How the BEST brands are reading their customers' minds 🧠

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🪩 Volume 103 | September 24, 2025

HAPPY WEDNESDAY, good marketers.

Did a looooottttt of reading this past week and no, not the fun “fiction” kind.

I went full cuckoo bananas down a marketing rabbit hole in a quest to get out of my day to day vacuum.

Slack messages.

LinkedIn posts.

Data studies.

Which is a great segue to…

This week's read time: 3ish mins

For you skimmers: 1-2 mins (hit the bold headers and bullet points)

image of play doh and a statement about how the best marketing keeps things simple

I saw a post on LinkedIn by one of my fave follows in the marketing space: Meghan Hardy. It said:

I don't have 20 years in the industry but I do have a solid near-15 and I could NOT AGREE MORE.

👉 Best way to understand the customer?

STALK THEM. (not literally, please don't literally stalk your customers).

The marketing as a result of REAAALLLLY knowing your customer is… extremely dialed in.

And we can allllll guess what happens with “dialed in marketing” right?

Hint: rhymes with shlayking honey

Let's dig a taaaaddd deeper (who doesn't love brand examples):

Glossier turned blog comments into billion-dollar products. They asked, “What’s missing in your routine?” and then built exactly that.
Duolingo noticed users were bailing when lessons got boring, so they leaned all the way into gamification—streaks, push notifications that feel like memes, even their unhinged TikTok presence.
Canva listened to non-designers drowning in Photoshop and built a tool anyone could use.
Figma saw how teams were hacking design files just to collaborate, so they made real-time collab their north star. Adobe never stood a chance (and er, still doesn't. WE'VE switched).
Liquid Death didn’t sell “hydration.” They tapped into how their customers wanted to feel: rebellious, funny, and a liiiiiittle bit weird.

And now for my next magic trick: I'M GONNA SHOW YA how to get into your customers' heads.

⚠️ Warning: applying these tactics might send you into a good kind of tizzy with new ideas for how to grow you brand. You're welcome.

1. Find their words.
Go to where your customers hang out online (comments, forums, reviews, Reddit, TikTok) and screenshot 5 phrases they use to describe their problem. Drop those exact words into your marketing copy.

2. Spot the drop-off.
Open your analytics and look for the one place people most often leave (checkout, sign-up, contact, demo form). Ask: what’s happening in their head right before they bounce? That’s your next experiment.

3. Run a quick conversation.
DM or email 3 customers and ask: “What almost stopped you from buying/working with us?” The answers will show you blind spots faster than any survey.

4. Step into their shoes.
Spend 15 minutes doing what they do: use your own product like a new customer, or shadow how they’d experience your service. Where do you get stuck or frustrated? Fix that friction point first.

5. Close the loop.
Share back one change you’re making because of customer input (“We heard you wanted faster shipping—here’s what we did about it”). This BUILDS TRUST and keeps feedback flowing.

My “work” music playlist just got a major upgrade since my team told me about berlioz. Jazz house? Say less. If you need new work vibes, find them here (and apparently they're also on tour).

I am massively UNDERwhelmed by Taylor Swift's upcoming album launch… said to be her biggest marketing push to date, but she's launching… a music video… and lyric videos… in theater? And fellow Swiftie's please don't come for my neck but: another cardigan? Do we need ANOTHER cardigan? I'm in a “we'll see” mode now for the album. It feels like her most underwhelming one yet. But then again: how the heck do you top TTPD and The Eras Tour????? This girl is marketing genius through and through: but there comes a time for brands when the name and the mention OF it just sells itself. Maybe Ms. Swifitie has reached that point. Creativity waning and…. will I eat my words in a few weeks? Maybe lol.

Brands/products I've added to my wishlist this week because their marketing is just that good

Ruggable. I own two: and I got them second-hand. Ruggables are AN INVESTMENT but I am constantly impressed with their retargeting efforts on social media and via email; almost good enough to make me want to willy nilly buy a $600 rug. Almost. (This is me pleading with Ruggable to host a blowout 50% sitewide sale sometime soon).

If you could plug the below brand and marketing GENIUSES into your earholes, what would you want to hear from them?

My podcast co-host, Aurrie, and I are heading into QUITE A SEASON of interviews for our third season of MAPPED OUT™ and here's who we have on the docket (without naming names, because surprises are fun, K??):

→ A Chief Growth Officer who’s helped scale the biggest DTC brands you probably shopped in the last few weeks—and grew an ecommerce newsletter to 50K subscribers

→ A founder who built a bootstrapped SaaS powering thousands of online quizzes for top creators and brands

→ A Morning Brew writer turned finance media mogul turning complex money topics into relatable, binge-worthy content for a 200K+ email audience… starting from a casual blog turned full-blown finance media brand

They’ve built and marketed their businesses from the ground up, and we’re asking them all the burning questions—how they did it, what surprised them along the way, and where they’re headed next.

Soooo0o0o you tell us: what would you ask them?

Reply to this email and let me know.

Aaaaand if you wanna be in the loop on when the first episode drops, get on the list for the podcast below.

Subscribe To THAT newsletter, here

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