[Pain point #1] Financial pain points
In the United States, healthcare is a for-profit practice, so it is easier to assume the correlation between financial pain points and your duties as “the doctor” of your online store. But, in many countries, finances have nothing to do with well-being. So, don’t make the mistake of believing that your job is to provide your products at the lowest cost — pricing is just one part of your business strategy.
Financial pain points include the problems that consumers face regarding money:
- The high, often unnecessary cost of repeat purchases of everyday items.
- Low life-expectancy of a product that is made to last a significant length of time.
- Subscription plans and membership fees.
If you sell high-ticket products, you are more likely to be able to resolve a financial pain point by emphasizing the significance of long-lasting products. On the contrary, if you sell inexpensive products, you are more likely to position yourself as a hero in consumers’ eyes by comparing your prices (and maybe quality) to those of your competitors. In fact, according to a recent Capterra survey, nearly half (47%) of customers who had a negative customer cite the product not working well or to their expectations as a reason. Therefore, is so important to understand how your product resolves financial pain points. Your niche and your product standards can make a world of difference in the marketing message you should send.
This is how to relieve financial pain points
If you’ve lived in a home with carpeting, you may have experienced a pitch from a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman; the first time I met one of these guys, I was 19 years old, living in a suburban duplex with a roommate. The bell rang, so I went to the door and was greeted by a charismatic man in a suit with a large, clunky-looking machine, offering to shampoo my carpets “for free.” I let him in, allowed him to do his thing, then listened to his spiel.
Unfortunately for him, it was a no-go! There was no way in the world I was going to finance a $2,500 vacuum cleaner when I had just picked one up at WalMart for $30. I didn’t care how clean my carpets looked because logic told me it would only cost $100 to buy a carpet cleaner if I decided to — even less if I checked out the right garage sales.
But, guess who owns a Kirby now, 15 years later? That’s right, me. I ended up taking the plunge and spending more because I realized that those broken $30-vacuums (more like $100+ pieces of junk, today) were piling up in landfills and slowly but surely draining my bank — I had to buy a new one each year. If the first salesman I met had explained how his product could resolve my financial pain point, I may have considered the investment earlier.
(Source: Kirby)
The moral of the story is it’s not impossible to sell a penny-pincher an expensive product; you just have to highlight the long-term financial benefits. In the same way, a doctor always advises smokers to quit now so that they might avoid lung disease in the future, when promoting an expensive product, show your customers what how this product will benefit them for years to come.