We Got a Problem Here?
Hopefully you do.
We’re often conditioned to avoid problems. Problems = bad.
But if you’re a marketer or a business leader, problems aren’t the enemy. They’re the starting line.
The key is to identify the problems your audience has. Because being relevant to your audience doesn’t start with your product, your service, or your business story.
Relevance starts with how well you understand your audience’s problems—and your ability to solve them.
The good news is that problems aren’t hidden if you know where to look.
Review the data. Behavioral trends, feedback, social media. Look for patterns and outliers, as both are signals on where there might be issues. The goal is to uncover pain points or customer frustations.
Talk to people. Data is a start, but it can’t capture tone, emotion, or nuance. Conversations with customers, employees, and stakeholders often reveal what the spreadsheets miss.
Keep asking why. Most problems we see on the surface aren’t the real problems, they’re sometimes symptoms of a more fundamental issue. To uncover the core drivers of the problem, keep asking “why?” until you land on the underlying issue.
Once you’ve uncovered the problems, the next step is to connect them to your marketing and communications.
Too often, brands rush to highlight features, benefits, or lofty missions. But if you can frame your messaging around real customer problems, and then show how your products and services resolve them, you immediately become more relevant.