How to discover your customers pain points

We are in Day 4 of the start a business challenge and it’s been an awesome
time.

On day 1 we talked about defining what your business goal, the 2nd day we discussed about finding creative small business ideas, by day 3 we went on to discuss how to create the perfect buyer persona for your business.

Now that you are done creating your buyer persona, it’s time to discover
what your customer’s pain points are.

If you are just joining this challenge, sign up on my email list and you
will the get the email series for the 1^st 2^nd and 3^rd day.

You can also read up the blog posts, as highlighted in the links in the
paragraph above.

 

 

 

 

In this 4^th day’s post, I will teach you how to find your customers
pain points so that you can position your product to solve their problems.

This part of the challenge is iterative, this means that if you discover
that your business offering is not addressing the consumer’s pain points, it’s
time to go back to your minimum viable product in day 2 and re-tweak it.

Now let’s get to finding out what your customer’s pain points are.

Steps to discovering your customer’s pain points

 

1-Survey:

The best part of finding out what your customers need is to find out from
the supposed customers themselves.

Now drawing up a survey can be tricky if you do not have any customers at all but it is doable if you follow these steps.

Target audience congregation.

Go to where your customers are congregated, you will often find them in

–Facebook groups

-LinkedIn groups

-Online forums

-Reddit forums

-Quora

-Start asking the right questions in those forums, some forums allow a poll.
For example, in Facebook group’s you can set up a poll asking people to vote on each solution.

-You can also start a discussion around your topic area by asking open-ended questions.

Please note that each group has its own rules so be willing to abide by the
rules of the groups.

Sometimes in finding your customers pain points, you have to be willing to
contribute your knowledge to the groups in previous days or weeks before you can ask questions or do a survey.

2-Visit Top blogs or opinion shapers in that niche or industry.

The top players in an industry are often the ones who have an idea of how the industry is moving and will easily be in the position to talk about the issues they see in the industry.

The top industry players in your specific niche can easily be gotten by a
simple Google search.

3-Comment sections of top blogs and opinion shapers

The second place to find out your customer’s pain points is in the questions
that people ask in such Blogs.

Read the comment trails and see the most common questions asked by people and also answered by the blog owners.

4-YouTube Videos

The next place to check the questions people are asking (if it’s
a technical niche) is  YouTube.

Youtube videos provide a ton of information about how to do things, but they also provide questions that people are struggling with.

What to do with the information gathered.

 –Analyze the data and extract a common thread that runs through all the data and consider offering a solution to it.

Now that you have gathered your customer’s pain points, it’s time to tailor
your solution to solve that pain point.

 

How to tailor your solution to your customer’s pain points

1-Understand what your customer’s real problem is

The solution to your customer’s pain point must take them from the point of
feeling that pain to the point they are pain-free.

If your solution is not able to do that, it will be difficult to convince them
to buy your product.

You can only solve your customer’s pain points if you understand what the real need is.

For example, the customer who wants food delivered to his office is not
looking for food actually, but for convenience.

If you then offer a solution which provides food to satiate the hunger, you may be missing the point.

Thy hate to go out and waste time trying to get food to eat, they will
prefer the food to be delivered to their door.

That’s why pizza sellers who deliver to homes make a ton of money, especially when it’s inconvenient to go out because of the cold.

So, understanding your customer’s real need is key to providing a solution to their pain points.

 

2-Highlight how your solution will solve the problem.

You may have crafted a beautiful solution to a problem, but if you do not tell your customers how your solution will solve their problem, you will be wasting your time.

This is where marketing of your product comes in. You should be willing to
tell your customers how your solution is the best thing that will happen to
them.

You can do this by

–Offering them a trial session

–Showing what others who tried it says- word of mouth recommendation or reviews

–Showing what their current solution could not do for them.

3-Agitate the problem.

In this case, you help to inform your customer’s how these pain points have been a problem for them and will continue to be until they solve it.

You also highlight how that problem wastes their resources in terms of time, energy and money.

Sometimes showing your customers their pain points will make them want to take action immediately.

For example, in selling the solution of a planner to someone who is always
disorganized, I can tell that person what the costs of lack of planning will do
to their life.

This will include a lack of focus which leads to wasted efforts, time energy
and resources.

No one wants to be seen to waste such very critical resources in their lives,
that’s why they will pick up a planner to help them begin to refocus and plan their lives.

4-Provide a solution

After you have agitated the problem, you can then provide a solution.

This is where you get to highlight what your solution will do and how it
will take them from the point of pain to the point of being pain-free.

Tell a story that resonates with that issue and give real-life examples of
how these issues were solved and you are on your way to solving such pain
points and snagging a customer for life.

To continue this discussion on how to discover your customer’s pain points, get on my email list and you will get a more in-depth discussion on how to write a copy that compels your customers to buy from you.

You will also get a template to help you design your customer pain points.