4 Minute Read

[October 07, 2022]

Most businesses are founded on the same principle, your customer has a problem and you’re there to solve it! But what exactly can you say in your marketing messages to get your prospects (read more about who your prospects are and Buyer Personas here!) jumping from the Consideration stage to the Decision part of their buyer’s journey?  How do you get them to say Yes to buying from you when there’s so many other options available to them?

If you’re marketing efforts aren’t bringing in as many leads as you like, it’s time to get empathetic!

You don’t have to CONVINCE anyone to buy

Because there is one detail about your prospect that if you know it, you can draw them in again and again…even if they aren’t actively looking for your product or service.

That detail is your prospects’ pain point. It’s what keeps them up at night. It’s what they complain about.

And it’s what your product is designed to solve.

Talking about a problem gets people interested

They key is to talk about their problem in their words and be specific (Need tips? We got you!). If you overgeneralize a problem or completely miss the mark by making assumptions, your prospects can’t relate.

Imagine a tax preparation company merely stating, “We’ll do your taxes for you.”

It’s accurate, but it’s too generic and bland to get your prospect excited to be done with their taxes. (If someone enjoys filing their taxes, we’ve never met them!)

But check out the Turbo Tax website where they say, “You answer simple questions. We do all the math.”

Suddenly, we’re listening because the math aspect of preparing our taxes is a huge pain point.

What problems are your prospects facing?

So how do you find out what your prospects deep-seated issues are? What do they need you to solve so they can be successful?

You could come out and ask them, but you probably won’t get the best answers. To find out what plagues your prospects to the point that they will write a check to fix it, you need to talk to people who’ve written the check. The people who have conquered their own resistance to purchasing. The people who see the transformation from before your product or service to after.

Your customers.

Yes, your existing customers are the best source of information to create compelling marketing messages.

But you’ll have to draw out your customers’ problems

We’ll go through three sets of questions you can ask to uncover your customer’s problems.

  1. What problem were you facing before you started working with our company and how did you solve this problem before we worked together? What didn’t work and what didn’t you like about what you were doing before?
  2. Why was it important to solve this problem now? What would have been the outcome if you had put it off?
  3. If you could go back and do it again, what would you do differently about choosing to solve this problem?

The common element to these questions is that they are open-ended. You want to get the client talking about their problem in greater detail.

You could ask these questions in a customer survey, but what would be even better is to ask in a one-to-one interview where you could ask follow-up questions that would get even closer to the root of the problem.

All prospects have similar problems, but the root causes are varied

Customer problems generally fall into four broad categories: Financial, Productivity, Process, or Support but to actually connect with your prospects, you have to understand the variances in their problems. The more spot-on you are in the language you use, the better.

Where to go from here

Irresistible marketing isn’t creating demand for your product or service, it’s taking a problem that already exists and shining a light on it. Knowing the nuances of your prospects’ problems means there’s no guesswork when it comes to your marketing.

You’re running a business, you can’t afford to guess. You know how we know that? Attracting customers is YOUR pain point, and well... we're here to solve it!

If you still aren’t sure how to use your prospects’ problems to increase sales, contact us and we can help you achieve your goals.