You are in business to solve a problem (or problems) for your customers. You might be proud of all the features you provide and how it all works, but no one cares how it works, and no one searches for features. People search for solutions to their problems, so if you want to attract, engage, and convert more leads, you need to focus on their problem.
Understanding customer pain points will tell you what keywords and phrases they’re using to search for solutions to their problems. Once you know that, you can create content that answers their questions and uses those keywords and phrases to get them to your website.
That sounds great, but how can you identify customer pain points?
You can start by using these strategies:
Table of Contents
- What Problems Do You Solve?
- Consider Your FAQs
- Conduct Surveys
- Check Out the Competition
- Read Reviews
- Talk to Your Team
- Conduct Exit Interviews
- Social Listening
- Answer the Public
What Problems Do You Solve?
It always helps to start with the basics: what problems did you go into business to solve? This sounds like a simple answer, but I’d be willing to bet you solve more problems than you realize.
For example, when I hired an attorney to set up my LLC for me, it took her all of one day to get everything squared away. It would have taken me much, much more than one day to figure out what the heck I was doing, what I needed, and where I should file what paperwork if I had tried to do it myself. Not to mention I would have been worried I had done something wrong, so not only did she incorporate my business for me, she saved me a whole lot of time plus gave me peace of mind that is was done right. That was well worth the money I paid her.
Consider Your FAQs
I always recommend thinking back on your FAQs to come up with topics for your blog post or any other marketing content you might be creating for your business. What questions do you get asked over and over again? If people are asking you those questions in person, chances are good they’re asking the same questions online, so if your marketing content has not already answered all those questions, start there.
The same goes for every new question you get asked at a networking event or in a sales conversation. If you have not already addressed that content on your blog or in another piece of marketing content, fill that void as soon as you can.
Conduct Customer Surveys
You have so many opportunities to survey your target audience, including when they schedule a meeting with you, when they join your Facebook group, LinkedIn group or MeetUp group, and sales conversations. You can even send your newsletter subscribers a survey and provide an incentive for them to fill out the survey, such as a discount on something you offer, or a chance to win a prize.
The more you know about your target audience, the better able you are to create content that answers their questions and ranks for the searches they’re conducting online. Not to mention it will enable you to create content that engages them and leads them through the buyer journey all the way to the end. So, take advantage of every opportunity to gather information on your prospects, including their biggest struggles with whatever area of their where life you can help improve.
Check Out the Competition
I’m always a fan of checking out the competition to see what they’re doing. What types of content are they creating? What topics are they covering? When are they publishing their content? How long is their content?
To be clear, I don’t ever condone copying your competitors’ content. Not only is it rude, but it could negatively impact your SEO at best and get you slapped with legal action at worst. Not to mention it won’t do anything to attract your ideal client because chances are good that your ideal client is slightly different from your competitors’ ideal clients, even if you work in the same industry. Remember that finding your niche is key to finding success, and you can only attract your people by being your authentic self.
That said, if your competition is covering certain topics, it’s probably because they’ve identified their customers’ pain points, which means you should be addressing those same (or related) pain points in your own marketing materials.
Read Reviews
While you’re checking out the competition, you can read the reviews their customers have left for them, which is a great way to identify customer pain points you might never have considered.
And, of course, you should check out your own reviews. I always recommend asking for testimonials for marketing reasons, and reviews are a great way to boost your online visibility, but looking at your own reviews is also a great way to gather information on your customers, including the pain points you may not have even realized you were solving for them.
Talk to Your Team
If you have a sales department or a customer service department, talk to them regularly about the kinds of things they’re hearing in conversations with customers and prospects. Your sales team and customer service team are your most valuable assets, not only because they are the most customer-facing roles and they help keep money flowing in the door, but because they can also be one of your best sources of information on your customers and prospects.
Because they are talking to customers and prospects all day every day, your sales team and customer service team have heard it all, but they’re not necessarily going to volunteer to tell you what they’ve heard because they’ll just assume you already know it unless you ask. So, be proactive in soliciting feedback, not just from your customers, but from the members of your team who spend most of their time talking to your customers.
Conduct Exit Interviews
A lot of companies have exit interviews for their staff, but it’s just as important to make sure you have exit interviews for your customers so you can identify what went wrong and if there’s something you could have done to prevent the loss of that customer. There’s no denying that sometimes things happen that are beyond your control, but just as often professional relationships break down because of a lack of communication or a failure to follow up. Maybe your customer decided to leave because they didn’t realize you offer something they need. Or maybe you could start offering something you hadn’t thought to offer because you didn’t realize there was a need. Making a habit of regularly conducting exit interviews with your customers is a great opportunity to gather information on them and learn what you can do to better serve them.
Social Listening
There are a variety of social listening tools available that give you all the information you could ever need on social media posts on certain topics or containing keywords or phrases of your choosing. This is a great way to gather information on what people are saying about your industry, including your company and your competitors, as well as the questions they’re asking about your industry.
For example, if someone is complaining on social media that your competitor didn’t provide something they wanted, you can jump in and offer it to that person. Or if they praise one of your competitors for offering something you hadn’t thought to offer, but that you could reasonably provide to your customers, that’s information you could use to attract, engage, and convert more leads who are looking for those products/services.
By the same token, a lot of people tend to take to social media to ask their friends and followers questions they have about all kinds of things. You can use social listening tools to see what questions people are asking about your industry, which can provide great inspiration for your next piece of marketing content.
Answer the Public
Answer the Public is my favorite tool for coming up with content topics. All you have to do is enter a keyword or search term and it generates all the most commonly asked questions from the internet using that keyword or phrase. It’s writer’s block’s worst nightmare.
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If you need more help identifying your customer’s pain points, or any other aspect of your content marketing strategy, we can help.
