Summary: If you like this podcast and post, check out our <a href="https://www.ducttapemarketing.com/marketing-strategy-plan/">Ultimate Guide to Small Business Marketing Strategy</a>.<br> <a href="http://traffic.libsyn.com/ducttape/John_Jantsch_on_Problem_Solving.mp3">Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch About Problem Solving</a><br> I want to talk about solving problems. I really think in the end that is our job and I think it takes a special point of view. We as business owners and marketers are so in tune with this idea of promoting what we do and talking about our solutions, but until a prospect or a client understands that we understand their problems that they’re trying to solve, I don’t think we can make any kind of connection to the solutions.<br> I often think that the person that wins is the person that understands and articulates the problem more so than the person that understands and articulates the solution. I know this is kind of the cold hard sort of crass sounding facts, but I really do think that nobody wants or cares about what we sell. They want their problem solved, period. If we can make that connection, if we can get them to understand that we understand their problems, they’re going to listen to our solutions. The reason I say this takes a special point of view is that it requires us to fully understand our customer’s problems and in many cases, understand problems that maybe have nothing to do with the products and services that we offer.<br> When I work with businesses, quite often I will try to get them to list all of their problems and challenges. When we work with clients on their websites today, the biggest thing on their homepage should be “Here’s your biggest problem. Here’s our promise to solve it.” I don’t think that anybody wants to pass go until they’ve been able to make that connection.<br> Figuring out your customers’ problems<br> A lot of times, you know what they are, you hear them every day. I think the real art is to actually find those problems that people are trying to solve very early in their journey before they’ve really led to, or even figured out if what we do is going to solve their problems. There are some great tools out there and I really recommend that you take a look at these, because I’ve been telling people for the last few years that I think keyword research or that part of SEO that people used to call keyword research, I think has actually become one of the master skills now for marketers. We have to get very good at understanding intent because all the data is there, we just have to know how to mine it.<br> <br> Use online tools<br> One of the first tools I want to tell you about is <a href="http://AnswerthePublic.com">Answer the Public</a>. It’s a really cool site because what it essentially is, is a search engine of sorts, but if you put any search term, it will a thorough list of questions and related topics to that term. It’s different really than the traditional kind of keyword search terms that might show you terms that are related and different ways to say the same thing. This is really more of an intent engine because it structures many things in the form of questions. I do think that it’s hard to misinterpret what somebody is looking for, what their intent is, what they’re trying to solve when they actually put in a question.<br> That’s why I really love this. It can spark so many ideas. In fact, I would venture to say that you could actually go here and most businesses could get a year’s worth of content that they need to produce just around a couple themes in terms of answering questions that are very specific. These are things that people are actually typing into search engines. You can even break it up into all kinds of ways. They have comparisons. They have questions. They have things that start with prepositions.
