Why nobody is buying your perfect product

Gaurav Gupta
Business Unscripted
3 min readJan 16, 2020

Every product/service has a purpose. A primary objective.
A problem-solving ability.

Pens are meant to write, soft-drinks are meant to quench thirst, fruits and vegetables are essential foods, and online wallets are meant to carry out financial transactions with ease.

However, most businesses are often deluded by this primary use-case of their product. As a result, they invest a lot of time and money in advertising that use-case — and end up not getting any returns.

“My product is solving a big problem and I am going to advertise how my product is solving that problem. Hence, people with that problem will buy my product.” Right? Wrong. Why? Because you’re being logical.

You’re making the mistake of overlooking the many factors that influence the buying behavior of your customers and excessively advertising its primary use case only.

Let me elaborate on this with an excerpt from the book “What Great Brands Do” :

One example of the power of empathetic research can be seen in the plight of Pampers, Europe’s best-selling disposable diaper brand in 1998. Although Pampers’ product was a market leader in keeping babies’ bottoms dry, sales were still in steady decline. After exploring empathic research, the company discovered that actually, young mothers cared more about things like how soundly their babies slept than about whether their diaper was dry. In response, Pampers developed diapers that were specifically designed to help infants sleep more comfortably, and sales soon picked up.

If you study the diaper ads of today, almost every advertisement highlights these attributes. You will notice that the diaper advertisements of today talk as much about the diaper being made out of good quality fabric, easy to put on and remove, light on the baby and other features, as much as they refer to its core functional utility.

It has become important for all companies to brainstorm and ensure that their advertisements have the right mix of the relevant messages.

Successful companies have identified the importance of this. Look around you and you will know that this insight is a lot more common than you think. As a result, pen companies talk about how long-lasting the refill is, beverage companies focus on how healthy their drink is, and online wallets focus on the facility of cash-backs and discounts.

It is essential to take time, feedback and support to brainstorm and understand the various value propositions that your product/service has to offer.

This should allow you to make your product more relevant to your audience and in turn generate the sales your great product deserves!

I would love to know if anyone of you have a different opinion or have some more examples to share.

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Gaurav Gupta
Business Unscripted

Entrepreneur from India. I love sharing and talking about the interesting things I come across in books and people.