247: What is a "pain point" content?

“How do you create content as a small business owner?”... 

Find out the problem your audience has and solve it for them. 

I asked a big creator and business owner this question… above was the answer. 

So - are you really creating content for your audience and their needs? Let’s find out. 

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KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 👇

  • What is a pain point 

  • How to understand a pain point 

  • How to create “pain point” or desire content 

SHOW RESOURCES 👇 

If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @contentqueenmariah⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

Other than that, enjoy - chat next week 💕

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

This is episode 247 and I'm talking all about pain point content. Welcome to the content queen podcast. I'm your host, Mariah entrepreneur, storyteller, digital nomad, creator of content bootcamp and founder of content queen. I'm here to teach you how to share your unique story, create content and market your business with strategy through the channels that work for you.

Each week I'll deliver a story to help you connect to a powerful strategy around marketing business and content creation. I'll also be joined by amazing sales and entrepreneurs who are here to share their own journey along with actual steps to help you take your business to a whole new level through amazing storytelling, powerful lines of marketing and content strategy.

Let's do it.  All right. So the other night I was scrolling on TikTok and  a creator that I really enjoy came up as going live and his name is James Smith. He's a PT. He, he has. like a million followers, but built from scratch. And I really loved watching his journey and how he talks about content marketing and content creation and social media.

And, you know, he's interviewed, um, James Clear, who is the author of the atomic habits book, who also started with a blog, started posting consistently and really saw the results. So I want to play the snippet because basically he was going live and there wasn't heaps of people on the live asking questions.

So I thought. I'm going to ask a question. Very short, simple reply, but I just want to share with you what he said to me.  My question was, and here's the answer. So hopefully you can hear this. Number one content tip for small business owners, big fan, use this example a lot. What is the problem people have?

How can they solve it? Okay. So basically I asked him, biggest content tip, he said, what is the problem and how do you solve it? Which is so true. And I think sometimes we get stuck along the way of creating content and marketing our business because there's all these flashing lights and all these things that we could do and all these things that we could talk about.

But when you understand what is the pain of your customer or client, then you can create content to either explain this or, and emphasize  and show desire. because basically the opposite to the pain is the desire or the desired outcome. Now, if pain points don't resonate with you, you can simply talk about the desire, but you need to show your audience that you understand what they're going through.

So I'm going to share sort of three things that can help you with establishing the pain points and communicating them through your content. Now,  this is like marketing 101 and it sounds really simple, but it kind of is. Um,  It really is. And I remember this piece of content, what is a pain point content was something that Mitch sent to me, uh, from HubSpot a couple of months ago, or even a little while ago.

And it's one of those things we really need to talk about it more. I did see a marketer  a couple of months ago say, well, we shouldn't be sharing the pain point because pain point is so negative. We should be sharing the desire. Yeah, great. Totally agree. But you have to understand that  you're showing your audience that you understand what they need.

So  pain points are the consistent problem. First thing you want to do is find out what these are.  If you have been in your audience position,  you would know what the pain point is.  But along the journey, you've probably got lost on what that pain point is. So come back to it because it's that persistent problem that we have.

And  really what our product and service is here to do is to satisfy that problem. A customer's pain can be related through like, their personal, professional lives. It could be physical, emotional, logical,  but you must convince them that they have that problem that your company can, or your business, your product, your service can solve.

So you need to show them and it's not in a bro marketing unethical way, but there is a problem. So sometimes they might not be aware of it. I work with clients that people don't know that they have this problem because it's something that they don't know about. So you also have to think outside the box in how you can explain things to them that they will understand, Oh my God, yes, I have that issue because we just want our problems solved, right?

And we can do this through also engaging with your customers, tell them directly, conduct research. Um, look at, um, focus groups and interviews and questions that you can ask. I'm going back through and doing some market research because I want to  work out how I can make my sort of educational services more impactful.

And instead of saying, you know, would this be a product you would buy, dah, dah, dah, the first questions and was helped develop by my business mentor was really these open questions around. And  What's, what are you struggling with right now? Because often what you might think people are struggling with is something different.

And of course, sometimes our product might be what our customer needs, not necessarily what they want. So you have to find that fine line between  giving them also what they want, but then sliding in what they need. For example, I know. People want to have content out there giving results, generating leads, all the things.

They want to know how they can create a reel quick enough. They want to create cool looking videos or they want it to just take them less time. But I know they need a strategy. They need storytelling. So it's up to me to meet them at that pain point, but then also explain to them what is going to make their lives easier.

And sometimes we can be talking about it. in many different ways to find out what really works. And then of course, you want to analyze that customer research and listen to what has been said, you know, get ChatGPT to analyze your notes, all those things. And then you can start implementing marketing messages and things that come from the direct words of your audience.

And  really,  I have understood and some of the things around what my example of a pain point is posting on social media channels is tedious and time consuming or I feel like I have so many ideas and I don't know how to put them out there in the world.  I feel like I spent hours creating posts and content and I'm always on social media that I actually don't have time to go out there and find clients.

And I don't have time to go out there and network because I'm spending so much time on social media because I'm thinking that's where my audience is and I'm thinking that's where my, all my customers are coming from, but they're not. So you can see some examples of pain points that I'm seeing, and I can use that in my content to then share the desired outcome, which is my audience.

the things that I can offer at any part of their journey, whether they,  you know, want to outsource completely or whether they just need some support and some help. So it sounds really simple, but I think it's something we're definitely missing a lot. It's just going back to the basics instead of spending time going, Oh, that would make a cool trending reel or I wonder if I can learn more video editing, which of course is a great skill to have and very important.

But if you're not getting the basics right, it's like the foundations are fundamental and I know it's not as sexy and I know it's not as fun, but if you really want to create impact and speak to your audience directly, these are things we need to understand. And I know I've spoken about this with, um, some clients in the past.

Like I think you need to go out and interview some of the people that have gone through your product and service like, Oh, but it's not that many. And it's like, Yep. But  it's important. And that's why I've made it a really important thing to do at the moment. And if you would love to help me in understanding your pain so I can better facilitate with content with anything, I'll put in the show notes, a link to book in a 15 minute session with me, just to run over some questions I might have.

And I'm happy to spend the next 15 minutes. It's giving you some of my time answering a question. I did one with, um, a client on my email list this week and I gave her some value at the end that really supported her. So if you have a niggling question, book in the time, I'm going to ask you a few questions and then you can ask me a few questions.

So the second one is then address that pain point or flip it into a desire. So use the language as I mentioned from the beginning. Um, the people that you've interviewed from people that you've spoken to and use that across your sales page, use that across your social media content. I have a client that does this very well.

She conducts a lot of research and a lot of interviews because that's really part of her body of work. So she's very good at doing that. And then she's able to use that information to create her sales page, to create a social media copy. She's using conversations that she's having on the daily with her audience to create her content.

And that's basically what we want to do. But. Sometimes we can, as I said, get lost. And of course it's, you know, it's great to create content that's fun and entertaining and engaging for our audience, but you have to also create content that's going to speak to that audience. So it's a balance, right? It's a balance.

It's all a balance. And if you have interviews, as I said, chuck it into chat GPT and get them to take the words, you know, don't get them to paraphrase, say, please take the direct quotes from my clients and share them with me here. I remember this year I went through all my Google reviews. All my reviews, everything, and I put them in a sheet and then highlighted really key words of things I've helped my audience with and my clients.

And that really helped me get a good understanding of their pain point as well, because that was their desired outcome. So I could flip it and work out what their pain was  and then test these, post them on social media, use those words. It's all about testing, putting it out there, seeing what people resonate with.

You know, create a landing page or a sales page, send it to those people that you've done the market research with and say, Hey, does this resonate? Does, do you think this is something that you would buy? Just ask the question. I think, and obviously it can be, you know, challenging sometimes to get people to jump on a call or to give you their feedback.

But if the more people you ask, the more chances you're going to get of getting that feedback. And I think it's just asking, I think  for some reason we have gotten so  just, I don't know if it's scared or, you know, we know everyone's busy, so we don't want to take up too many people's time. So we don't really ask for things,  but that was something I was really good at when I first started my business, like asking questions, asking people for their support and their help.

And I think along the journey, You just stop doing that. So let's start asking for feedback, asking, you know, if you're part of Facebook groups, if you're in a business community, ask people, your target audience is probably in there at some point, um, in some degree. Or you could say like, Hey, do you know anyone that fits this audience description?

Could you ask them like what they think of this? They could spend two, three minutes and give you an opinion that could really change. And that's the energy, putting that energy into doing that. Sometimes I think we just leave things to the last minute. We want to get them up quickly and sell our thing that we forget to go back and see.

And it's not about like being a perfectionist or anything. It's getting it done. It's getting the feedback, making any changes, boom,  test it. All right. And the third one is analyze what works.  You know, do some A B testing, like, um, you don't have to go into too much detail, because I'm all about like saving time and making sure that we're,  you know, not spending hours on this sort of stuff, but do one social media post with one wording and one social media post with the other wording and see what resonates.

And do that a couple of times, you know, choose the language of your audience. I remember one of my clients who I'm in her target audience and we had a conversation And I saw a post like obviously helping her with the, I'm like, I really love that post, how she wrote that and stuff. And I commented on it.

She's like, yeah, cause they were your words. That's what you said to me when we had a meeting. And I was like, Oh, well, that was like, I really liked that. Yeah, of course. And your target audience that see their words are like, Oh my God, that's me. I resonate with that. Your goal is to get your audience to say, Oh my God, I feel like you're speaking to me.

And this is not just in your promotional content that you do your bottom of funnel. in your emails and things like that. This is also in your top of funnel content in the pain point related content that you create in the educational stuff you create. You're creating educational stuff based off conversations you have with your audience and their pain points, and you're helping them by giving them some value flip.

And then you can flip it into a desire and say, we'll try this, this, and this, and it's going to help you with this. And it's not like four tips to XYZ. It's just generally giving value.  Right. So continue to build what you learn. Be curious. You know, you don't have to look at every single post and  get really, um,  stressed about, you know, that one worked, that one didn't.

You can look at it from a big picture back. Oh, I noticed a trend here, here and here. Maybe that's the type of messaging that works, but that's why sometimes leaving things to the last minute can kill us because we don't have time to do all that.  And we live in this like very fast paced, get things out there.

And I'm all for that, but get things out there and test them as soon as possible. Right.  So  basically. What I want you to think about is, am I really addressing the pain point of my audience right now? Or am I creating stuff that's just here to  serve a purpose that I'm not really sure? Like, you know, am I just putting out content because I've been told I've got to create content and be online for my audience?

And I saw this interesting post, you know, we don't have content pillars anymore. We have sort of a funnel and that's true. We create content towards our goals. So if you are looking to build audience, Is the content that you're creating that top of funnel, no one knows who I am, but I'm trying to give some sort of value whilst also addressing their concerns, addressing their desires, their dreams, their aspirations, and doing it in a way that aligns to me.

And I had a question in the DIY content marketing club of like, what is top of funnel? Like, I kind of get it, but I'm not really sure. And that's a really good question. Basically it's. Content that is not really about you, well it's not at all actually, and it's not about your brand, it's about your customer and your audience.

It's about entertaining them, engaging them. sharing something of value. If they don't know you, they will take something away from it.  Maybe it's sharing a really solid opinion that you have in your space. And it is about addressing their concerns in general and not saying my product can help you, but giving something that some can support their journey.

So it really is about That top of funnel, you'll get more people to see that content. That's the content where you're going to get more views. That's the content where people may follow you from, but it is just remembering that that top of funnel is basically someone sees it that doesn't know who you are and how can you give them the most value.

It's like your first impression piece of content, basically.  So I would love for you to spend a little bit of time this week thinking about what are my pain points? Do I need to book in a couple of calls, even with people that you've worked with, and it might not be a call. It could be, Hey, I'm just going to send you a voice note with a couple of questions.

Can you just come back to me on what you think about these? Those questions are going to be really important. And if you're unsure of how to create good  questions for your audience, try and keep them as open ended as possible. I got this feedback and review from my mentor, Leticia Andrak, who said, try and keep them as open as possible and don't narrow down to like yes and no answers.

So what was your pain like before working with me?  And what is it like now after? And that's a great testimonial as well, but that's really going to help you get an understanding if they're people you've worked with. If they're strangers, they're And people that are your target audience, but you don't necessarily work with them.

Just ask them, what are they currently struggling with in this niche of XYZ?  And that is a really good starting point. Then use this to start creating some content on it, analyze it. Come up with some post ideas  and then just test them and see what resonates with your audience. And then you can look at, if you don't have a content marketing strategy, this is going to really help you build that.

If you do have one, think about how you can tweak and change it to add this messaging in. But I'd love to know what comes up for you when you. Start doing some of this work. It is very important and I think it's something we definitely miss. Be a content queen or king and remember that developing your strategy and story develops your business.

Thank you so much for joining me today and please don't forget to share this with all your business and entrepreneurial friends. You can do this by adding it to your insta stories and tagging me at contentqueenmariah or just simply tell them about it. If you do rate and review it allows me to get amazing guests on the show and it allows me to continue this content.

Make sure you follow her on Instagram or TikTok and let me know if there's any topics you want me to talk about. I would love to. And if you want to book in a quick 15 minute session, I would really appreciate it. But I'll talk to you soon. Bye. 

PodcastMariah MacInnesmarketing, marketing advice, how to be authentic online, business ownerComment