5 Ways to Identify Customer Pain Points So You Can Nail Your Marketing Messages

By Pam Neely Could 17, 2022

Need to know why folks purchase – or don’t purchase – from you? Understanding buyer ache factors will clarify loads.

Understanding your prospects can have a huge impact in your advertising, and on your online business general. Figuring out buyer ache factors is a key a part of this.

Folks don’t purchase a services or products simply because it’s low cost or has flashy options. Whereas these causes may affect somebody’s buy resolution, they’ll finally purchase one thing as a result of it solves an issue.

Don’t have time to eat an costly sit-down meal? Seize meals at McDonald’s.

Can’t sleep as a result of your neighborhood is noisy? Get a pair of earplugs or a white noise machine.

Uninterested in driving to the gymnasium every single day? Buy an at-home exercise program on DVD.

When you perceive your prospects and their issues, you’ll be able to place your services or products as the answer. And also you’ll promote much more stuff.

What are buyer ache factors?

Buyer ache factors are frequent issues your goal prospects have that your services or products solves.

We outlined just a few examples of shoppers’ ache factors above, however what issues is what your prospects’ ache factors are. You could be in the identical market with different competing merchandise, but when your product solves your goal audiences’ ache factors another way than your rivals, chances are you’ll wish to be concentrating on a barely totally different viewers.

For instance:

You promote boots. You promote ultralight mountaineering boots for long-distance hikers who need nice ankle assist with minimal weight, even when meaning they must pay greater than they might on common boots. Their ache level is discovering light-weight, supportive boots.

Your competitor additionally makes boots, however they make duck boots. They promote duck boots to individuals who desire a pair of shoes that may final. Their preferrred prospects are individuals who worth sturdiness. Their ache level is discovering boots that received’t collapse.

Your different competitor additionally sells boots, however they promote trend boots. Their prospects should have a boot that appears nice and is in keeping with the present model. Their ache level just isn’t with the ability to discover a handsome boot.

See the place we’re going with this? Totally different ache factors, totally different merchandise. 

Mockingly, one particular person could possibly be the perfect buyer for all these boot sellers, as a result of every one in all us can have a number of ache factors, relying on which conditions we discover ourselves in.

By understanding buyer ache factors, you’ll be able to promote your services or products extra successfully and write convincing advertising copy. Your viewers is more likely to purchase in the event you can clearly articulate the way you’ll remedy their issues or ache factors.

LL Bean’s product web page about their duck boots is a masterclass in how one can use buyer ache factors to jot down higher copy. Right here’s a picture from that web page. For those who have been a buyer who wished boots that final, would this persuade you to purchase these?

5 methods to determine your prospects’ ache factors

Now that you just perceive the facility of buyer ache factors, let’s present you how one can discover the ache factors of your viewers – and to have the ability to describe these factors and handle them in a manner that makes your product the no-brainer resolution to these issues.

You don’t must do all this stuff to search out frequent ache factors, however strive at the least two or three.

 1. Survey your prospects

Share a survey in your social channels or inside an e mail and ask folks to clarify what they’re at the moment combating.

Suppose very fastidiously about the way you write your survey, and maintain the variety of questions you ask to a minimal. Surveys with ten questions or fewer are inclined to carry out higher. 

In our personal surveys, we regularly ask e mail subscribers to share their largest e mail advertising problem. We will then create instructional content material to resolve these challenges.

For example, we created our What to Write in Your Emails and Electronic mail Listing Development Blueprint programs after receiving survey suggestions requesting assist with e mail copywriting and listing progress.

Right here’s a quite simple pattern survey to get you began:

• What’s the largest drawback you’ve with [thing you help people with, like “public speaking,” or “tax preparation”]?
• What have you ever carried out to attempt to remedy this drawback?
• How nicely did that work?
• What would fixing this drawback seem like? How will your life be higher or totally different when you’ve solved this drawback?

2. Ask them about ache factors in your welcome emails

Generally when folks first join an e mail listing, they’re at their most motivated to interact with you. They could even be actively on the lookout for a technique to remedy their drawback and may inform you quite a bit about their ache factors. 

Thinkific, a web based course internet hosting platform, asks subscribers to share what’s stopping them from creating a web based course of their automated welcome collection. 

Asking a easy query in an automatic e mail is a straightforward technique to be taught extra about your prospects’ ache factors.

The solutions to this query can present them what instructional content material they need to create to resolve buyer ache factors. Plus, they’ll write case research that specify how Thinkific helps folks overcome frequent issues with course creation.

3. Discuss to your prospects

Digital analysis is nice, however there’s nothing like speaking to an actual buyer in particular person (or at the least by way of a Zoom name). Conversations enable for extra backwards and forwards. They’re usually one of the best ways to find out about issues your prospects face that you just may not even find out about. For those who can, attempt to begin with a few open-ended questions so the particular person you’re interviewing feels such as you’re having a dialog with them, quite than simply finishing an in-person survey. 

For those who can speak to your prospects in particular person, they’ll inform you all types of belongings you didn’t even know to ask about. You’ll additionally get to listen to them describe their ache factors in their very own phrases – phrases you could rephrase or use verbatim in your advertising messages, your web site copy, and your emails.

It’s extra work to speak individually with folks, however particularly in the event you’re beginning a enterprise or in the event you don’t do lots of direct customer support work together with your prospects, these conversations will likely be price your time. There’s an previous saying that “you don’t know what you don’t know.” Speaking to your prospects can reveal loads that you just don’t know, however ought to.   

4. Look via product critiques

Product critiques are a terrific technique to find out about potential prospects’ ache factors. They’re additionally nice in the event you’re having hassle discovering folks to speak to, or in the event you don’t have a big sufficient e mail listing for a survey. 

Amazon has the biggest assortment of product critiques, however verify area of interest sellers, too. Pay particular consideration to the critiques with two or three stars, as these are sometimes individuals who wished to love a product or who actually wanted a product to work, however have been upset with their buy. 

Right here’s an instance of a evaluation like this. It’s for a low-priced, transportable Bluetooth speaker. The speaker could be very extremely reviewed (4.5+ stars), however in the event you look via the three-star critiques, there’s a sample of individuals complaining in regards to the Bluetooth preliminary pairing or the system dropping the pairing at random occasions.

These folks may not even know that they’ve a “ache level” about Bluetooth pairing points, but it surely’s clearly an issue for them. They may purchase a speaker just because it had a super-easy setup, “never-drop” Bluetooth connection.

Professional tip: Look via your rivals’ product critiques.

5. Take part in Fb Teams 

Social listening is a good way to analysis your viewers’s ache factors. There are many social listening instruments, however a lot of the free instruments give attention to Twitter. In case your viewers is closely centered on Twitter, nice – strive TweetDeck or Twitter Advanced Search. Google Alerts also can provide you with some good data.

However nothing is nearly as good as discovering a web based tribe of people who find themselves passionate a couple of subject. And nowhere is that this simpler to do than with Fb Teams.

There are Fb teams about each conceivable subject underneath the solar. You possibly can search these teams to search out conversations round particular matters. You possibly can even contribute concepts to those teams to see how these concepts are acquired. For those who ask permission from the group’s admin, you may even be capable to put up a brief survey or presumably ship direct messages to group members. Nonetheless, do all of this fastidiously and politely. Don’t be that person who simply crashes into a gaggle to do analysis, sends undesirable direct messages, after which leaves. You may get your self banned from the group for conduct like that. 

There are, in fact, different teams on-line. LinkedIn nonetheless has some lively teams, and there are tens of 1000’s of impartial websites with on-line teams. 

Easy methods to use buyer ache factors in copywriting and content material advertising

So let’s say you’ve carried out your analysis and you realize about your prospects’ ache factors. Now how do you apply all this?

Right here’s an instance of it in motion:

Think about you’re a social media skilled who gives hourly consulting companies to assist companies enhance their social media technique. Listed below are just a few ache factors your potential prospects may battle with:

1. They’re too busy to recurrently put up on social media.
2. They don’t know what content material to share on their social platforms.
3. They know they need to be utilizing Fb advertisements, however they don’t know how one can set them up or get them to work.
4. They’re uncertain how one can develop their social following.
5. They’ve a big social media viewers, however they don’t know how one can get these followers to purchase.

Utilizing this instance, let’s say you wish to give attention to buying prospects who need assistance with #3: Fb advert technique.

You realize {that a} frequent buyer ache level just isn’t understanding how one can arrange a Fb advert. So that you resolve to create a digital information known as 5 Easy Steps to Set Up Your First Fb Advert, and you utilize it as an incentive (aka a “freebie” or a “lead magnet”) in your enroll kind.

When folks subscribe to your listing, you ship them the next automated e mail sequence:

Email 1: Right here’s your free information to Fb advertisements!

On this e mail, you welcome subscribers to your e mail listing and also you give them your free information 5 Easy Steps to Set Up Your First Fb Advert.

Electronic mail 2: Why Fb advertisements are one of the best ways to amass leads

This e mail proves that Fb advertisements are price investing in in comparison with all the opposite methods your reader could possibly be doing lead era.

Electronic mail 3: Right here’s how I helped one enterprise earn $50,000 with Fb advertisements

To reveal that your skilled recommendation helps folks get outcomes, you share a case examine that explains the way you helped one enterprise launch profitable Fb advertisements.

Electronic mail 4: Need assistance launching efficient Fb advertisements?

Within the remaining e mail of your collection, you promote your Fb advert companies. You clarify you could assist the reader launch efficient Fb advertisements and develop their enterprise. Then, you ask them to buy a session session with you.

This whole e mail collection is predicated on a easy buyer ache level. It’s efficient as a result of it positions the enterprise’ service as an answer to that ache level.

How will you utilize what you find out about buyer ache factors?

Now it’s your flip. How will you discover out your prospects’ ache factors? Or, in the event you already know what these ache factors are, how may you be utilizing that data in your advertising and your emails? Inform us about it within the feedback.