Finding Language/Market Fit: How to Make Customers Feel Like You’ve Read Their Minds

“When I’m coaching founders, I never want us to get too far from the question: ‘What does the “Dozens of times now in my career as an operator, investor and advisor, I’ve seen changes in a handful of words yield jaw-dropping differences in conversion. I myself didn’t realize until I jumped the wall from operator to VC and saw hundreds of early-stage companies, but now it’s clear as day: language/market fit is the most under-appreciated concept for early-stage startups.”

After more than a decade of running B2B growth teams at PayPal and investing at 500 Startups, Matt Lerner now spends his days helping early-stage startups accelerate growth, as the co-founder and CEO at Startup Core Strengths — so he’s got plenty of patterns to draw on here to support this rather bold claim.

“What’s going on here isn’t magic, nor is it ‘just marketing tactics.’ It’s language/market fit at work — when you find the exact right words to explain your product or service to prospective customers, words that resonate with goals and struggles that are already in their brains,” says Lerner.

Too many startups stall out before reaching this unlock, however — something Lerner is striving to change. The first step is to prioritize it properly. “Most founders are focused on finding product/market fit, zeroing in on the right set of features to match their prospects’ needs. Moreover, ‘marketing’ is usually seen as a later priority, not step zero. People also don't like to go out of their comfort zone — and for technical founders especially, this work usually is,” he says.

Yet there are real costs to not prioritizing this deeper work. “Before language/market fit, growth feels like pushing on a string, a lot of work for incremental gains. Your Facebook ads barely pay for themselves and your AdWords don’t. Your marketers struggle to deliver results despite success with previous companies. Your salespeople (other than your founder) struggle to sell your product. And your conversion rates hover between 0.5% and 3%. On the other side, I’ve seen companies with language/market fit normally get conversion rates from 8% - 40%, which results in much stronger unit economics,” he says.

Why the sudden jump? “Visitors to your site or app store listing bring different levels of intent. It’s easy to convert high-intent users. But if you’re an unfamiliar startup, most of your visitors will have low intent, more curious than desperate. As you tighten up your language, you’ll be able to cut through to that massive pool of low-intent traffic.”

In today’s exclusive article, Lerner shares more about why finding language/market fit should be “step zero” for startups, explaining the neurological basis for this phenomena and showing how startups can find it in his four-step framework. If you’re a pre-product/market fit founder, or a head of product or growth, his approach can save you a lot of time and wasted cycles.

Thanks, as always, for reading and sharing!

-The Review editors

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