How to identify your customers’ pain points and become the solution to their problems

All businesses and brands are the same in a couple of ways:

1. They’re all trying to sell us something.

2. They’re all solving a problem that their customers have.

Point 1 above is straightforward and blindingly obvious. From ‘budget range’ to ‘high-end exclusive’, some sort of sale is always what businesses are after - be it a product, a service or an experience.

Sometimes it’s a little less literal and a little more abstract. Brands might be trying to sell us an idea, an aspiration, or a lifestyle.

But, ultimately, it all revolves around us putting our hands in our pockets and shelling out for something with our hard-earned cash.

The extent to which a business is successful at Point 1 will largely depend on how convincing it is at Point 2; persuading its customers that it offers the solution(s)k. to the problem(s) they are experiencing.

So, in a nutshell, identifying what your customers’ problems are and positioning your business as the ready-made solution to those problems is the bread and butter of making your business grow.

What are your customers’ pain points?

In marketingjargonbuzzwordspeak customers’ problems are often described as pain points.

Some problems are simple… Your kettle is broken. The pain point is that you can’t brew up. The solution is to buy a new kettle.

However – surprise, surprise – life is never always that simple. It’s perfectly possible that some of your prospects won’t even be fully aware of the pain point they are facing. This means that you might need to give your prospects a nudge so that they realise that they actually have a problem.

And you need to convince them that your business has the answer (to a question they didn’t even ask, remember) – the solution to their problem.

How to categorise customer pain points

There’s always something inherently flawed with taking a ‘one size fits all’ approach or believing that all things will fit nice and neatly into a particular box or category.

However, in general, pain points fall into 3 main types:

· Productivity & Process: Your prospects are not being as efficient and effective as they want to be. They are being held back by a process/system/habit, wasting too much time, or just want to use their time more effectively.

· Quality: Your prospects aren’t receiving the quality of service or delivery that they expect or want.

· Financial: Your prospects are either spending too much or not enough. Either way, they are not getting value.

How to identify your customers’ pain points

Thinking of pain points sitting in the 3 categories above is a great way to start positioning your business as the solution to your prospects’ problems.

Essentially, you need to know and understand your customers better than you know yourself.

A global brand would go about this by spending big bucks on focus groups and all manner of qualitative and quantitative research. Your business might not have the budget or time for this. It doesn’t need to be on a massive scale, but you do need to some sort of market research – even if it’s just looking at social media profiles, forums or competitor websites. Similarly, taking the time to consider your typical customer persona is always a worthwhile exercise.

How to position your business as the solution to your customers’ problems

Once you have a clear understanding of who your typical (or ideal) customer is and you’ve identified what their pain points are, you can begin positioning your business as the solution.

Once again, there is no hard and fast rule for how to do this. Just remember that pretty much everything you do marketing-wise needs to address your customer pain points. From the copy of your ad campaigns to the content of your blogs and the subject line of your marketing emails, it all needs to be honed-in on those pain points.

Think of it as a dartboard. Get a double and you probably won’t get much engagement at all. Throw a treble and you might get the odd click… but get it spot on and hit the pain point bullseye and you’ll be getting plenty of sign-ups and callbacks.

But you don’t want anybody to say ‘here’s what you could have won’ to you, hit the Pain Point Bullseye straightaway.