Hey everybody, it’s Matt from Get Quirked, the digital marketing consulting agency that can help you take your business to the next level online. Today, I want to talk about five tips to actually know what your customers’ biggest pain points are. A lot of business owners that we talk to, and customers, clients of ours, when they first come to us, we ask this question, “What are your customers’ biggest pain points?” What do you help them with?

A lot of people respond by saying what their product is or what their service offers and they don’t understand what it is they actually solve; their customers biggest pain points. Why are people actually driving themselves toward finding your business online?

There are tons of ways we can look at doing this. Today, we are going to go over five.

Quick links to our top 5 tips to actually know what your customers pain points are:

• Listen to what your customers are saying
• Survey your audience and your customers
• Pain Points Research:Request their feedback on your product or service
• Don’t forget to consult the Google-box!
• Get out there and share your knowledge!

Listen to what your customers are saying

The first tip is to take the time to actually listen to what your customers are telling you their pain points are. There are tons of ways to do this but let’s start by taking advantage of the physical location of the business. The brick and mortar business. When people come into your store, your shop, they are looking for a solution to a problem. Simply engaging them in conversation; that’s going to immediate form a good rapport with that person who walked into your business and they’re going to know that you actually care about solving their problem.

That’s going to give you an amazing start to the relationship and it’s going to allow you to then understand what their actual pain point is. It’s as simple as that. We need to just talk to people. If you have a service based business, then all you need to do is continue that conversation. People come into your shop, they’re looking to solve that problem so you need to identify what their problem is so you can better understand how to serve them and more people like them.

One of the best ways we have found, when we start a relationship with a client is to ask them if we can contact some of their existing or previous customers. We interview them. We actually have a script that we go through and ask them questions about …. “What was life like before using X product?” Or, “Using X service? What was your every day like? Were you stressed out? Were you uspet? Were you finding it hard to get out of bed because things were just taking a toll on you?” For a lot of people, they’re not going to have a life threatening problem.

They’re not going to be super stressed about something but for many businesses, let’s say real estate; people who are looking to buy a home, they’re going to be pretty stressed out about that. That’s a process. They need somebody who is their guide, I.e. their real estate agent, and maybe you’re a friend of theirs. Maybe you’re a real estate agent. Maybe you’re a friend. Maybe you’re family. Maybe you’re someone they randomly met on the street or maybe they came to an open house, two years prior to this now interaction.

That’s actually a story that my wife and I have. We started looking for homes two years prior to buying a home. We had never done it before and were looking for something… we didn’t even know what. So we started early.

The very first open house that we went to, we met an amazing pair of agents and we kept in contact with them. They kept in contact with us.

Every couple months, they would check in and send my wife and I an email just saying, “How’s life? How are things going?” They didn’t know who we were, but they were taking the time–and yes, two years is a long time to build up rapport with someone but you’ve got to hit the ground running and you’ve got to use every means at your disposal to really know how to attack your customers.

Attack their problems, their pain, their burning desire; you want to help them. That’s the whole reason you got in business.

Money is good and needs to be made however, you can’t do that unless you are actually helping people. When you focus on helping people and helping people identify their problems, their pain, their struggles, their strife and walking them through; literally being their guide to their perfect solution. Their perfect outcome.

All you’re going to do is win and that is great.

That’s exactly what you need to do. You need to take the time to listen to their pain points.

Survey your audience and your customers

Tip number two is; send them a survey. Be sure to add value though, for the exchange of their time. That is where the key is.  

I got one today from my TV service provider and I just deleted the email after I opened it because there was nothing in it for me. 

There was no benefit for me to take the survey that they sent me and that email. You need to provide value for the exchange of time.

That value can be in the form of a free guide… an entertaining video… or in the form of a coupon.

It doesn’t matter what the value is. But, you need to position it as, “We understand we’re asking you to give us your time so, in exchange for your time, here is this thing.” Whatever this thing is.

It doesn’t matter what the value proposition is but there needs to be an exchange of value because without the exchange, you’re not going to close the deal. You’re not going to get your survey filled out. It’s just not going to happen. Some people will do it just because their bored. That’s not the kind of people you’re looking for though. You want people that are actually engaged with what you are asking them and you know that they have something valuable to give you that can help inform your business.

That’s why you’re asking them.

Surveys can be sent in many different ways. You can build a survey on a platform like, SurveyMonkey.com or build it on your website. It doesn’t matter how the survey gets out, you could even do paper surveys. You could send them direct mail that has a prepaid envelope that they stuff their answers into and send that stuff to you. It doesn’t matter how the survey gets out to them, just that it gets to them.

If you’re going to send it through email, I suggest putting it on your website, building it into your site so that you can provide them something to do at the end of the survey.

This is the perfect way to engage your customers, your email list, whomever you’re sending the survey to and provide them with a next step. Keep them on your website.

At the end of the survey, you provide them something of value. It should pertain to what the survey is asking them but, as long as it is on brand, that is okay. This is a great way to find our more about your customers pain points.

Pain Points Research:Request their feedback on your product or service

Tip number three is to add a comment card to your packaging. Let’s say you’ve got a physical product that you sell. Why not take advantage of the packaging and insert a card or build it into the outer packaging?

If you ship things, people love opening boxes. There are thousands of people on YouTube that film themselves opening boxes. It could be video game systems, it could be cameras, it could be knives, or anything else. It doesn’t matter what it is.

People love unboxing things. When you add special items that they weren’t expecting, into their order; even if you’re asking them to do something, people are much more likely to do it because they were asked. Never be afraid to ask the questions.

If you are a service based business, you could add an interview, as a comment card, into the project process.

When all things are said and done you’ve completed what you’ve set out to do for them. For a plumbing service you’ve unclogged their toilet or un-clogged their drains.

If you are servicing their lawnmower, you could build it into the process of handing them back over the product that they came to you to fix. Just ask them some questions. Maybe it is a quick checklist that you have on a clipboard and you just start asking them questions. Again, it goes back to tip number one; take the time to listen.

Never be afraid to ask the questions because even if they are unwilling to give you the answers, that’s all that they’re unwilling to do. They’ve already provided you with money and you’ve already provided them with whatever the solution to their problem was. The initial value exchange has already happened, now you’re just asking them for just a little bit more. You could even go as far as to explain why you’re asking them.

You say, “I had such a great time working with you,” or, “I’m so glad that X product worked so well to improve your life,” or “so well that little Timmy had the best birthday ever.” Whatever it is, you could ask that question, form it in a gratitude sort of way, “thank you so much for allowing us to be part of this project,” whatever it was. Or, “thank you so much for coming to our company to use our products to solve your problems. Would you take five minutes or two minutes, or ten minutes and can we ask you a few questions about your experience with us?”

Always ask about their experience.

Don’t forget to consult the Google-box!

Tip number four is to just go to Google.

All you’ve got to do for any business that solves a problem, which is every business, is to Google and type in your business industry, your product, or your service. Start looking at what pops up in the suggested searches. Google provides you with searches that it thinks are what you are looking for as you are typing things into the search box.

Once you have completed a search you should look at what the results are. You will find that people are searching for specific problems, i.e. “how to unclog my toilet”.

They’re constantly searching for solutions to their problems and pain points.

The next step with Google is to scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll find the section labeled, “Related Searches”.

These are searches that Google finds similar results for and what people what actually typed in as their search for your service, your product. This can be so valuable because it gives you an opportunity, not only to connect with problems and pain points that your customers and prospective customers are actually searching for, it also gives you a great way to search for new content topics.

Get out there and share your knowledge!

Our last tip, tip number five. Speak at events. Events where attendees would use your product or service.

This can be absolutely huge! So few people actually think about doing this. As business owners and professionals, most of you have been to some sort of event that is within your industry.

If you are a lawn care service provider, you have been to trade shows, things that you can benefit from.

If you go to a different event, let’s say some sort of corporate business event, as that lawn care service provider, chances are, the attendees are owners of or renters in a building… or somebody they are connected to owns a building.

That building likely needs landscaping services. Whether that is pruning trees or cutting the grass or designing new layouts for their landscaping, that building can definitely use your services.

Here in Arizona, we have rock-scaping. A lot of businesses don’t like to use a ton of water, because it’s expensive, we are in the desert after all and water costs money. So, they turn to a rock-scaping and a more desert-natural landscaping technique.

If you go to a business event, as a landscaper, you’re looking to either speak there and provide value to those owners & business leaders OR just go and listen to people’s problems. See what they’re talking about. See what the presentations are about.

Listen to the conversations that are going on and strike up conversations of your own. You can then continue to form the relationship and lead them towards your business, products or services.

They’re going to want to know what you do and why you came.

When you tell them why you came, you’re just listening for their reaction. Listen for people who have problems that you can solve.

This is a great way to find new avenues of business, make more connections, and also, the main point of why we’re here today; actually know what your customers’ biggest pain points are.

What are my customers biggest pain points?

When you take these 5 tips and strategies into your business, we want to know how they work out for you! Comment below or send an email to us at info@getquirked.co and tell us all about it!

If you want to dive deeper into any of these 5 tips, let us know and we’ll be happy to do a follow up or do a video for our YouTube channel where we help business owners just like you learn how to speak to their customers more effectively through digital marketing techniques, tools, and tactics. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrygs6Uxrlhw41hDXYO2coQ