Stop Confusing Your Customers and Fix Your Messaging 

Why Customers Don’t Understand Your Product

“Good copy can’t fix bad messaging.” This blunt truth, from messaging consultant Diane Wiredu, hits at the heart of why so many B2B websites underperform. It’s not that your headlines are too boring or that your CTA buttons aren’t orange enough. It’s that your product messaging doesn’t land. In fact, it may not even make sense to the very people you’re trying to serve. 

When prospects can’t quickly understand what you do and why it matters, you face low conversion messaging that damages your go-to-market strategy. Diane says that “most companies don’t actually have a copy problem. What you actually have is a messaging problem.” A recent study confirms her insight, showing that “46% of website users said that a lack of message or unclear messaging was the main reason that they actually left websites.”

“You can have the best product in the world, but if you have the wrong message, it’s going to fail.” – If your product page looks sleek but leaves users scratching their heads, the problem isn’t copy—it’s core messaging. Fix that, and your conversions will follow.

This article builds on previous How to Web Conference insights—like April Dunford’s guide to product positioning, which distinguishes positioning from messaging and copywriting, and Tino’s perspective on brand storytelling, which argues your message is often more powerful than your tech. Together, they offer the foundation for a product communication strategy that resonates.

Positioning vs Messaging: Finding Your Message-Market Fit

The distinction between positioning and messaging is critical—yet many early-stage startups blur the lines. To clarify this relationship, Diane draws a clear distinction: “Messaging is not your positioning, it’s not your headline, it’s not just your tagline, it’s not your mission. Messaging articulates the most important things about your company and product and why that matters to your audience.”

A strong brand messaging strategy builds upon your product positioning framework. As Wiredu explains, “Messaging is what you say about your product, and copywriting is how you say it.” This difference echoes April Dunford’s opinion: positioning is strategic, messaging is tactical. Ignore that distinction, and your product’s perceived value gets lost in translation.

For technical product messaging in particular, Diane doesn’t underplay words about this reality: “Good copy can’t fix bad messaging. In the same way, you can put lipstick on a pig and it will still be a pig. You can try and polish bad messaging, but it will still be bad messaging.” If you’re building a positioning statement or defining a value proposition, don’t skip this foundational work.

The Messaging Hierarchy: A Powerful Product Messaging Template

Effective messaging—especially for technical products or AI solutions—needs structure. Enter the “product messaging hierarchy”, a framework presented by Diane at How to Web Conference, and visualized in her talk:

At the bottom of the hierarchy are features — the technical building blocks of your product. These feed into capabilities— what users can actually do with those features. Capabilities lead to benefits, which in turn connect to value — the bigger outcome or change your user experiences.

At the top of the pyramid are your personas and segment types, which define who you’re speaking to. But the emotional center lies in pain, struggle, context, and use case — the real-world scenarios and jobs-to-be-done that make your message land. 

“When what we say aligns with what they care about, that’s the magic zone.” – That’s the message-market fit. 

And without it, product-market fit doesn’t matter. “Product market fit is not enough,” Diane insists. “To truly have product-market fit, it relies on us having message-market fit. Because you can have the best product in the world, but if you have the wrong message, it’s not going to work, it’s going to fail.” Understanding this relationship is essential for companies developing their market positioning strategy, especially when creating value proposition examples that resonate with target audiences.

The 3 Most Common Messaging Mistakes in B2B Tech

1. The Overstuffed Syndrome

Wiredu compares the most common messaging mistake to an all-you-can-eat buffet where you pile too much on your plate. She calls this “overstuffed syndrome” and explains how it creates “messaging bloat”:

“When we don’t have a singular focus, we stuff in too many messages, and it’s really painful for our prospects to digest all of this.” This kind of bloated messaging puts the cognitive burden on your audience. It’s overwhelming, unmemorable, and forces your users to work too hard to understand what you offer. Even worse, it’s often the result of too many stakeholders trying to say too much at once—resulting in Frankenstein messaging.

Also, this approach ignores Miller’s Law, which states that “our brains can’t retain more than 7 pieces of information ±2”—and in reality, our attention spans demand even greater focus.

The consequences are severe: “It is overwhelming for your prospects, it’s not memorable. There’s no way for you to stand out when you’re saying a million things. And it puts all of the onus on your prospects to do the hard work of figuring out what your product is.”

One of the most effective ways to combat this is through a concept Diane calls One Key Message (OKM). She often asks her clients a deceptively simple but powerful question: If your customer could remember just one thing about your product, what should it be? This isn’t just a messaging tactic — it’s a mental exercise in clarity and prioritization. Imagine walking into a room with your ideal customer and having only 10 seconds to explain what your product is. Would you try to tell them everything at once? Or would you focus on the clearest, most compelling outcome?

That’s the magic of OKM. It forces you to distill the essence of your value into a single, simple, yet memorable message. When companies embrace their One Key Message, everything sharpens: the homepage copy becomes focused, the elevator pitch becomes punchier, and the user experience becomes frictionless. Most importantly, your audience gets it — instantly.

So, Diane recommends to always apply the “Rule of One”: “Messaging should have one key idea, speak to one key persona, and make one promise.”

2. The Me-Me-Me Syndrome & the ‘My Product…’ Obsession

The second big flaw focuses exclusively on product features while forgetting customer needs. Diane compares this to an eager student desperately raising their hand: “We are so eager and excited to talk about what we do that we forget about the audience.”

This approach ignores a fundamental truth from Jobs-to-be-Done creator Bob Moesta: “People don’t buy products, they hire them to make progress.” 

Diane adds: “Often in technology and products, what we need to focus on is the fact that we’re selling an outcome, we’re selling a transformation, and sometimes we’re selling that capability.”

She emphasizes: “It’s very different to say ‘here’s what our product does,’ than ‘here’s what you can do with our product.'”

The solution? Apply the golden question of messaging: “What’s In It For Me” (WIIFM). Wiredu explains that this question “allows us to put ourselves in our customers’ shoes and stay focused on the goal and the outcome for our prospects.”

Her value proposition framework starts by examining “the old way” of doing things and its associated pain, then uses the phrase “Now you can…” to highlight new capabilities that connect directly to product features and customer outcomes.

3. The Fluff Syndrome or The Cotton Candy Problem

The third critical mistake relies on vague language and buzzwords. Diane compares this to cotton candy: “It’s big, it’s exciting, takes up a lot of space, but then you bite into it and there’s just nothing of substance there.”

She points to buzzwords as the primary culprit: “We don’t just use one or two, we sprinkle them in. We’re like the Salt Bae of SaaS and it overpowers our messaging.” The problem? “None of us actually know what these things really mean. So, they mask the value that we’re trying to share about our product.” Diane shares feedback from a messaging test with a client’s ideal prospects: “We expected more than the usual buzzwords.” “Customer-centric is getting really tired. What does that mean?” “How are you streamlined?” As she explains, “No one actually knows what streamlined means. So your prospects will not be impressed.”

The solution? “We need to get concrete. We need to get very specific. We need to be really unambiguous with our messaging. And a good way is to get visual with our messaging.” She recommends using customer language since “who understands their pains, their motivations, their desires better than your customers?”

Dash’s Messaging & Value Proposition Transformation

Diane shares effective storytelling through the success story of Dash, a digital asset management software company. After using messaging testing tools and customer research, they discovered why their marketing wasn’t working: “things were muddled up, it was chaotic. We had all these WeTransfer link sharing images, things took ages to upload.”

Instead of generic claims about being a “powerful platform”—a common mistake in technical product messaging—Dash created specific messaging that addressed these pain points: “No crashing inboxes, no huge attachments, no WeTransfer woes. Sharing images and videos is simple and painless, like it should be.”

Their research revealed that customers felt their visual content finally had a “home”—not just a storage location. Dash then made a bold move in their brand messaging strategy that Diane applauds: “Dash does something that I absolutely love and that so many companies are really scared to do. They called out the incumbent.” 

Their customer-led messaging became: “Your videos shouldn’t live in Dropbox and Drive. Create a home for your brand assets. With everything organized and searchable, your team can find what they need themselves — leaving you free to design.”

In this way, they recognized a fundamental truth about product positioning frameworks: “often your competitors or your competitive alternatives are not your competitors. They’re the existing players in the market and the old way of doing things.”

The Dash case study powerfully reinforces what Tino emphasized in his article on brand storytelling: your brand story is often worth more than your code.

The results? Dash doubled their monthly recurring revenue in six months.

How to Build Your Message-Market Fit?

Diane concludes with three essential components for a product messaging template that addresses the common problem of why customers don’t understand our product: “Strong messaging has a clear and singular focus. It is relevant to your prospect, to their needs, their motivations, their desires, and it’s differentiated. So, you need to be uniquely specific and say the things that only you can say about your product in your market.”

For those developing a SaaS brand voice, she emphasizes documenting your messaging framework: “It’s really important that this serves as a document for the entire team so that you have consistency moving forward and we don’t end up with that mishmash with everyone touching your messaging and not aligning with the messaging that you’ve created.”

When you achieve message-market fit through proper user research for messaging, you don’t just explain your product—you create conversion-optimized product copy that drives results. You transform the buying experience from pain to satisfaction.

Your product solves a problem. But your messaging opens the door. 

Message-market fit isn’t fluff—it’s the foundation. It bridges the gap between what you’ve built and why anyone should care.

Ready to make your messaging work harder? Start by asking: What’s the one thing my customer should remember about my product? If you don’t have an answer, you don’t have a message-market fit.

And that’s your next growth milestone.

If you’re ready to sharpen your message, share your story, and connect with others building bold, customer-led brands — come to How To Web Conference 2025. Join us to explore what truly makes messaging resonate, and learn from the founders, strategists, and storytellers shaping the next wave of product communication.

This article continues the exploration of strategic product communication, building on April Dunford’s insights on product positioning and Tino’s views on the power of brand storytelling. Together, these three pieces provide a roadmap for creating messaging that converts and connects with your target audience.