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Clarify Your Marketing Message | Step 2: Address the Problem

Note: Scroll to the bottom for links to the rest of the Clarify Your Marketing Message Series.

Hey folks, I’m Sam Nelson, founder and owner of Website Muscle.

Step one of our 7 Steps to Clarify Your Marketing Message, as you remember, is to Identify Your Customer — exactly who they are and what their business goals and objectives are.

The second step is to Address the Problem.

Address the Problem

In our last post, we talked about the customer being on the road and encountering a problem. We want to identify exactly what that problem is.

1. What are they looking for?

The first way we do that is to ask “What is the product or service that customers are coming to you for?”

When we go through this exercise with our clients, they usually say that they do a lot of different things — different products, different services, etc. For this exercise, let’s start with the first thing that comes to mind. As we create our first marketing message, let’s talk about either your primary service or a collection of your services from a high level.

For example, we have a client that does printing services. Many different products and services are included under that heading. For their first marketing message, however, the customer is coming to them for business printing needs.

2. Thoughts, Feelings, Questions, and Frustrations

The second component, which provides the power of Addressing the Problem, is to ask “What thoughts, feelings, questions, and frustrations do customers have as they search for a solution to their problem?”

If we can answer those questions, that provides the basis for our marketing. We don’t want to fall back on saying “we’re a printing company” or “we’re a website company.”

Let’s return to our business as an example. When customers need a new website, they are looking for a web designer, but they also have thoughts, feelings, questions, and frustrations as they are searching and meeting with different companies. They might have had a frustrating experience with a previous website company that makes them wary.

We want to make sure that your marketing message speaks to those concerns. We aren’t going to jump ahead and solve them yet, but we need to identify these issues to help your customer overcome them.

Summary

To summarize, the two questions to ask when you Address the Problem are:

  1. What product or service are customers coming to you for?
  2. What thoughts, feelings, questions, and frustrations do they have while they search for your product or service?

Watch the rest of the Clarify Your Marketing Message Series:

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