How you should use pain points in marketing

It's good to give your potential clients a glimpse of life without you. The keyword is GLIMPSE. We’re not wanting to turn this into a full production miniseries.

Old school marketing often talks about “pain points”. I use the term myself. Pain Points are us identifying what our customers need to have resolved, what the impact of those not sorting out that pain is, identify what pains they have (from being too busy, having mother guilt, not having time to work out)?

Working out what would happen if someone did NOT use you is an essential step in your marketing process. We need to know the cost of what happens if they do not choose you. And most importantly, YOU need to be super clear on this too. This is your secret weapon in marketing with confidence, it’s the reason you are going to liberate them from where they are now, it’s the flip of the hope you’re going to give them, or the excited reaction when that parcel arrives.?

When you ask yourself the question “What will a person miss out on if they don’t buy from me/ work with me, you can start to check whether your product or service is something that’s enough for them to give you money for it.

There’s nothing wrong with telling people about the cost of not working with you too.?

The issue with pain points is marketers sometimes like to really remind us of our pain to lead us to buy what they’ve got. It brings up an image of finding the other person’s bruises, and pressing our thumb down into it, until the person squeals, and then saying we can fix that for them. I don’t know about you, but when my sister did that to me as a kid, I certainly wasn’t keen to go and play with her straight after. In fact, if I had, it would be creating a pretty dysfunctional relationship between us over time.

People might come work with us if we push them in their pain enough that they feel they must get it fixed up now. Sometimes we need to be reminded of our pain if it’s an emergency. But emergency solutions make great stories, not great relationships. (Let me tell YOU one day about the night I almost died in an emergency room)

So if you are talking to people’s fears all the time, and they are already stressed, you’ll not build a business where people want to come back again and again or tell everyone else about. And, if they do, you'll just be building a business of people who are in a high state of anxiety all the time.

High alert humans question your actions more, struggle to trust, query invoices, and often struggle to pay on time. If the humans you sell to are people who need a solution to make them feel better, the biggest gift you can give them is to make them feel better, make them feel they’ve got everything sorted, and you’re their cheerleader.?

You can point out the bruise. Just don’t dig your knuckles right in there

While it’s so important to help identify what problems you are trying to solve so you know how to speak to them, it’s not a great idea to then make all those problems the focus of your message

It’s the easiest thing to do of course. You could say “Don’t be responsible for killing people with your car, get your brakes checked today” and it would make a memorable impact (the phrase, not the car!) You could also say it this way: “Keep you and your loved ones safe on the roads. Get those brakes checked”

One of these uses the pain point in a negative way. It tries to trigger an anxious response. The other tugs at the values of love, care, and life. It’s the same message, from a more positive stance.?

We want to make sure that people are aware of the pain of not choosing you. We can do this without creating an abusive relationship

Are you showing glimpses of what life without your offer might look like? Or are you pushing down on that bruise?

Rachel Klaver is a marketing strategist specialising in helping business owners with personal brand. She's also the owner of?Identify .?Identify helps small business owners develop a marketing strategy and action plan for their business. This newsletter is based on ideas from her new book "Be a Spider, Build a Web" which is coming out in 2022. You can also check out her?podcast ?here