I once told a client his customers were selfish. He looked at me alarmingly so I went on to explain. I told him they weren’t that interested in his company which is why his marketing efforts of ‘selling the company’ were landing on deaf ears. No one cared. What is true is that whilst they don’t care who the company is, they do care who can fix their problems and how well they are looked after. How well their needs are serviced so they keep on buying.
It boils down to two things, what their problems are and what they get from the solution. So, before you start any marketing, you need to understand your customers PAINS & GAINS. Let me explain:
What are their PAINS before they start working with you?
What do you do that fixes their problem?
What are their GAINS by choosing you to fix those problems?
What customers want when it comes to fixing
Customers want one of eight these things when they come to buy:
To save
To make
To reduce
To increase
To improve
To enhance
To change
To transform
They don’t want your HR services, they want:
You to Save money on employment costs.
Make money by recruiting or maintaining great staff.
Help to Reduce recruitment costs by Improving or Enhancing the employee journey.
Help to Increase employee reviews by implementing better work place practices.
Change the perception of the business to one where everyone is fully engaged and happy to work there.
Transform HR processes so they are more efficient, safer and user friendly.
How do YOU fix the PAIN and what do THEY GAIN?
Think about what you do as a business and put one of the eight phrases above into sentences.
For example, as a marketer people would come to me because they want help with marketing. They don’t. They want to make money, save time over doing it themselves and reduce costs on miss spent promotions. I know this so I use it in conversations and use The Power of Three for ease.
The Power of Three
What I mean is, I use it to convince people I can fix their problems by quoting lines similar to this, grouping into threes as people remember better this way:
Do you find marketing confusing (please reduce the confusion)
Do you find it overwhelming (please make getting business easier)
Do you know where to start (please improve my mind set as well as my processes as I am done with this!)
How about we look at working on a clear marketing strategy and implement a defined plan. This will give you …
Clarity (enhance my thinking when it comes to growing my business)
Focus (save me from spending more money on marketing now I know what I need to do)
A plan (transform how I market my business forever as I now have a structured road map to follow)
What Next
Work out what your customers PAINS are then list how you help them. From the list, think about what they GAIN from this. What you leave them with…. less confusion, more clarity. Then look at how you can articulate this into sentences based on the Power or Three. Three PAINS and three GAINS for each product or services then spin this into posts, stories and case studies for content people can relate to.
If you have an accountant, they should be your first stop for business advice. If you don’t have an accountant or they can’t help, BuBul has a wide range of experts available. For more advice contact our expert* Nigel on LinkedIn.
*We’ve picked experts we know and trust who are good at what they do. All of them will give you at least an extra 30 minutes free advice if you contact them and would then charge their normal prices. They don’t pay to be on BuBul and don’t give us any money from anything they earn as an expert.