Your marketing problem might not be a marketing problem
Before you change the copy, launch another campaign, or rebuild the website, let’s find out what’s actually NOT working.
Uncover the gaps between what customers are saying, what your organization thinks they’re saying…and what your marketing actually communicates.
Your customers are talking.
The question…is everyone hearing the same thing?
Your sales team talks to prospects every day.
Customer service knows what confuses and frustrates your customers.
Marketing has research, analytics, surveys, and campaign data.
Leadership has years of experience and its own understanding of the market.
There’s customer intelligence everywhere.
But here’s where things get interesting.
Ask Sales why customers buy from you.
Then ask Marketing.
Then ask Leadership.
Would you get the same answer?
If not, you may have found one reason your marketing isn’t doing what you need it to do.
Sometimes the problem happens long before someone writes the copy.
Maybe Sales repeatedly hears an objection Marketing doesn’t know about.
Maybe customers rave about something your website barely mentions.
Maybe Marketing is promoting the benefit leadership thinks customers care about while your customers are telling Sales something completely different.
Maybe customer service answers the same question 15 times a week, but nobody has thought to answer it on the website.
Or maybe your website simply isn’t making it clear why someone should choose you.
These aren’t always copy problems.
They’re customer signal problems.
And rewriting the headline won’t fix the underlying problem if we don’t first understand where the signal is getting lost.
Customer Signal Audit
Marketing + Messaging Diagnostic
Copywriting + Marketing Strategy
The Customer Signal Framework
Follow the signal before fixing the marketing.
Your customers are constantly giving you information about what they want, need, question, value, misunderstand, and ultimately buy.
I look at how that information travels through your business.
Capture
What are customers actually telling you?
Sales calls.
Reviews. Emails.
Support tickets. Surveys.
Interviews.
Lost deals. Search behavior. Complaints. Testimonials.
The clues are everywhere.
Collect
Where does that customer intelligence live?
Your CRM? Customer service software?Marketing reports?
Email?
A salesperson’s notebook? Someone’s head?
Having customer information isn’t the same as being able to use it.
Connect
Is the right information reaching the right people?
Does Marketing know what Sales hears? Does Sales know what Customer Service repeatedly sees? Does leadership’s understanding of the customer match the evidence?
This is where silos become marketing problems.
Interpret
Are you drawing the right conclusions?
Customer information doesn’t speak for itself.
Assumptions, internal language, departmental priorities, and we’ve always known our customer thinking can change the meaning of what customers are actually telling you.
Translate
Does the customer signal show up in your marketing?
Positioning. Website copy. Email. Sales materials. Offers.
Content.
Customer experience.
This is where customer intelligence becomes communication.
Measure
Did it work?
What happened after you changed the message?
Did more people respond?
Did conversion improve?
Did objections change?
Did sales conversations get easier?
Then we listen.
CAPTURE → COLLECT → CONNECT → INTERPRET → TRANSLATE → MEASURE
My website had all the pieces, nice photos, great products, but my bounce rate was too high. My online sales were not anywhere near where they should be, based on the size of my business.
Her clear, concise information made me realize how over-done and over-worded my website was. She helped streamline the copy and more importantly, the look of my landing, product and category pages.
I’m Christine
Part marketer. Part conversion copywriter. Part systems thinker. Professional question-asker.
I’ve spent decades working in marketing, entrepreneurship, conversion copywriting, and product businesses.
And one thing I’ve learned is that the obvious marketing problem isn’t always the actual problem.
My background taught me to look at both sides.
Marketing taught me to ask:
What are we communicating?
Conversion copywriting taught me to ask:
What does the customer actually care about?
And systems thinking taught me to ask:
What’s happening between the two?
That’s the space where I do my best work.
I follow the customer signal, find the disconnects, and help businesses turn what their customers are actually telling them into marketing that makes sense and gets people to act.
Based in the RaleighDurham area. Working with businesses everywhere.
BETTER MARKETING DOESN’T ALWAYS START WITH MORE MARKETING.
Sometimes it starts with listening.
To your customers.
To Sales.
To Customer Service.
To the data.
And even to the disagreements inside your own organization.
Because your customers are already sending you the signal.
Let’s make sure your business can hear it.
My Approach
Before I prescribe, I diagnose.
I’m not interested in rewriting a homepage simply because someone decided the homepage needs new words.
First, I want to know:
What’s actually happening?
Is there a traffic problem?
A position problem?
A customer understanding problem?
A messaging problem?
A conversion problem?
Or is valuable customer intelligence simply getting lost somewhere between the customer and the marketing?
Once we know what’s wrong, we can decide what needs fixing.
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