Heal the pain point, win the customer.
In well-established industries, we can forget that there are new people finding out how things work every day.
Yes, people who have taken out a mortgage know how awful the process can be and have accepted it – but first-time buyers don’t and haven’t.
There will always be new people to dismay. Imagine if your business did it differently.
Example: Bulb
Bulb is a futuristic energy company. It’s definitely aimed at millennial types like me – and guess what? It worked. I am now with Bulb.
Their marketing worked on me because they took all the traditional pain points of energy and just threw them in the bin.
Energy companies have always made switching providers a nightmare, so Bulb handles the switch for you and even pays any exit fees. They also have a focus on renewable energy, they’re transparent about their costs and they make leaving THEM easy, too! Madness.
This stuff – which many energy companies would see as profit-destroying idiocy – is having a big effect. The word of mouth generated by ditching the status quo is growing Bulb faster than any marketing they could create themselves.
Heal your customers’ pain points and they’ll do your job for you.
How to heal your customers’ bad opinion of your industry
1. Find your pain points
Make a list of every complaint you’ve heard in a rant against your industry.
Most of my customer service experience has been in personal finance, where there are a LOT of pain points. Money is always emotional, so it’s easy pickings.
Pain points in banking:
- It often costs me money to store my money…just so banks can use my money however they like
- I have to go into the bank to do so much stuff and it’s never easy
- If anything happens to my card, I have to call up and speak to a human – ugh
- Money isn’t real and we’re all slaves to a system of lies (but that’s a rabbit hole for another time)
2. Heal your pain points
Chuck everything you know about your business and its wider industry in the bin. Solve your customers’ pain points in as magical and far-fetched way as you like. Think like Bulb. You can always rein it in later.
Monzo is a mobile-only bank that’s done a Bulb and deleted all the traditional funny business associated with banks. And yes, I signed up for that too.
Healing pain points in banking:
- Monzo gives ME money if I recommend them to someone who then opens an account
- Monzo is mobile-only banking
- I can suspend my card in the Monzo app – and unsuspend it if I find the missing card
- I can activate my Monzo bank card by tapping it on my phone
- Part of Monzo’s brand is that they’re launching ethical banking
3. Tell your customers
Pain points work on everyone, whether they’ve experienced them before or they’re afraid they will if they go elsewhere.
The smallest thing can make the difference if it’s a niggling pain that’s embedded in the industry. I lose my bank card up to five times each year and often find it in a forgotten handbag or down the side of my driver’s seat. That’s all it took for me to open a Monzo bank account; I can freeze my card while my brain catches up, and unfreeze it when it inevitably reappears.
If you can identify and then solve all your customers’ pain points, you have a ready-made list of USPs to tell them about.
