Common Messaging Mistakes: The One Error That Undermines Everything Else

After decades of helping technology companies communicate their value, Sharon Cordesse has seen every messaging mistake in the book. But when I asked her on Magnetic to name the most common one — the mistake she encounters more than any other — her answer was immediate and specific.

I won't spoil her exact words — you need to hear them in context. But the theme she identified sits at the root of almost all common messaging mistakes in B2B: the gap between what companies think their audience cares about and what the audience actually cares about.

It sounds obvious. Of course you should message around what your audience values. But in practice, most organizations are so close to their own product, their own roadmap, and their own internal priorities that they unconsciously project those priorities onto their messaging.

They lead with what they're excited about, not what the buyer is worried about.

Sharon has coached teams out of this pattern throughout her career, and her approach is refreshingly direct. She doesn't start with messaging frameworks or brand positioning exercises. She starts by asking a simple question that most marketing teams can't answer clearly: what is the specific problem your buyer had before they found you, and how are they describing that problem in their own words?

Not your words. Their words.

The distinction is everything. When your messaging uses the language of your product team, you're creating a translation exercise for the buyer. They have to read your copy and mentally convert it into their reality. Most of them won't bother. But when your messaging uses the language the buyer already uses to describe their own challenge, you create instant recognition. They feel understood before you've even pitched anything.

This is why lists of common messaging mistakes always circle back to the same root cause. Whether the symptom is jargon-heavy copy, features-first positioning, or benefit statements that sound generic — the underlying problem is the same: the company is talking to itself instead of talking to its buyer.

This is especially critical in demand generation and content marketing, where you have seconds — not minutes — to establish relevance. If your headline describes a problem the buyer is already thinking about, in words they'd use to describe it to a colleague, you've cleared the first and hardest hurdle in marketing: getting someone to believe this is for them.

Sharon's coaching method for fixing this is practical and actionable. It doesn't require a six-month brand overhaul. It requires the willingness to step outside your own perspective and genuinely listen to how your customers talk about the challenges you solve. Pull up your last five sales calls. Read your support tickets. Sit in on a customer advisory board. The language you need is already there — you just have to stop overwriting it with your own.

For marketing leaders, this clip is a gut check. For individual contributors writing copy, building campaigns, or preparing sales decks, it's a framework you can apply immediately. And for anyone who's ever looked at their own company's website and felt like the messaging was somehow missing the mark without being able to articulate why, Sharon names the problem and hands you the fix

Watch the clip, then open your homepage in a new tab and read it with fresh eyes.