When marketing your business, one of the most critical questions to answer is: What story are your customers telling themselves?

Every person who visits your website or interacts with your brand brings their unique background, goals, and challenges. Despite these differences, some common customer stories and shared motivations drive them to seek out your products or services.

Identifying and understanding these shared narratives is essential for creating story-driven marketing strategies that resonate deeply and inspire action.

As a marketer who sees the value in earning the trust and loyalty of your customers (see: Belong to Your Customer), it’s in your best interest to uncover these customer behavior insights and common themes.

Once you identify them, you can create marketing that attracts and engages customers, increasing the likelihood that they will choose you over your competitors.

In this post, you’ll discover:

• How to discover the story your customers are telling themselves
• Why it matters
• How can you use this insight to shape your marketing and copywriting?

Let’s dive in.

Why Understanding Customer Stories Matters

Marketing isn’t just about promoting your product or service. It’s about creating a connection and showing your audience that you understand their needs and can help them solve their problem.

Becoming aware of the story your customers tell themselves is central to building this connection. It enables you to create marketing copy that speaks directly to their internal dialogue and the belief system that shapes their decisions.

For example, people shopping for beauty products might tell themselves, “I’m overwhelmed. I want to look polished and fresh without too much hassle.” A business owner investing in software might think, “This will help me save time and focus on growing my company.”

By understanding these narratives, you can align your messaging with your audience’s desires, making them feel seen and understood.

Customers who see their story reflected in your copy are more likely to trust you and choose your brand.

But how do you do it?

We’ll tackle that in the next section.

How to Uncover Customer Stories

So, how do you determine what’s driving your customers to make purchasing decisions?

Here are three proven strategies:

1. Engage Directly with Your Customers

There’s no substitute for talking directly with your customers. The best way to uncover their fears, motivations and aspirations is by conducting one-on-one interviews.

Open-ended questions like the sampling below can reveal the emotional and practical factors influencing their decisions:

• What problem were you trying to solve when you bought this product?
• What made you choose our product over others?
• How do you feel when you use this product?

Real conversations provide a unique glimpse into the customer’s thought process, helping you understand the story they told themselves before purchasing.

2. Analyze Customer Reviews and Feedback

Customer reviews are a goldmine for understanding how people perceive your product. Mine for Voice of Customer on your platforms, competitors’ platforms, or third-party sites. When reading, look at your customers’ language and note recurring themes.

A simple search on Reddit for a popular beauty brand resulted in pages of reviews as detailed as this one:

“I haven’t tried a wide variety of their products, but I agree with the others that their lip products are the standouts. The shades & tones are phenomenal. I adore the lipsticks & I enjoy the lip oils, the only con to the lip oils is I wouldn’t keep them flat or keep them in a bag; they can leak, I keep mine standing up on my vanity, though I haven’t had a problem taking them around with me for the day as long as I return them back to standing. Long-term laying down seems to be the leak issue for me.”

As a copywriter, this feedback is a dream. It provides many descriptive, concise and powerful adjectives that would make for great copy in product descriptions, headlines, email marketing subject lines, etc.

Social media is where customers often share their unfiltered thoughts about products, brands, and industries.

3. Use Social Listening

Look for anecdotes, complaints, or praise that reveal how customers feel about your offerings. This approach helps you tap into the broader and more casual narrative your customers engage with and ensures your marketing meets their expectations and desires.

Now that you have the insights, it’s time to implement them.

Turning Customer Stories into Sales Copy

Once you’ve gathered insights about your customers, the next step is to use this information to craft compelling sales messaging and engaging content.

Here’s how:

1. Use the Language of Your Customers

As mentioned above, your customers’ words and phrases when describing their challenges or goals will make the best copy. By marrying their voice with the key benefits of your product, you’ll capture their attention and inspire their confidence that your product is worth their money.

Or, in place of, “Our makeup line includes long-lasting lipsticks,” say, “Our lipsticks keep you looking flawless all day, so you can focus on what matters most.”

2. Focus on Their Story, Not Your Product

The most effective marketing copy emphasizes how the customer will benefit, not the product features. Instead of saying, “Our software has advanced analytics capabilities,” say, “Our software helps you make data-driven decisions to grow your business.”

Apple does this better than anyone.

Frame your product as something that helps customers achieve their goals or solves their problems. Show them how your offering fits seamlessly into the story they’re already telling themselves.

3. Educate Your Buyers to Feel Safe to Buy

Great content doesn’t just sell—it educates and empowers. Create resources that help your audience make informed decisions, like the ones below:

• Videos, blog posts, live chats, and customer-facing events can position your brand as a trusted authority.
• Case studies and testimonials can show how others have successfully used your product to achieve similar goals.
• Tutorials and how-to guides can help potential customers envision themselves using your product.

To wrap things up, let’s revisit the most important takeaways.

Recap:

Understanding the story your customers tell themselves is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing toolkit. You can uncover the narratives that drive their decisions by engaging directly with your customer, conducting thorough research, and remaining open and curious to feedback.

From there, it’s all about crafting messaging that reflects those customer stories, helping your customers see themselves in your offer. This approach attracts customers and builds trust, loyalty, and long-term sales success when done effectively.

So, what story are your customers telling themselves? And how can you make your brand a part of it? The answers to these questions are the foundation of genuinely impactful marketing.