It’s Saturday morning. Your coffee is brewing, filling the air with the aroma of instant joy, your dog is prancing around showing off their favorite toy, and you sit in your favorite comfy chair taking your phone to open Instagram—instantly coming across an ad related to something you said yesterday. Yes, your phone is always listening and yes it’s still very weird!
As you scroll and try to ignore the feeling of invasiveness from your phone, you come across another ad from the same brand, and this one makes your thumb stop, tapping the video for that full and more immersive experience. You’re moments away from touching “learn more” or “purchase now,” but you save and skip to come back (because you’re working on your “shoppies” problem ;)). You scroll a bit more and come across an influencer promoting the same brand/product, however their tone, persona and song choice made you unsave for later—it no longer connected.
This doesn’t just happen when brands work with an influencer that may not be the best fit. It also happens when brand messages are being fragmented across “personas”—i.e. when you see brands promoting something one way and their employees promoting it in their own personal way.
Is this a risk when you include other people in your brand messaging? Yes, always. Is it worth the risk at all? Yes, absolutely.
When you don’t include your people or outside influences into your storytelling, then that humanization piece gets lost. The critical piece here is sharing and telling your story accurately and consistently. How you speak internally and externally are critical and if they’re disjointed, it’s incredibly obvious.
It’s also critical to note that it’s not just people telling stories about your brand, because that will happen whether you like it or not. It’s also how the channels tell your story/stories, including how you engage with your audiences. All of these pieces, if disconnected, cost your brand.
Marketing vs. Sales
The most common misaligned storytelling systems tend to come from within. From previous roles and my own experience, Sales and Marketing can have a disconnect, however they need to be the most connected.
So how does this happen? I’m so glad you asked! The teams tend to have separate goals—internal and external—they will have conversations in the field vs. how they’re trying to present themselves (trying to own the narrative), or there will be separate conversations happening online.
This elevates the conversation beyond team friction and into structural storytelling breakdown.
Another misaligned system happens between marketing and influencers. There’s a special sweet spot that you aim to work in to give the influencers the freedom to craft the story in a way that matches their brand—which in doing so makes it more human. However, this can get discombobulated when an influencer is popular, but doesn’t represent the same values as the brand.
What Fragmentation Actually Looks Like
As you were reading, I’m sure there were some examples that came to your mind immediately. No matter what the brand is, you’ve likely seen or experienced this kind of disjointedness.
Some of the easiest disconnects to spot is language. For example, a brand’s LinkedIn uses the word visionary, their website says practical and their sales team is selling as cost-saving.
Another is when the brand voice sounds bold and commanding in a way that makes you listen, but their nurture emails sound cautious and maybe slightly uncertain. And something important to call out here is that fragmentation isn’t always language—it can also be visuals or even color usage. While testing and evolving are a part of brand development and growth, it doesn’t work when all parts aren’t moving in the same direction at the same time.
One that I’ve experienced more than once in my career has been internal language versus external language—i.e. when internal language is product-centric, but the external language is problem-centric, or when the internal language is specific to the company, but doesn’t match the way customers or audiences actually talk about their needs.
Something really interesting that I learned in that experience was the way (in my role specifically) I was able to showcase the gaps to the marketing and sales team—when people mentioned specific problems and the solutions being tagged or provided didn’t include our company. It was because the language we were using to market and promote weren’t landing the same way. And through this knowledge, I was able to position myself in conversations to increase brand awareness and sales. And not every company has someone dedicated to do that job, so I was thankful that was a skill I had and a need that I was filling.
Expand “Internal vs. External Language”
Internal vs. external language can be the quiet culprit. The one that doesn’t always show up in a brand review deck, but will absolutely show up in performance.
We know that within companies, language becomes shorthand or “innovative.” Teams speak in product names, feature sets, internal nicknames, acronyms and industry jargon that makes perfect sense… to them. It’s efficient. It’s familiar. It’s comfortable.
But when that same shorthand or ‘innovation” finds itself in external promotions and doesn’t land? That’s where the disconnect begins.
Internal shorthand becomes external messaging
What feels natural internally often sounds confusing, or could even sound irrelevant, to your audience. Your team might say “modular integration layer,” while your buyer is just trying to “connect tools without a headache.”
Feature obsession vs. outcome clarity
Internally, there’s pride in what you’ve built or the work that you do. Every feature has a story. Every capability matters. But your audience isn’t buying features—they’re buying relief, progress, transformation. When your messaging leans too heavily on what something is instead of what it does for them, you lose momentum.
Founder language (innovation) vs. buyer language
Founders and early teams often describe the product from a place of vision and origin. It’s passionate, but sometimes abstract or overly complex. Meanwhile, buyers are grounded in their current problems. If those two perspectives don’t meet in the middle, your message will float right past them.
And this is the critical piece—this isn’t just a messaging issue. It’s a conversion issue.
When the internal and external language aren’t aligned, you’re asking the audience to do extra work to interpret, to translate or to figure it out themselves. And in this world where attention is currency and attention spans are short with endless options, your audience won’t figure it out themselves—they’ll move on. If your message needs explaining, it’s not working.
Diagnosis complete. Let’s talk about the fix.
Now for the part most brands skip—the fix.
Create a single narrative spine
The core of your brand story should be a clear throughline:
What problem are you solving? What tension does your audience feel? And what transformation do you enable?
Every team, every channel, every voice should be able to trace back to this.
Align on 3–5 core message pillars
Core message pillars are your anchors. The themes you want to be known for. Not 12, not 20—just a handful that actually stick the landing.
When everything is important, nothing is memorable.
Build a shared language doc
This is your translation layer. A living document that defines how you talk about your product, your value, and your audience’s problems—in their words, not just yours. Sales, marketing, customer success, and even partners should all be pulling from the same source.
In a previous role, we had a client provide 16 pages of dos and don’ts for their brand. Was this a bit overkill? A little. But did we have an answer to every question? Yes, absolutely.
Run quarterly narrative audits
We all know that your brand doesn’t live in one place—it lives everywhere. Your website, your social, your sales calls, your email nurture campaigns, your partnerships, etc. Take time to step back and ask: Are we telling the same story everywhere? Or are we accidentally saying five different things?
Involve sales in messaging development
This is critical because your sales team is on the front lines. They’re the ones that hear objections, questions, hesitations in real time. If marketing is building the story without their input, there’s critical context being missed—and potentially reinforcing the disconnect you’re trying to fix.
Alignment is About Removing Friction
Remember this: alignment isn’t about making everything sound polished or aesthetically consistent. It’s about removing friction.
It’s about making it easier for someone to understand you, trust you, and choose you—without hesitation.
When your story is cohesive, trust compounds. Every touchpoint reinforces the last. Every interaction builds momentum. But when your story is fragmented? Doubt starts to creep in their likes, comments, shares, clicks, DMs and more. Small inconsistencies turn into bigger questions.
An “almost ready to buy” turns into “maybe later.”
Don’t forget: if five people on your team describe your company five different ways… your audience can 1000000% feel that.
At Thulium, we’re here to help you align on your story and tell your story. We’re here to help you gain and build trust while establishing and enhancing relationships with your audiences. Our goal isn’t perfection. It’s making sure that whether someone hears about you from an ad, a sales call, an employee, or an influencer—it all feels unmistakably, confidently you. Because when your story is clear, your growth gets a whole lot less complicated. Connect with us today if you’re looking for help in these areas!
