Voice of customer as a positioning strategy for resistant or invisible audiences

Executive overview

Some of your best potential customers actively resist you — or feel so invisible they never engage. Generic positioning misses both groups.

Ask two questions: who is most against you but in need of you, and who is most unloved but in need of you? Build your brand voice around those people so they see themselves in it.

Make your voice their voice — not a performance of voice, but genuine advocacy for a specific group.

The two groups worth targeting

• Against you but in need of you: people who resist your product even though it solves their problem
• Unloved and in need of you: people who feel invisible or undervalued and lack confidence to engage
• These are "or" scenarios — both do not need to be true, though overlap amplifies the opportunity
• Positioning is not just about interesting language — it solves the problem of why a group won't adopt your solution

Finding the insight: founder interviews

• Conduct real founder interviews — not intake calls, but deep conversations tracing back to the original problem
• Push the founder to revisit what drove them to build; surface the human insight underneath the product
• GetPrime (now Flow by Pluralsight) example: engineers needed recognition tools but resisted being measured
• Founder Travis said: "Engineers love building cool ships" — that single line revealed the brand's true allegiance
• Result: positioning statement "Engineers build business" — engineers could see themselves in the brand and buy into it

Translating interviews into brand voice

• Run jobs-to-be-done interviews and other user interviews alongside founder interviews
• Look for the specific language people use to describe feeling overlooked or out of place
• Copyhackers example: in-house copywriter said "I used to feel like nobody in a room — my whole team is made of PhDs"
• That quote surfaced the unloved-but-in-need-of-us opportunity among in-house copywriters
• The insight drove the tagline "Most Aware" — insider language that signals belonging and competence

Applying the framework

1. Identify who in your market is against you but needs you, or unloved but needs you
2. Interview your founder to find the human truth behind the product
3. Interview users to find the exact language they use to describe their situation
4. Build a position or tagline that makes your voice their voice
5. Deploy across brand touchpoints — not just homepage copy, but anything that creates belonging (emails, merch, community signals)

Key distinction

• This is not pandering or mirroring surface-level language
• It is becoming a genuine advocate for a specific group — giving them words to believe in
• People want to believe in the brands they buy from; positioning lets them do that