The cursor blinks on the blank page. The pressure is on. You need to write product marketing copy that converts—a headline that hooks, a value proposition that resonates, a call-to-action that clicks.
So, where do you start?
For many of us, the process is a familiar mix of creative brainstorming, competitive analysis, and a sprinkle of "best practices." We look at our product's features, try to spin them into benefits, and A/B test our way toward something that works. But what if this whole approach is a high-stakes guessing game? What if your customers have already given you the perfect copy, and you just don't know how to translate it?
At thrv, we've discovered through our work with portfolio companies that customers are constantly revealing exactly what messaging will resonate—through their descriptions of struggle, frustration, and desired outcomes. Our AI-powered platform helps teams identify these insights in hours rather than weeks, transforming customer research into precise, compelling copy that converts.
Traditional copywriting often starts from the inside out. We're proud of our new dashboard, our faster algorithm, or our sleek design. We talk about what our product does, hoping the customer will connect the dots to why they should care.
The problem? This approach puts the burden of translation on the customer. It assumes they have the time and energy to figure out how our "synergistic workflow automation" solves their real-world problem of just trying to get a report approved without chasing down three different managers.
This disconnect isn't just a missed opportunity; it's a significant handicap. According to Nielsen, ads with a clear value proposition are recalled by 50% more people. When we talk about ourselves instead of our customers' struggles, we're creating a fuzzy, forgettable message. There is a better way, and it starts by fundamentally shifting your perspective to what we call a Jobs to be Done mindset.
Imagine you're buying a drill. Do you want the drill itself—the plastic, the metal, the motor? Or do you want a quarter-inch hole in your wall to hang a picture?
You want the hole. The drill is just the tool you "hire" to get the job done.
This is the core idea behind the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) framework. Customers don't buy products; they hire them to make progress in their lives—to accomplish a "job." This job isn't a task (like "click a button") but a goal (like "prepare a healthy meal for my family with minimal cleanup").
By focusing on the customer's job, we stop selling drills and start selling perfect picture frames, hung effortlessly. We stop marketing software features and start marketing seamless project approvals. This shift is the first step. The next is to figure out where your customers are struggling the most to get that job done.
Our experience at thrv shows that companies implementing this Jobs to be Done approach typically see 25% improvements in marketing effectiveness because messaging connects directly to customer motivation rather than product features.
To write copy that truly connects, you need to find the friction. Where in the process of getting their job done do your customers struggle, get frustrated, or waste time? Where is the effort highest?
This isn't a guessing game. Using JTBD research methods that we've refined through our portfolio company implementations, you can systematically identify where customers experience the greatest difficulty completing their jobs. At thrv, we use Customer Effort Score (CES) analysis to measure the percentage of customers who report difficulty at each step of their job, based on three key criteria:
Effort Required: The amount of work, time, or resources needed to complete this step
Speed of Execution: How quickly customers can complete this step without compromising quality
Accuracy of Execution: How reliably this step produces the correct outcome without errors or rework
These high-effort areas are where your customers are feeling the most pain. And that pain is a powerful motivator. Research by Gartner shows that 96% of customers who have high-effort experiences report being disloyal. High effort doesn't just create a marketing opportunity; it creates a business imperative.
Our AI-powered platform accelerates this analysis, helping teams identify these precise friction points across large customer segments rapidly. By pinpointing these moments of struggle, you're not just finding marketing angles; you're finding the exact spots where unmet customer needs are bleeding revenue and loyalty.
Your copy should be a direct answer to these high-effort moments. It should find the customer in their moment of struggle and offer a clear path to relief.
Once you have Customer Effort Score data that pinpoints where your customers are struggling, you can turn those insights into compelling copy. Here's the process we use with our portfolio companies to translate CES findings into messaging that works.
Look at your JTBD research data. Find the step in the customer's job where the highest percentage of customers report difficulty. This is your starting point. Don't focus on the dozen other things your product does; zoom in on the one thing that is causing the most widespread frustration.
Example Job: "Plan a weekly content calendar for a marketing team."
Highest CES Step: "Ensuring all stakeholders have reviewed and approved content before the publishing deadline." (78% of customers report this as difficult to execute accurately and on time)
Before you introduce your solution, you must first show the customer you understand their struggle. Use emotive language to describe the frustration of that high-CES step. This is where you build empathy and connection.
This isn't just about logic; it's about emotion. Forrester research indicates that emotion is a key driver in 80% of purchasing decisions. By articulating the "before" state, you're tapping directly into the emotions that drive action.
Copy that reflects the "Before" State: "Tired of chasing down approvals? Is your content calendar held hostage by last-minute feedback and endless email threads?"
Now, position your product as the direct remedy to that specific struggle. The "after" state isn't about features; it's about the feeling of relief, progress, and success. It's the effortless hole in the wall, not the drill.
Copy that presents the "After" State: "Get every piece of content approved on time, in one place. Ship your campaigns with confidence, not chaos."
By following this process, your copy transforms from a generic list of features into a specific, empathetic solution to a proven customer pain point with measurable impact.
For more insights on implementing customer-centric messaging strategies, explore our Jobs to be Done framework at thrv.com.
Let's imagine a hypothetical company that sells financial reporting software for small businesses to illustrate this methodology in practice.
Job to be Done: "Prepare accurate financial reports to make strategic business decisions."
Data from CES Research: The step of "consolidating data from multiple sources (bank accounts, credit cards, payment processors)" shows that 84% of customers report this as highly difficult due to effort required and accuracy challenges. It's a manual, time-consuming process prone to errors.
Traditional, Feature-Based Copy: "Our software integrates with over 50 platforms. We feature a centralized dashboard and automated data syncing."
This copy is accurate, but it's lifeless. It forces the business owner to do the mental work of connecting "integrations" to their real-world pain.
JTBD-Informed, CES-Based Copy: Headline: Stop wasting hours downloading spreadsheets. Sub-headline: Get a single, real-time view of your company's finances automatically. Finally, you can spend your time making decisions, not hunting for data.
The second version enters the conversation already happening in the customer's head. It speaks directly to the highest Customer Effort Score area and promises a clear, desirable outcome that addresses both effort and accuracy concerns.
This data-driven approach isn't just for writing headlines and landing pages. Customer Effort Score insights should be the foundation of your entire go-to-market strategy, as we've implemented with our portfolio companies.
Sales Teams: Can use these high-CES pain points to qualify leads and tailor their discovery calls around proven struggle areas.
Content Marketers: Can create blog posts, webinars, and guides that address these high-effort struggles with specific, actionable solutions.
Product Teams: Can prioritize the roadmap to solve the customer problems with the highest effort scores first, ensuring development resources target genuine unmet needs.
When your entire organization is aligned around solving the customer's biggest struggles, you create a seamless and powerful customer experience. Our comprehensive JTBD platform helps embed this customer-centric data into every team's workflow, ensuring everyone is speaking the same language—the customer's.
We've seen this approach generate a 20% improvement in Net Promoter Scores as customers recognize that companies truly understand and address their specific challenges rather than promoting generic capabilities.
Learn more about our proven value creation methodology and how it transforms go-to-market performance.
The methodology becomes even more powerful when applied systematically using AI to identify patterns across your entire customer base. Our platform enables teams to:
Segment-Specific Analysis: Different customer segments may experience effort differently at the same job steps. Enterprise customers might struggle with integration complexity while small businesses struggle with setup simplicity.
Competitive Positioning: Understanding where competitors create high effort for customers reveals positioning opportunities. If every competitor focuses on one job step, there may be an underserved step where you can dominate.
Content Strategy Alignment: High-CES job steps become content topics that generate immediate engagement because they address genuine, widespread customer struggles.
Product-Market Fit Validation: When your solution directly reduces effort at the highest-CES job steps, you achieve stronger product-market fit and sustainable competitive advantage.
For detailed case studies of this methodology in action, visit our portfolio company results.
Great marketing isn't about having the cleverest tagline; it's about having the deepest empathy for your customer's struggle. Your customers are constantly telling you what they need and where it hurts through their descriptions of difficulty, frustration, and desired outcomes.
The Customer Effort Score methodology we've outlined represents years of refinement through real-world application. When implemented systematically with proper JTBD research techniques, it creates sustainable competitive advantage because competitors using traditional feature-focused messaging simply can't match the precision and relevance of CES-informed communication.
Stop guessing what to say. Start using the proven, high-effort struggles of your customers—identified through systematic Customer Effort Score analysis—to craft messaging that is specific, resonant, and impossible to ignore.
Ready to transform your marketing with customer-centric insights? Explore how our JTBD platform can accelerate your customer research and messaging development at thrv.com.
Customer Effort Score (CES) measures the percentage of customers who report difficulty completing specific steps of their job. Unlike generic customer satisfaction surveys, CES identifies precisely where customers struggle with effort required, speed of execution, and accuracy of execution. This enables marketers to create copy that addresses genuine pain points with specific, measurable improvements rather than generic benefit statements. When messaging targets high-CES job steps, engagement and conversion rates improve because customers immediately recognize their exact struggle reflected in your communication.
CES data is gathered through systematic Jobs to be Done research interviews that deconstruct a customer's complete job into individual steps. Researchers ask customers to describe their current process, identify where they experience difficulty, and rate the effort required for each step. The methodology focuses on understanding circumstances, desired outcomes, and current solution limitations. Advanced AI-powered platforms can accelerate this analysis by identifying patterns across large customer segments, reducing research time from weeks to hours while maintaining accuracy and depth.
CES analysis works effectively across both B2B and B2C contexts because all customers follow processes to accomplish their goals. B2B software customers might struggle with "generate monthly reports" or "onboard new team members," while B2C customers might experience high effort with "plan healthy meals for the week" or "find reliable childcare." The methodology remains consistent: identify the job customers are trying to accomplish, break it into steps, and measure where effort is highest. The resulting insights inform messaging that resonates across any market.
Traditional market research often asks customers what features they want or how satisfied they are with existing solutions. CES analysis focuses on understanding the customer's current process and measuring difficulty at each step, regardless of existing products. Instead of asking "What do you like about our dashboard?" CES research asks "Walk me through how you currently prepare monthly reports and where you experience the most difficulty." This approach reveals genuine unmet needs and creates messaging opportunities that competitors using feature-focused research will miss.
Most companies see immediate improvements in message engagement and relevance within 2-4 weeks of implementing CES-based copy. Click-through rates, time-on-page, and lead quality typically improve because messaging addresses specific, recognizable customer struggles. More substantial impact on conversion rates and sales metrics usually appears within 2-3 months as the messaging is tested and refined. Companies that systematically implement CES insights across their entire marketing strategy often achieve 20-30% improvements in marketing effectiveness within six months.
The biggest mistake is conducting CES research but continuing to write feature-focused copy that doesn't directly address high-effort job steps. Companies also fail when they use CES language but still communicate generic benefits rather than specific effort reductions. Another common error is focusing on job steps where customers are already efficient rather than targeting genuine high-effort pain points. Successful implementation requires translating CES insights into copy that speaks directly to customer struggle with measurable, believable improvements.
CES insights enhance existing marketing tools by providing customer-centric context for messaging and targeting. Marketing automation platforms can create campaigns triggered by specific high-effort job steps, CRM systems can incorporate CES data for better lead scoring, and content management systems can organize resources around job steps with the highest effort scores. Sales teams can use CES insights for discovery calls and objection handling. The analysis provides strategic direction that makes existing tools more effective at addressing actual customer needs.
While comprehensive CES research provides the most robust insights, small companies can start with simplified approaches. Begin by conducting informal interviews with recent customers, asking them to describe their process for accomplishing their goal and identify frustration points. Listen for phrases like "it takes forever," "constantly breaks," or "never works right" - these indicate high-effort areas. Even basic CES insights can dramatically improve messaging effectiveness. As companies grow, they can invest in more systematic research methodologies and AI-powered analysis tools for greater precision and scale.
Transform your marketing with Customer Effort Score insights. Learn more about our proven JTBD methodology and AI-powered research platform at thrv.com.