Necessity-based Marketing For Services: And Why It Beats All Other Kinds
How to keep your service from being another nice-to-have
What do the following have in common?
A toothache
A car that won’t start
Poo on your shoe
Each of them is a problem. And most people won’t tolerate these problems. They’ll do something about them right away. The fact that people feel the need to solve problems is the cornerstone of necessity-based marketing.
Necessity-based marketing is about situations that must be solved
You feel you must pay taxes to avoid the penalty. You must get your car fixed so you can go to work. You must fix that tooth because … well, life is too hard when you’re in pain.
What happens if we can find this “must solve” problem in our business?
A husband and wife team I consulted struggled to sell their coaching services. They helped people change how they thought and felt with a unique system that produced results in mere hours. The clients they had loved them. The problem is they couldn’t get enough clients to get ahead financially. When I worked with them, I helped them find a specific problem they could solve: fear of public speaking.
People with this fear, dread speaking in public but some have to do it anyway. The people with the worst fears lose sleep for days before a speaking event. They can suffer problems with stress. And some would lose their shot at promotions because they avoided speaking in public.
Once this team decided to focus on the fear of public speaking they were able to get clients without any advertising. They just reached out to their network, got several clients, and quickly gathered testimonials. With this proof of results in hand, they launched a website to promote this business. The two ended up with a waiting list of clients 20 people deep. They then had to hire coaches they had trained years before to handle the overflow.
How do we find a “must solve” problem?
It’s actually not hard. You simply interview one person in your target market. You ask them for the entire list of the problems they have related to the work you do. Then you have them prioritize those problems so you can find the biggest one.
We can apply this approach to a problem I’m currently facing — my computer won’t boot.
What’s the list of problems I’m facing with my computer?
It won’t boot. It has multiple drives so my backup system for my previous computer wasn’t compatible, meaning no complete backup. To make a bootable drive, I needed a USB and another windows machine. I had another windows machine but most of my USB sticks didn’t have enough storage. Further, most solutions to my problem involve wiping out my hard drive and returning it to factory condition. That would mean losing all the non-backed up files.
As you can see, that’s a long list of problems.
Next, I would ask to sort these problems in order of importance.
To me, the possibility of losing all my data is the worst problem of all. I would spend good money to make sure I could get all my data even if I had to scrap the machine afterward.
Can you see that if someone had a solution to my problem, they could sell me their product or service?
Well, in fact, one company did just that. A company called NeoSmart promised a disk that would reboot my computer without losing the data. Yes, they promised exactly my wish. So how hard was it to get them to convince me to fork over my hard-earned cash? It was easy and nearly instant.
As a marketer, I knew exactly what they were doing when I read their description of my problems with booting my computer and my fears of losing all my data. And I didn’t care. All I cared about is that they understood my concerns and had a precise solution.
And your potential clients and customers are no different. They have a problem. They need you to show you understand that problem. And they need you to propose a precise solution. And yes, I’m using the word “need” on purpose. Because all of this is based on necessity as I mentioned earlier. Problems need to be solved. If you offer empathy plus a solution, you are likely to make the sale.
But there is a mistake we can easily make when we go on the path of necessity marketing
And that’s solving what you think is the customer’s real problem and ignoring what they perceive as the problem. A relationship coach may decide that what really causes relationship issues is the client’s mindset, their lack of self-esteem, or their lack of communication skills. The client might perceive the issue as not knowing how to talk to the opposite sex.
If the coach opens the conversation trying to explain their “real” problem, watch as the client runs from the hills. Instead, we show empathy for the client’s perspective. And gradually, we can show them we have a diagnosis and a solution.
But isn’t this all a bit negative?
Yes, it is quite negative. However, we aren’t creating this negativity. It’s what the client already complains about. We are just showing them we understand their concerns from their perspective before we offer them our solution. And if all you did was to repeat back the client’s issues and did nothing to show you can resolve them, then it would be right to call that conversation a bit negative. We only start in a “negative” place to meet the client where he or she is, we then guide them to our solution which gives them hope.
Summary
Necessity marketing involves solving must-solve problems your clients or customers have
You discover these problems by simply asking the customer, then asking them to tell you which problem is the most important
This can go wrong if we go with our expert diagnosis instead of the client’s complaint (even if it seems like a surface issue to you and not the real problem)
Client’s don’t experience this as negative as long as you follow up with a solution to their problem
When your tooth hurts, your car won’t start or you step in that brown smelly stuff, you want to act now to fix the situation. When you discover how your client describes their own “toothache” they don’t want to wait, they want a solution now. So empathize with their problems, that way they’ll let you help them solve the real problem.
Want to know how to create online presentations that get you, clients?
In 2018, I delivered a live course that taught participants how to create presentations that empower your potential clients yet also makes them want to hire you. I’m thinking about releasing that as a video course in the coming months. If you’re interested, click here to join the waiting list.
