Everybody has problems – including your customers. That’s why they’re looking at you – you get to position your products and services as the solution to their problem... or, at least one of them.

Which is why, when you talk about your brand, you need to understand the problem your customer is actually looking for. So many times, we get caught up talking about ourselves (and see the last post for why that’s a bad idea) that we don’t take the time to make sure we understand the problem our customer has in the first place.

Imagine, for instance, that your kennel customer is going on a business trip, and needs someone to look over her two dogs and her cat. What do you think she’s feeling? A little nervous about leaving her pets with a total stranger? I know I might feel that way.

If you spend all your time talking about how every cat gets fresh lobster every day, and each dog gets a complete spa treatment, it’s not going to bring in a sale – because that information doesn’t solve the problem she has.

The problem in this case is obvious – she wants to know if you like animals, and if she can trust you with her precious family members. That’s the problem you need to address, and if you do, she’s likely to leave her pets with you.

Remember – you customers are coming to you to solve a problem. Talking about how you solve that problem grabs their attention. Think about it like this: Your customers’ brains are doing two things – trying to save calories, and trying to survive and thrive. At a very basic level, that’s all they do. For your customer, “thriving” includes keeping her pets safe and happy while she’s out of town. But she’s not going to take the time to think long and hard about how you do that, if you’re couching it in a lot of words. Make it simple to understand how you solve the problem – someone calls it “putting the cookies on the bottom shelf.” If you do that, you’ll find that your customers engage more, they stay engaged, and they end up buying your products and services.

This month's free resource

Everyone's talking about ChatGPT... but do you know how to use it effectively? In this months resource, which you can download below, we'll tell you how!