Page 115 - 100 Great Copywriting Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

51 FIND YOUR CUSTOMER’S
PAIN POINT

Lots of products and services are there to make people’s lives easier
in some way. Not more pleasurable, necessarily, just less unpleasant.
Life insurance being an obvious example. Loft insulation another.
As copywriters selling this type of product, we need to be looking
for our customer’s pain point—not to inflict it, but to remove it.

Business-to-business markets in particular are stuffed with this
type of thing, a reflection I suppose of the extraordinary pressures
modern business imposes on its participants. Losing money,
employing crooks (by accident, not on purpose), breaking rules,
being fined, getting sued, having secrets stolen, losing pitches,
being rejected: they’re all points of pain. And that makes them
excellent motivators.

The idea

From the World Advertising Research Center, a marketing data
company
WARC used to publish a series of brilliant little data books on all
kinds of markets and industries. They’re pocket sized but stuffed
with as much data as books ten times their size. This benefit is
summed up in the strapline “Heavyweight data in the palm of your
hand.” Nice, huh? For a mini catalog, promoting the whole range,
we came up with the line “Plan, pitch, presentation? Here’s your
supporting data.”

The point of pain being the fear that naturally accompanies anyone
who has to prepare a plan, make a pitch, or give a presentation. What
if I’ve missed something? What if the opposition have better data in

106 • 100 GREAT COPYWRITING IDEAS