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About this lesson

Define the biggest challenges that your product or service helps your customers overcome.

Exercise files

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Challenges
54.2 KB Challenges - Solution
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Quick reference

Challenges

Articulate what your product or service is, and how it solves a challenge.

When to use

Define the biggest challenges that your product or service helps your customers overcome.

Instructions

You need to articulate your product or service to customers by addressing how it can solve a challenge they are facing.

Ask your clients – or imagine asking your ideal client: “what are the biggest challenges you are facing right now?”

There are two types of challenges:

  1. The spoken challenge – surface answers you will get from customers, e.g. attract more clients, better customer service, better quality product.
  2. The unspoken challenge – under the surface, customers might not tell you directly. E.g. what are the customers fears? Fears of not being enough, failure, letting down family and coworkers.

It is important to keep these challenges and fears in mind in marketing to address how your product or service can help. Choose the top 3 challenges that your product or service can help solve to focus on for your marketing efforts.  

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  • 00:04 In this video, we start with step one, articulate your product or service.
  • 00:10 Marketing is all about articulating what your product or
  • 00:13 service is, that solves a challenge and provides a solution.
  • 00:18 It's that simple.
  • 00:19 So what we need to do is get very clear on what you or
  • 00:23 your company offers as a product or service, and
  • 00:26 more importantly, what challenges do they solve.
  • 00:30 So for example, if you were to ask right now one of your favorite clients, or
  • 00:35 your best client, or if you don't have any clients yet,
  • 00:36 what would you ask your ideal client?
  • 00:39 When you ask him,
  • 00:40 hey what are your biggest challenges you're facing right now?
  • 00:43 What would they tell you?
  • 00:45 And you wanna make sure you get few of them, right?
  • 00:48 So choose the top three challenges that your product or service solves, right?
  • 00:53 So for example, in the beginning, if you were to ask him a question,
  • 00:56 that's called the spoken challenge, the spoken challenge.
  • 01:00 Now the spoken challenge,
  • 01:01 that's the surface answers that you're gonna get from your ideal customer.
  • 01:04 That's what they're gonna tell you.
  • 01:06 So for example, they might tell you, well, I need to attract more clients,
  • 01:11 for example, right?
  • 01:12 If you're doing something to help them get more clients.
  • 01:15 You know what, I need better service, better customer service, for example.
  • 01:21 Or, hey you know what, we're looking for a better quality product, okay?
  • 01:26 So whatever that is, whatever challenges, and try to get specific as well,
  • 01:30 that your company can help solve, or your product, or your service,
  • 01:33 that's what you wanna get very clear on.
  • 01:36 Now, this next challenge is a little more deep, right?
  • 01:40 This one's under the surface, this is the unspoken challenge, okay?
  • 01:45 So that's gonna be more about what are their fears, that they may or
  • 01:50 may not tell you, right?
  • 01:52 So these are those deep psychological fears, so fear of not being enough,
  • 01:57 the fear of failure, the fear of letting down their family.
  • 02:02 The fear of letting down their friends, their coworkers,
  • 02:05 etc., especially if it's a business that's in a place that's struggling and
  • 02:10 you have a product or service that helps me get through that.
  • 02:14 They may have a fear of letting down their coworkers, closing down the business,
  • 02:18 losing jobs, whatever it is, what's that deep piece?
  • 02:21 And the reason it's so important to understand that, is as we're putting your
  • 02:25 marketing message together, we wanna keep these things in mind,
  • 02:29 because we wanna address all of those fears.
  • 02:31 Does that make sense?
  • 02:33 Okay, so to recap, you wanna make sure that you articulate your product or
  • 02:37 service in your marketing.
  • 02:39 So that starts with the challenge and the solution that your company or
  • 02:43 your product or service will provide, okay?
  • 02:46 And there's two types of challenges, there is a spoken challenge, right?
  • 02:50 If you were to ask, hey what is the biggest challenge you're facing right now,
  • 02:53 what would your clients tell you?
  • 02:55 What would your ideal client tell you?
  • 02:57 And we're gonna talk more about that in some future videos,
  • 02:59 what your ideal client is.
  • 03:01 Number two, what are the unspoken challenges that they have?
  • 03:04 What are their fears?
  • 03:05 What will they not tell you?
  • 03:07 Or maybe tell you, or not tell you, but what's deeper under the surface.
  • 03:11 And you wanna choose the top three challenges that your product or
  • 03:14 service solves, okay?
  • 03:16 Get very specific to that client.
  • 03:18 And the way you do that, pick a client that you have right now,
  • 03:21 think about what their challenges are, or you can do a survey.
  • 03:25 Or you just think about, hey, we designed this product or service
  • 03:29 to solve x problem, okay and you wanna make sure that you can articulate that.
  • 03:34 All right, you guys have this, I'll see you in the next video.

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