Is there a smoking gun in marketing? Is there one sure fire way to get a prospect to convert to a customer? Let me warn you that if someone tells you that there is and he wants you to sign a contract, you should run away as fast as you can holding onto your wallet! Marketing is a simple concept – we make an appealing offer of our goods and services to people we think will buy from us. But it gets complicated because it is dependent upon the whims and moods of the marketplace. That can be fairly difficult to predict. However, if there is a smoking gun, it has to do with predicting at what point a person is feeling pain and how well you can position your product or service to fix the ailment.

Pain point and a solution

Several years ago, I wrenched my knee. I tried icing it. It didn’t work. I tried staying off of it for a couple of days. Still no luck. I went to the doctor and he gave me a trial drug – an anti-inflammatory that worked wonders. In a day, I was ready to go running. In much the same way, people are looking for solutions to what ails them. It may not be a physical pain. It could be an inconvenience of time, a way to do a task faster or easier, or a solution to a problem. When you can position your products or services to fix the pain that your prospects are feeling, you have an opportunity to convert them to customers.

Understanding needs

Of course all of this is dependent upon your understanding the needs of your target market. A little research is a great help when devising a plan to market to a pain point. The easiest and most cost effective way of doing this is to simply talk to people in your target market. Ask them questions about how they go about business. Ask them where they are experiencing a hard time or where there is monotony or inefficiency in what they do. Make a list of the most common needs you are hearing. List these on one side of a piece of paper. Beside each, write how your products and services solve the listed problem. Some of the most successful businesses are built upon a very simple solution to a common need. For instance, what does FedEx do? They make deliveries. Pretty simple. Another company was making deliveries before FedEx came along – namely the U.S. Post Office. How do you successfully compete with a governmental agency that is well established? They met a need – people wanted overnight delivery of documents and small packages. The Post Office could not make that happen. FedEx stepped in to meet the need. It was a simple solution based upon meeting a need.

Reading people trends

Is every pain point created equally? No, one person’s pain may not be the next person’s pain as well. It is wise to find out how many people are actually experiencing the same pain point before you put your marketing into full motion. It is also wise to size up the competition. Is what you are doing to solve a problem as effective as what someone else can do? Is it priced similarly to the competition’s solution? Do you have the same quality as your competitor? Read the people trends. Find a focus group to try out your product. Get feedback on how well your product or service is doing to reduce the pain and fix the problem. This will require you to do some research and make adjustments. Markets can be fickle – love you today, loathe you tomorrow. Make sure you are reading the people trends. Stay on top of trending opinions. It is crucial if you are going to effectively market your wares.