”
Emotional patterns are your narrative anchors. They tell you not just what customers want, but why they want it. And that’s the difference between messaging that feels flat and messaging that hits nerve endings.
When customers say, “This saves me time,” take note. When multiple customers independently say, “This made my day easier,” that’s your message.
3. Let Insights Shape the Story, Not the Other Way Around
Here’s one of the most common mistakes: teams gather feedback, then retro-fit it into a narrative they’ve already decided on.
That’s backwards.
True customer-led messaging requires letting insights lead, even if they reshape what you thought your product was “about”.
Start with three simple questions:
What keeps surfacing?: These are your core messages. They’re not optional.
What surprised you?: These are your differentiation points. They signal unexpected value.
What’s missing from your current story?: This is the messaging gap, the stuff customers care about that you never talk about.
If you want messaging that resonates, you have to be brave enough to let the narrative evolve with the data. AI tools help teams identify these shifts early instead of waiting months to notice the pattern.
4. Turn Raw Insight Into Clear, Human Messaging
Once you’ve collected themes, now the fun begins: translation.
Great messaging is just customer truth, articulated with clarity and intention.
A simple framework to turn feedback into a real narrative:
Customer Phrase > Insight > Positioning > Message
Example:
“It took me five minutes instead of an hour.”
THey value speed and efficiency.
Our advantage is fast time-to-value.
You can word it as: “Get results in minutes, not hours.”
Another example:
“Your onboarding felt like a personal guide.”
They value feeling supported.
Our advantage is intuitive guidance.
You can word it as: “Onboarding that actually feels like someone’s got your back.”
Your goal isn’t to paraphrase feedback, it’s to articulate the emotion behind it in a way that connects instantly.
That’s what turns a jumble of quotes into a cohesive story.
5. Close the Loop by Testing Messaging With the People Who Inspired It
Most teams stop too early. They gather feedback, extract insights, rewrite the messaging, and then send it into the world without showing it to the very people who supplied the input.
Huge missed opportunity.
Great messaging is co-created.
Here’s how to test the story with customers:
Feed your new messaging through your feedback analytics tool to spot how closely it mirrors themes.
Share drafts with your customer champions and community groups.
Ask: “Does this sound like you? Did we capture the real value?”
Watch for emotional alignment, not word choice.
Iterate before you publish.
Customers feel ownership over the messages they help shape, which makes adoption stronger, loyalty deeper, and your story far more believable.
What This Means for You
Here’s your playbook to turn feedback into a story your market actually cares about:
Start with customer language, not product language. Comb through feedback. Look for the phrasing customers repeat.That’s what you need to focus on.
Map the emotional patterns hiding inside comments. This is where resonance lives. In the feelings, not the features.
Identify the themes that keep bubbling up. Make these the pillars of your narrative. Don’t fight the data.
Translate insight into messaging using a simple chain: What they said > what it means > what you stand for > what you say.
Validate the story with the people who inspired it. This is where your narrative gets sharper, more human, and more honest.
The goal isn’t to guess what will resonate. It’s to listen your way into a message your customers already believe.
Thank you for being here! And for caring enough about your customers to turn their voices into your greatest storytelling asset.
That’s the work that separates brands people buy once, from brands people follow forever.
See you next week!
Talk soon,
Marian 💚