The Key to Marketing Success Is Customer Pain Points

As a business, you create value by solving problems. These problems, or customer pain points, catalyze a purchase. Understanding consumers’ pain points is fundamental to marketing success. It’s crucial for achieving growth, increasing marketing ROI, and delivering a memorable experience.

Answering these three questions below will help you formulate a marketing strategy focusing on pain points.

Question #1: What problem does your product or service solve?

At the beginning of a buying journey, customers don’t necessarily have a specific product or service in mind. However, they know an issue and want to find a solution.

For instance:

A person comes home late from work and needs more energy for cooking. They’d also like to make healthy food choices. This pain point can lead them to multiple solutions, from a meal delivery service to frozen dinners emphasizing health and nutrition.
A customer needs a new phone plan, but comparing options is frustrating due to the need for more transparency. A service provider with a positive reputation and a clear billing structure will likely emerge as the solution.
In a business-to-business (B2B) setting, cutting costs while increasing efficiency is a common pain point. A company can solve this pain point by outsourcing or adopting automated solutions.

The benefits of identifying pain points

As a marketer, you can identify common pain points among your target audience by identifying the problems your product or service solves. Designing your marketing campaigns around these pain points rather than product benefits will increase your outreach since not all users know the solution they need.

Considering pain points will also help you better understand the competition. While some companies are competitors with similar products and services, other brands offer alternatives. For instance, if you provide automated billing software, businesses can achieve equal time and cost savings by outsourcing instead.

Once you understand customer pain points, you can use this information to inform future product development and identify new services to offer.

Product research methodology

Rather than making assumptions about customer pain points, you should carefully research what prompts your target audience to purchase.

Working with a mix of qualitative and quantitative research will yield the best results:

Interviews, surveys, and focus groups will provide valuable insights into how customers solve pain points.
Keyword research can tell you a lot about the questions and topics prospective buyers are researching.
Analytics from web sessions can reveal the content they consume before moving to the next step in the buying journey.
Online reviews sometimes reveal the issue the buyer was able to solve with your product or service and discuss how well the product or service addressed the problem.
Social conversation monitoring provides you with real-time data. Keep an eye on what people say about your brand and products.

Use your findings to develop buyer personas. These profiles will help you segment your audience, and you will likely notice that pain points vary from one persona to another. This information can help you fine-tune your approach and focus on pain points that resonate with a specific audience segment when developing marketing campaigns.

Question #2: What need will your product or service fulfill?

Besides solving problems, products and services often address needs or wants. Identifying these needs and desires can be a good starting point for formulating your brand’s unique selling proposition (USP). Even though each brand and target audience is unique, there are common USPs that resonate with consumers.

Financial value

Retail customers are currently focusing on value to ward off inflation. This trend is present in other industries. Customers can seek financial value through a lower-than-average purchase price. It’s the USP Ollie’s Bargain Outlet emphasizes with its ‘Good Stuff Cheap‘ slogan that immediately appeals to the budget-conscious shopper.

Some brands communicate value by emphasizing quality and durability. For instance, Canada Goose sends a strong message about their product’s value by offering a lifetime product warranty.

Feel special

Some customers want to feel valued and expect a highly personalized experience that will help them save time. Personalization is synonymous with loyalty for 65% of consumers. Netflix is an excellent example of this USP with its customized recommendations that save users time while creating a highly curated homepage.

Speed and responsiveness

Many consumers prioritize speed and convenience when shopping, and you can differentiate yourself by emphasizing fast delivery times or a seamless ordering experience. Amazon Prime has embraced this USP with its same-day and two-day delivery options.

Quality assurance and peace of mind

Sometimes, a purchase can feel like a risk the customer takes, especially when trying a new brand for the first time. You can address this need by making this experience risk-free through free returns or a money-back guarantee. For instance, Craftsman uses precise wording in its warranty that explains the brand will replace tools that “fail to perform for any reason.”

Delight and surprise

Over a third of consumers describe most of their purchases as impulse buys. For many, purchases stem from a need to treat oneself to something fun. Brands with unique products and an upbeat voice can fulfill this need.

Question #3: What value does your content provide?

Pain points exist beyond the initial problem that prompts the search for a relevant product or service. Pain points can arise at multiple moments in the buying journey and become barriers to purchase if left unsolved.

Some common pain points include:

Issues with a merchant’s website include slow speed or poor design.
Need for finding trustworthy information.
Finding answers when the customer needs help deciding which questions to ask.
Navigating a tremendous amount of content.
Evaluating contradicting claims from different merchants.
Getting the approval of other decision-makers.

Addressing pain points with content marketing

For most marketers, a top priority is developing content that aligns with different stages of the buying journey. Content can also play an active role in helping customers decide if it addresses pain points and allows them to move to the next stage in their buying journey. Content can become a potent growth factor by consistently solving these pain points and removing barriers to purchase.

Content can highlight how a product or service addresses a pain point by connecting specific features to issues the customer is experiencing, and it also solves pain points linked to the buying journey itself:

Incorporating keyword research and SEO strategies into your content development efforts allows you to connect with users who still need to refer to the product or service by name.
Thought leadership content combined with a strong ‘About Us’ page builds credibility and authority.
Detailed long-form content helps buyers achieve a more advanced level of sophistication and builds their confidence.
Bite-sized content makes the buying journey feel less time-consuming.
Developing personalized content at scale makes navigating online resources more manageable.
Using an omnichannel strategy to distribute your content allows users to consume content when and where it’s convenient for them to do so.
Integrating touchpoints with your sales team into the content consumption journey facilitates access to additional information, including pricing.

Get help developing content that addresses pain points

Understanding your audience’s pain points is fundamental to marketing success. Once you identify the most prevalent pain points among your audience, you can use this information to develop better products, connect specific features to common pain points, and solve additional pain points that can arise during the buying journey.

Tempesta Media is a managed service provider that helps you leverage content marketing and connect with your audience while solving pain points. Thanks to our Bullseye Effect solution, we can drive results and identify the most relevant strategies for solving pain points.

Michael Marchese

Michael is the founder and CEO of Tempesta Media. He is responsible for corporate strategy, executive team leadership, and overall business operations across all the company’s segments. With over 25 years of experience, he has held various strategic and operating positions. As a recognized expert, he has served on numerous committees for the following industry associations: SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization), IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau), CGA (Casual Gaming Association), and the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association).