The Problem With Pain-Point Marketing (And What I Do Instead)
Most marketing advice starts with the same move: find the pain point, then sell against it.
Something's missing, something's broken, something isn't working, and here's the fix. It works, technically. It also tends to make someone feel a little worse before they feel better, just so they'll buy the solution.
I lean the other way.
Instead of building content around what's lacking, I build around values, the things someone already cares about, already enjoys, already wants more of in their life.
The gap is still there. But instead of digging into the wound and saying I have the band-aid, I'm pointing at what someone already wants more of, and showing them the space to actually get it. The goal is giving someone a space they already want to grow into, rather than a hole to fill.
Same result, different feeling getting there. One convinces someone something's wrong with where they are. The other just makes staying interested feel easy.
That doesn't mean pain-point marketing doesn't work, plenty of businesses build entire strategies around it successfully. It's just not how I want to build. Community factors into this too. I'd rather give someone a space to grow that already fits who they are than convince them they need to join a community that's going to fix them.
There's a version of marketing that can start to feel like taking advantage of people.
Once you understand what actually moves someone, it's tempting to lean on that instead of asking whether you should. A lot of business owners just starting out sense this and pull back from pain-point marketing because it feels like poking at a weak spot on purpose, and then they end up stuck in a loop trying to figure out what to even say to get anyone to move at all.
But if what you're building is genuinely helpful, backed by real interest in being there for people, you don't need to make anyone feel bad first to sell it.
Now I actually want to hear from you.
Do you find yourself leaning in more when you're presented with pain, or with pleasure?
Drop it in the comments below.
If you'd rather build content around what your audience already loves instead of what's missing from their life, come explore fromotion.com or book a chat with me. Talking through ideas with people is genuinely my favorite part of this whole thing.
If any of this has you thinking you might want to try something like the Ultimate Blog Challenge yourself, it's still open all month. Anyone can jump in and start posting daily right alongside the rest of us. You can check it out at ultimateblogchallenge.com.
