ONLINE MARKETING

Start Talking About Customer Pain to Increase Your Sales

Stop talking about your product. Solve customer pain instead.

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Navigator on Unsplash

Everybody says “know your target audience”. There is probably no place that tells you otherwise. But there are so many things behind the scenes of this phrase — it’s very easy to get lost. Does it mean that I need to know the age and sex of my customers? Or probably the geography? Or should I learn how people make the purchase and their psychological consumer patterns?

All of these factors are important. But, from my experience, one this is way above everything else:

Knowing the Pain of your customers is an ultimate weapon.

Understanding why your customers buy your product or read your blog is 50% of the job. Because as soon as you acquired such power, you can start talking about customer results instead of the product’s benefits.

And this is when you can outline your product without any additional effort, marketing expenses or reduced price. And there is a reason why it works.

Being one step better might be just enough to win the market

Can you imagine how much advertising each of us sees every day? Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, radio, TV… it’s enormous. I wouldn’t be surprised if the average amount of advertising per capita in 2020 is bigger than the education materials in the average school a century ago. And in all this noise, we have to find the best solution for every single of our problems.

What does this mean for us? Usually some sad news.

1. We don’t have time to think things through.
2. We don’t have time to find a better way through deep-dive analysis.
3. We try to solve problems only when they appear

Each additional minute we put in solving our problems is precious. We don’t have time for extra steps.

Each time I need to take additional action to make my thoughts, you’re losing me a customer.

And this is a reason why the most successful products in the world are so successful — they are very convenient. They don’t ask unnecessary questions and don’t try to tell us how good they are.

Using the same approach in your advertising will put you above all your competitors.

Talk about my Pain. Not about your product.

The Pain of your customers is the main reason why she or he put any effort into finding a solution. If there is no actual pain, we don’t act. And by Pain, I don’t mean physical pain. I mean everything that makes me uncomfortable enough to start moving.

• If I’m looking for pizza, I want to defeat hunger and save time on cooking. I don’t care how many employees you have, or which year your business was established. I want my pizza to be tasty and be delivered as fast as possible.
• If somebody is looking for a gaming laptop, he or she wants to have the best gaming experience. The number of cores or memory size is essential for some. But in most cases, people want to be sure they can relax after work in their beloved game.
• If somebody is looking for an online course, they likely want to be promoted or make another career move. And earn more to improve their living conditions.

Concentrate on the outcome

When you stop talking about the product properties but instead concentrate on the outcome — your product becomes number one on the market.

• If you sell houses for big families, tell about a beautiful time children will have there. A perfect place for growing my children might be a much more convincing argument than a lower price.
• If you sell courses, promise me a career move, promotion or better outcome for my business. I might be afraid to be too advanced or not enough advanced for your course. Could you give me a guarantee to be satisfied?
• If you sell flowers, tell me about emotions. I want to know about my wife/boyfriend/mother being happy afterward. It’s very cool that you have 1000 different flowers available. But the problem is — I don’t need a thousand. I only need the right one. Promise me you help me with the choice to make the best present, will you?

It’s just a few examples. Never stop making another step towards understanding the actual Pain of your customers.

When you sell the product — your price is a huge factor. But when you sell a result, price is not that important.

Your 3 takeaways

When you try to convince anybody to make a purchase or to subscribe, try to show a real outcome. It’s much more valuable to talk about the solution than the properties.

If you think about my pain and my main concerns — I don’t have to think about them anymore. You save time, and you reduce my stress. You can charge me more for that kind of product.

Focus on one, two or three most important things. Don’t try to be best at everything. Be best at something and outline it.

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