Understanding Your Target Audience: Challenges and Pain Points

Connecting to your target audience is a daunting task. But what if I told you it didn’t have to be?

Like any relationship, forging a genuine, meaningful connection with your buyers takes time and effort. But once you do, you will begin to reap the rewards: you’ll be able to promote yourself to an appreciative audience that is clamoring to do business.

So, how do you get there?

First, you must understand the type of pain points your audience aligns themselves with.

Pain points are the specific issues your audience faces that your products or services can solve. Identifying these pain points – and speaking to them in your marketing – is key to bringing new customers into the fold.

Traditionally, there are four different types of pain points:

1. Financial Pain Points: Your audience is trying to find a way to save money, as they are currently unsatisfied by how much money is entering or leaving their pockets.
2. Productivity Pain Points: Your audience is looking to save time, or rather, to use their time more effectively.
3. Process Pain Points: Your audience is in search of a more effective way to solve their problems.
4. Support Pain Points: Your audience currently lacks support they need during their customer journey.

Once you identify which pain points resonate with your audience, you can better position your business to appeal to their wants and needs.

Finding Your Audience’s Pain Points

Now that you know what you’re looking for, you can start doing a little investigating.

Depending on the time and resources at hand, there are several ways to go about understanding your audience’s pain points.

Customer interviews are invaluable. Nothing beats talking to your audience one-on-one. But if you’re short on time, or don’t have access to real customers, a good place to start is with customer testimonials and reviews (on Google, Facebook, HomeStars, etc.)

As much as it’s nice to relish in complimentary customer reviews, it’s important to view the negative comments as well. This way, you can identify areas of improvement. If your customers have provided reasoning behind why they are dissatisfied, you’ve found a pain point!

After you’ve reflected on reviews of your product or service, it’s time to turn to your competitors. What are they offering their customers that you are not? What pain points are they addressing?

Look at their reviews, along with their website copy. Doing a Google search will also prompt their ads to pop up, which is a good opportunity to look at how they are appealing to their customers.

Addressing Pain Points

So, you’ve found your pain points. Now you must tailor your copy to suit the needs of your audience. Target your audience based on their pain points, and you will start to build a connection between them and your product or service.

• Financial: Highlight the money your customers will save by switching to your product/service.
• Productivity: Emphasize that by switching to your product/service, customers will also be saving time and their frustrations through user-friendly technology.
• Processes: Discuss how your product/service is the most effective, reliable, and convenient way to solve their issue.
• Support: Be present in every stage of the customer journey by helping your customers, both new and secured. Use inclusive language and emphasize that they are more than just a customer to you.
  
  

Add to Your Copy

Now that you know how to address pain points, we have a few extra tips for you to incorporate into your marketing copy to help prospects realize how great your business is.

In this case, qualitative data is much more valuable compared to quantitative. Each customer has an individualized experience, meaning they all have their own different pain points. One customer is not going to share the exact same problem as another, though it can be categorized into larger ideas like the ones discussed above.

At the end of the day, your audience is not going to remember the number of customers served or percentage of satisfaction – they are going to remember the stories behind customer success.

This can easily be found through use of customer testimonials, as it gives prospects confidence to continue their customer journey with you. By seeing displays of trust between your business and customers, prospects will expect to have a similar experience, one where they are supported.

Make a Lasting Connection To Your Audience

Building a connection with your audience is vital to the growth and survival of your business. By no means is it an easy task, but the effort you put into this relationship will pay off in time. Now that you understand how to find your audience pain points and address them, you can get started on nurturing a relationship with your customers.

When in doubt, just ask yourself: what do my customers need and how will I provide it for them? Reach out to us to start connecting to your audience and attracting qualified leads now.