How to Market to Your Clients’ Pain

Emotions can play a prominent role in successful marketing, and one of the most effective ways to sell your products or services is by offering a solution to a problem, or a remedy to a recurring pain.

Do you target business owners who struggle with all things technology, or those who have had horrible experiences with other developers? What about clients who don’t have time to manage their own websites, or those who need step-by-step marketing help? In each of these cases, you can align yourself with your ideal clients by identifying what their pain point is and how you are perfectly situated to make the pain go away. Here are a few ways to do this.

Bring the Pain Front and Center

In many cases, clients may know they have a challenge, but they may not know exactly what causes it or how to fix it. Part of your job when marketing your products and services as the “perfect” solution is pointing out the client’s pain. Market research can help you get a general idea of the challenges faced by your target clients. Then, you can gather information on individual prospects when the time comes.

Focus on addressing your client’s pain point in your marketing materials, pitch emails and phone consultations by outlining what you believe the client’s challenge is, where it stems from and how it may impact their business and overall profits.

Envision Business Pain-Free

After you’ve clarified that the pain exists and outlined where it comes from, help prospective clients see what their business would be like without the challenge. Do they spend hours each week trying to update their website or manage online orders? Do they fear they are losing business because they can’t get a handle on their marketing activities? Help your potential clients see what daily life would be like without these concerns and all of the ways they could use the time saved to advance business.

Identify the Worst-Case Scenario

Once you’ve helped potential clients envision the perfect ending to the problem, you can encourage them to act by looking at the worst case scenario. If they continue struggling in the areas where they are currently struggling, what will happen? Will they continue to waste time and money, be unable to manage their business like they want, lose business to their on-top-of-it competition?

While you don’t want to put so much focus on the bad that the client becomes paralyzed and unable to act, introducing a little bit of fear about what can happen can help the client see the need to act, and act soon.

Show How You Can Save the Day

Bring your marketing full circle by showing potential clients how your business can get rid of the pain for them through the services you offer, the experience you have and the value you bring to the table. Address the worst-case scenario you identified before by outlining what you can do to solve the problem. The more specific you can be about your business, providing references, testimonials and case studies, the more powerful your marketing will be.

Do you use your target clients’ pain to sell your products and services? How do you get them to understand that your business can make the pain go away?

Image credit: juliaf