Pain Points of a client. This is how to identify them

In the vast world of digital marketing, there are many factors to consider when understanding the user and/or final customer. When their opinions about their experience with a brand are positive, everything is smooth sailing, but what happens when the opposite occurs?

Identifying those problems, negative experiences, and obstacles that a user has encountered is almost essential to strengthen and forge strong connections to your company. You might wonder, what are we talking about? Well, we’re referring to the pain points of a customer.

What Are Pain Points in Digital Marketing?

Getting down to business, by definition, a user’s pain points in digital marketing are the problematic areas or negative situations that users experience in their online experience or interaction with your brand.

These can be diverse, so much so that it will depend on each user’s circumstances. Nevertheless, there are some types that encompass some common situations.

Most Common Pain Points in User vs. Brand

As mentioned earlier, there are as many problems and negative experiences as there are users. Therefore, numerous examples can be mentioned (the list is infinitely long), so here we outline some types according to their «origin»:

• Emotional. After using a product/service from a brand, the user experiences a negative feeling (emotion) afterward or some type of prejudice for using «x» product/service. The latter is more related to the level and status that the user may show socially.

• Related to the economic factor. When the user finds that the expenses and/or prices of the products/services of a brand are excessive compared to, according to their judgment, the quality offered.

• Usability and processes. Having a sales process (in the case of eCommerce) or easy, quick, and simple usability and navigation for the user is essential to not make it difficult for the user.

• Support. We refer to when the user does not find a support channel (from the brand) in their online experience when facing a problem in case they require assistance.

• Brand visibility. Be visible (being redundant), as a user may know your brand, but if you are not visible (speaking in the online world) and accessible from the SERPs, their experience will be negative.

And after these points, there is a long etcetera that could be added to the list. The essential thing is to ask yourself, what problems does my potential user have with my brand? And from there, address them. But, how do we identify these pain points?

Identifying User Pain Points

Knowing the pain points of users related to your brand is vital to address them and provide a solution. So far, the basic theory.

To know and identify the pain points, you must conduct a thorough exercise to understand certain factors.

Put Yourself in the User’s Shoes

To know what worries them or what they have already experienced (negatively) previously, you have to put yourself in their place. That is, think like them (and you will succeed!), or at least you can approach what they are looking for in a brand, and what not, to avoid these negative situations.

However, to know what and how the potential user of your brand thinks, you must know them first. Build your buyer persona and thread everything else from it to understand their possible behavior.

Analyze Your Brand’s Data

Through the results and data provided by analytical tools, you can check what has worked, but you can also check what has not.

Regarding the latter, you can investigate what is causing a problem for the user and discover how to solve it.

Pay Attention to Search Engines

The behavior of SERPs helps us a lot to know what is being worked on and what the user really wants to find (and what not) from a brand.

Regarding what is shown, whether it’s images, «pure and simple» text, video, or any other element, search engines will tell you about a user’s unmet need and how you can solve it.

Know Their Opinions and Comments

Users often express both their satisfaction and dissatisfaction with something (positive experience vs negative experience), and even more so now with the large platforms we have in our daily lives such as social networks.

In them, we see User Generated Content (UGC), or what amounts to a user’s content about a brand, whether they have had a positive or negative experience, and it is in the latter that we must focus, as from there we will extract the information we need to know their pain points.

But they not only show it through these tools. What are the comments of users reflected through other channels such as blogs, videos, or reviews? In these, too, you have to pay attention to know more about them.

What Is Your Competition Doing?

In all aspects of multiple sectors (and in marketing especially), brands look at each other, because knowing what the competition is doing will help you know what the user believes is a negative or positive experience.

Understand Your User and Discover What They Expect, Need, and Want from Your Brand

Voilà! After doing the exercise of investigating more about the potential user, specifically what worries and concerns them about the possibility of finding a negative experience in a brand, you will have the answer to what to offer and what not, or rather, what to do and what not to do for the connection between brand and user to be optimal.

Ultimately, it’s about building strong and meaningful relationships with your audience in the ever-evolving digital world.