How to identify your potential customers pain points

The most common reason behind startup and product failure happens to be a lack of market demand, i.e customers need to have a problem solved. Identifying a potential customer’s pain point plays a huge role in being able to solve them with your product. 

Companies need to narrow their focus on potential customer’s pain points and help them solve the identified issues. According to a survey by Salesforce, 57 percent of customers switch brands if they find an alternative that’s more valuable.

Throughout this article, we will provide a brief guide to identify your potential customer’s pain points. We will also list actionable techniques to solve these problems.

How to identify potential customer pain points?

Identifying potential customer pain points can be challenging for marketers and engineers trying to build and sell products. So let’s explore some proven techniques to help you identify them.

1. Conduct qualitative research

Conducting qualitative research will help you know your potential customer’s opinions towards various products and solutions. It will also help you find the gap between ideal customer pain and your solution.

To start with qualitative research, you need to do a survey that will help you in finding the following three things:

  1. Customer’s objective
  2. Satisfaction with current solutions
  3. Additional solutions they need
Pain points survey

Having those answers will help you know the exact problem and find the problem-solution gap. Once you find that gap, you can provide your product or solution conquering their pain and bring them on board as customers.

2. Get your customer team to interact with potential customers

Your customer team usually interacts with the potential customers for sharing product details, and pitching solutions. They act as the bridge between the customer and the company, so they would be the best at identifying the customer’s pain.

Asking the prospects about the current solution they are using, its merits and demerits, and other hurdles are great to start with. While looking for a new solution, the prospects are more open to share their problems and ask for help.

As the customer team provides them with a solution, they should also note their pain points and pass it to the marketing team to provide a personalized customer experience. Fulfilling the needs of your competitors’ customers (your potential customer) this way can aid your growth.

3. Research your prospect’s social profiles

In 2020, there are approximately 3.6 billion active social media users worldwide. Business professionals also actively share their activities, achievements, and updates on social media. Be it raising funds, customer success or problem with their business process— you will find them all.

Professionals share their problems over social media communities and discuss various possible methods to overcome them. You will often find your competitors or market influencers engaging in these threads, and you can learn their approach in presenting their products/solutions as well.

Be present in social media communities where your potential customers are. Listen to them, understand their problems, and add value to your content. You can use the Facebook group management tool Groouply to keep track of your targeted keywords (queries) and respond. You can add your targeted keywords and monitor if any conversation starts in these groups.

Let’s look at an example, where someone shared a problem with PayPal for Brandoverflow. They shared a post on social media asking for a solution. This post was seen by other professionals who provided him with a solution or alternative. It’s also a great place for a marketer from a competing payment firm to know their potential customer’s pains.

Social media profiles

4. Use tools to find common problems

In the internet era, people are bound to Google every question they have. According to Moz, roughly 8 percent of Google search queries are questions. You shouldn’t miss out on what your potential customers are looking for. Using a content analysis tool like Answerthepublic or SEMrush find the users’ intent-driven questions in your domain.


Tools like Reddit Alert and HNWatcher can find targeted discussions on respective communities. You just need to add the targeted keyword related to your solution.

Once you find the pain points of different users related to your solution, you should analyze those problems and find the major drawbacks on which you should work. You also need to understand the expectation of your potential customers from your solution. You should work upon the solution only when you can align your product with these expectations.

5. Check on forums and community platforms

There are various community forums where people discuss their business problems to get solutions. These forums are a great platform to identify the prospect’s pain and get qualified leads. Forums are also hosted to a very niche audience — for example, Tom’s Hardware caters to small yet dedicated communities.

To simplify the identification process, you can initiate a discussion regarding your solution or ask a question on a particular problem. You can find various business professionals responding to you with all the issues and effective solutions available in the market. 

You can also check review platforms like Capterra and G2 Crowd to find the problems faced by your competitor’s customers.

Online reviews

These methods will help you gather a lot of ideas related to the ideal customer’s pain points. But that’s half away towards your goal. You need to build a robust solution to attract your potential customers and encourage them to use your product.

Tips to solve the potential customer’s pain points

A great product is one that can solve your customer’s pain points. This section will help you with tips and strategies for solving your potential customer’s pains.

1. Analyze the survey and create a data-driven solution

Once you are done with the survey, you can analyze it and identify the problems your potential customers are facing. You can use a tool like Pointerpro to carry out survey and analysis on a single platform. You get real-time data, graphical representation, and downloadable reports that can make your analysis easy.

Pain points survey results

Once you complete an on-going survey, you get a detailed analysis of each question. You can also view individual responses from a summary view to analyze them separately.

The reports will help you find insights you can work upon to create a better solution and messaging. You should focus on the problems of the entire user group (not just individuals) and work accordingly.

2. Improve your marketing collaterals

You now need to create marketing collateral using insights you’ve acquired and feature the benefits to showcase the solution’s effectiveness. Along with lubricating your sales funnel this insight-rich collateral will help you in being appealing to your audience and take you closer to your end goal— solving a potential customer’s problems.

2.1. Create explainer videos

Thoughtfully crafted explainer videos make for great marketing collateral. Start recording your solution and speak out how it can solve your problem. 93 percent of businesses believe that videos have increased user understanding of their product or service. Use a good video editing software to highlight important points or add voiceovers to make it engaging and powerful. Make sure to empathize with the users by putting yourself in their shoes.  This will help communicate the problems your product solves to your potential customers.

2.2. Update website copy

Having identified the problem, you need to update your website copy to cater to those pain points. 81 percent of people search online for a product or service. Updating your website copy according to the user’s problem will help your users find your solution at the top of the SERP results.

Your website landing page should address the potential customer’s pain points and provide a solution to it. The solution provided should be in the form of your product/service key features, use cases, and testimonials.


The ideal example is the landing page of Drift live chat. They’ve clearly put down the user’s pain point, and a solution to it. You can see as if all your objections are getting solved individually. This empathizes with the potential customer and allures them towards using their solution.

2.3. Build case studies

Case studies are the best way to demonstrate your product’s efficacy using an existing customer’s story. Pen down your findings in the study and show how your existing customers found value in using your solutions. When you design a case study, you’re making it easier for your customers to justify your product’s value.

Your potential customers can relate to your product features better by tieing the case studies with their problems. This will encourage them to try your solution against other alternatives.

3. Engage on social media where the problem is discussed

People usually search for solutions like yours on social media while making a decision. So, engaging with them when they’re looking for answers can expedite the process. They are likely to adapt your solutions and find out if you can actually help them. Once they’ve signed up, you can continue nurturing them with personalized follow-ups emails and marketing materials, and convert them into a customer.

engage on twitter

Source

In the above tweet, you will find Yu Energy was looking for a good CRM tool. InTouch CRM took the opportunity to boast about its easy-to-use interface and great customer care. A Call-to-action in the form of a link to their product page made it easy for the user to give inTouch CRM a try.

4. Send an email to the survey participants with a solution

Your survey participants would be expecting a solution while filling your survey questionnaire. Once you are ready with the solution, you can send it with the survey reports to help them with their pain points. With the Pointerpro feature, you can easily design personalized reports with documentation. You can send the downloadable links of the reports to your responders through emails. If you wish to send the report to all the responders, a cold email software like SalesHandy for sending personalized emails with multiple stage automated followup so that they don’t miss your report. The responders are likely to check the reports and revert back if they found them useful.

Check out this extensive list of the best cold email software on the market today.

5. Take a look at your competitor’s drawbacks

To solve your competitor’s drawbacks, you need to reach their customers with a solution they lack.  Your competitor’s customers must have listed their problems on social platforms and communities.

Once you’ve found these customers, reach out to them. Present them with solutions your competitor lacks. The prospects in pain will be interested in your solution and be open to give you a try.

6. Use ads to highlight your solution

Using paid promotions can boost your message and can help you reach a bigger audience of prospects. Your solutions can be shown on top of advertising platforms like Google, Quora, or social networks for relevant, intent rich keywords. According to recent research, 75 percent of users found it easier to click on search ads to get answers to their questions.

With paid ads, you can target a specific group of prospects in a location and analyze the success rate. 


In the above example, when a user looks for a solution to remove the trojan virus from their system, they find an ad for Mcafee antivirus. McAfee declares itself as a virus removal tool and assures the user that they can help.

Conclusion

Various firms start assuming the customer’s pain points and try to sell their solutions. This is one of the major reasons for their failure. Identifying customer’s pain points helps you in knowing the problems and solutions they need.

You need to research various channels, interact with potential customers to find their pain points. Further, when you proceed toward building a solution, you can cater to their exact problems and scale your business into new territories and markets.

We hope you have liked our article and gained value from it. Alternatively, if you have discovered another method to identify the customer’s pain point, please list it down in the comment section below to benefit your fellow readers.

The most common reason behind startup and product failure happens to be a lack of market demand, i.e customers need to have a problem solved. Identifying a potential customer’s pain point plays a huge role in being able to solve them with your product. 

Companies need to narrow their focus on potential customer’s pain points and help them solve the identified issues. According to a survey by Salesforce, 57 percent of customers switch brands if they find an alternative that’s more valuable.

Throughout this article, we will provide a brief guide to identify your potential customer’s pain points. We will also list actionable techniques to solve these problems.

How to identify potential customer pain points?

Identifying potential customer pain points can be challenging for marketers and engineers trying to build and sell products. So let’s explore some proven techniques to help you identify them.

1. Conduct qualitative research

Conducting qualitative research will help you know your potential customer’s opinions towards various products and solutions. It will also help you find the gap between ideal customer pain and your solution.

To start with qualitative research, you need to do a survey that will help you in finding the following three things:

  1. Customer’s objective
  2. Satisfaction with current solutions
  3. Additional solutions they need
Pain points survey

Having those answers will help you know the exact problem and find the problem-solution gap. Once you find that gap, you can provide your product or solution conquering their pain and bring them on board as customers.

2. Get your customer team to interact with potential customers

Your customer team usually interacts with the potential customers for sharing product details, and pitching solutions. They act as the bridge between the customer and the company, so they would be the best at identifying the customer’s pain.

Asking the prospects about the current solution they are using, its merits and demerits, and other hurdles are great to start with. While looking for a new solution, the prospects are more open to share their problems and ask for help.

As the customer team provides them with a solution, they should also note their pain points and pass it to the marketing team to provide a personalized customer experience. Fulfilling the needs of your competitors’ customers (your potential customer) this way can aid your growth.

3. Research your prospect’s social profiles

In 2020, there are approximately 3.6 billion active social media users worldwide. Business professionals also actively share their activities, achievements, and updates on social media. Be it raising funds, customer success or problem with their business process— you will find them all.

Professionals share their problems over social media communities and discuss various possible methods to overcome them. You will often find your competitors or market influencers engaging in these threads, and you can learn their approach in presenting their products/solutions as well.

Be present in social media communities where your potential customers are. Listen to them, understand their problems, and add value to your content. You can use the Facebook group management tool Groouply to keep track of your targeted keywords (queries) and respond. You can add your targeted keywords and monitor if any conversation starts in these groups.

Let’s look at an example, where someone shared a problem with PayPal for Brandoverflow. They shared a post on social media asking for a solution. This post was seen by other professionals who provided him with a solution or alternative. It’s also a great place for a marketer from a competing payment firm to know their potential customer’s pains.

Social media profiles

4. Use tools to find common problems

In the internet era, people are bound to Google every question they have. According to Moz, roughly 8 percent of Google search queries are questions. You shouldn’t miss out on what your potential customers are looking for. Using a content analysis tool like Answerthepublic or SEMrush find the users’ intent-driven questions in your domain.


Tools like Reddit Alert and HNWatcher can find targeted discussions on respective communities. You just need to add the targeted keyword related to your solution.

Once you find the pain points of different users related to your solution, you should analyze those problems and find the major drawbacks on which you should work. You also need to understand the expectation of your potential customers from your solution. You should work upon the solution only when you can align your product with these expectations.

5. Check on forums and community platforms

There are various community forums where people discuss their business problems to get solutions. These forums are a great platform to identify the prospect’s pain and get qualified leads. Forums are also hosted to a very niche audience — for example, Tom’s Hardware caters to small yet dedicated communities.

To simplify the identification process, you can initiate a discussion regarding your solution or ask a question on a particular problem. You can find various business professionals responding to you with all the issues and effective solutions available in the market. 

You can also check review platforms like Capterra and G2 Crowd to find the problems faced by your competitor’s customers.

Online reviews

These methods will help you gather a lot of ideas related to the ideal customer’s pain points. But that’s half away towards your goal. You need to build a robust solution to attract your potential customers and encourage them to use your product.

Tips to solve the potential customer’s pain points

A great product is one that can solve your customer’s pain points. This section will help you with tips and strategies for solving your potential customer’s pains.

1. Analyze the survey and create a data-driven solution

Once you are done with the survey, you can analyze it and identify the problems your potential customers are facing. You can use a tool like Pointerpro to carry out survey and analysis on a single platform. You get real-time data, graphical representation, and downloadable reports that can make your analysis easy.

Pain points survey results

Once you complete an on-going survey, you get a detailed analysis of each question. You can also view individual responses from a summary view to analyze them separately.

The reports will help you find insights you can work upon to create a better solution and messaging. You should focus on the problems of the entire user group (not just individuals) and work accordingly.

2. Improve your marketing collaterals

You now need to create marketing collateral using insights you’ve acquired and feature the benefits to showcase the solution’s effectiveness. Along with lubricating your sales funnel this insight-rich collateral will help you in being appealing to your audience and take you closer to your end goal— solving a potential customer’s problems.

2.1. Create explainer videos

Thoughtfully crafted explainer videos make for great marketing collateral. Start recording your solution and speak out how it can solve your problem. 93 percent of businesses believe that videos have increased user understanding of their product or service. Use a good video editing software to highlight important points or add voiceovers to make it engaging and powerful. Make sure to empathize with the users by putting yourself in their shoes.  This will help communicate the problems your product solves to your potential customers.

2.2. Update website copy

Having identified the problem, you need to update your website copy to cater to those pain points. 81 percent of people search online for a product or service. Updating your website copy according to the user’s problem will help your users find your solution at the top of the SERP results.

Your website landing page should address the potential customer’s pain points and provide a solution to it. The solution provided should be in the form of your product/service key features, use cases, and testimonials.


The ideal example is the landing page of Drift live chat. They’ve clearly put down the user’s pain point, and a solution to it. You can see as if all your objections are getting solved individually. This empathizes with the potential customer and allures them towards using their solution.

2.3. Build case studies

Case studies are the best way to demonstrate your product’s efficacy using an existing customer’s story. Pen down your findings in the study and show how your existing customers found value in using your solutions. When you design a case study, you’re making it easier for your customers to justify your product’s value.

Your potential customers can relate to your product features better by tieing the case studies with their problems. This will encourage them to try your solution against other alternatives.

3. Engage on social media where the problem is discussed

People usually search for solutions like yours on social media while making a decision. So, engaging with them when they’re looking for answers can expedite the process. They are likely to adapt your solutions and find out if you can actually help them. Once they’ve signed up, you can continue nurturing them with personalized follow-ups emails and marketing materials, and convert them into a customer.

engage on twitter

Source

In the above tweet, you will find Yu Energy was looking for a good CRM tool. InTouch CRM took the opportunity to boast about its easy-to-use interface and great customer care. A Call-to-action in the form of a link to their product page made it easy for the user to give inTouch CRM a try.

4. Send an email to the survey participants with a solution

Your survey participants would be expecting a solution while filling your survey questionnaire. Once you are ready with the solution, you can send it with the survey reports to help them with their pain points. With the Pointerpro feature, you can easily design personalized reports with documentation. You can send the downloadable links of the reports to your responders through emails. If you wish to send the report to all the responders, a cold email software like SalesHandy for sending personalized emails with multiple stage automated followup so that they don’t miss your report. The responders are likely to check the reports and revert back if they found them useful.

Check out this extensive list of the best cold email software on the market today.

5. Take a look at your competitor’s drawbacks

To solve your competitor’s drawbacks, you need to reach their customers with a solution they lack.  Your competitor’s customers must have listed their problems on social platforms and communities.

Once you’ve found these customers, reach out to them. Present them with solutions your competitor lacks. The prospects in pain will be interested in your solution and be open to give you a try.

6. Use ads to highlight your solution

Using paid promotions can boost your message and can help you reach a bigger audience of prospects. Your solutions can be shown on top of advertising platforms like Google, Quora, or social networks for relevant, intent rich keywords. According to recent research, 75 percent of users found it easier to click on search ads to get answers to their questions.

With paid ads, you can target a specific group of prospects in a location and analyze the success rate. 


In the above example, when a user looks for a solution to remove the trojan virus from their system, they find an ad for Mcafee antivirus. McAfee declares itself as a virus removal tool and assures the user that they can help.

Conclusion

Various firms start assuming the customer’s pain points and try to sell their solutions. This is one of the major reasons for their failure. Identifying customer’s pain points helps you in knowing the problems and solutions they need.

You need to research various channels, interact with potential customers to find their pain points. Further, when you proceed toward building a solution, you can cater to their exact problems and scale your business into new territories and markets.

We hope you have liked our article and gained value from it. Alternatively, if you have discovered another method to identify the customer’s pain point, please list it down in the comment section below to benefit your fellow readers.

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About the author:
Mehdi Hussen

Mehdi Hussen

Mehdi Hussen is the digital marketing manager at SalesHandy, a cold email outreach tool. He is passionate to help B2B companies achieve organic growth and acquire new customers through data-driven content marketing. Mehdi writes about startup growth, digital marketing strategies, sales email productivity, and remote work. Connect with him through Twitter or LinkedIn.
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