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Solve a Pain

You want to sell pain relievers, not vitamins.

This may be one of the most popular recommendations in all of copywriting. Maybe all of marketing.

And it’s true. It is much better to address and fix your customer’s immediate pain than to sell something that helps them gain something pleasurable.

You want to fix their headache, as opposed to improve their brain health.

Both are desirable benefits. And in the long run, improving brain health may even be more advantageous to the consumer. But fixing headache pain is far more urgent and deeply felt than the notion of improving the function of your brain.

Marketing Guru Perry Marshall calls this fixing the bleeding neck. If your neck is bleeding, that’s a problem that is both urgent and critically important. It has to be addressed NOW. And the person with a bleeding neck will pay a lot to end that bleeding.

As copywriters, we’re so familiar with the need to address our customer’s pain, that we’ve built pain right into the most popular writing framework… P.A.S.

Identify the Pain.

Agitate it.

Offer a solution.

But why is it usually better to address a pain instead of promoting a gain? Let’s start with the science…

All living creatures naturally avoid things that cause them pain. Scientists have noted that even one-celled amoebas—with no brain or nervous system—will move away from things that cause them pain like irritating chemicals, bright sunshine, and sharp objects. And they’ll do it faster than they’ll move toward things that bring pleasure… like food or warmth.

And more complex living things like humans have even more highly developed systems for moving away from pain. What’s more, it’s automatic. Pain avoidance is a System 1 behavior… we move away from pain before we have time to activate System 2 and ask why (if this concept of System 1 and System 2 is unfamiliar, we talked about these two systems in Module 1).

That all makes sense. Of course we avoid things that hurt us physically.

But what about emotional or psychological pain—the kinds of pain that don’t have a true physical sensation?

Most of the pains we feel are not physical… things like rejection. Disapproval. Fear. Disgust. Shame. Failure. 

Many—maybe even most—of the products we sell address these emotional pains…  as opposed to actual physical pain.

And again, science tells us, it doesn’t actually make a difference.

Researchers have discovered that pain isn’t actually a physical sensation. When you feel pain—a pinprick to your finger, a broken bone, or a migraine—that feeling is processed primarily in your limbic system (not in the part of the body that actually hurts).

Interestingly, the limbic system is where emotions are also processed.

And when doctors remove the limbic system (say with a frontal lobotomy), the perception of pain completely disappears.

Lobotomized patients register the pain stimulus, but it doesn’t hurt.

Until the stimulus reaches the emotional processing area of the brain, pain is just a signal that something is wrong.

The actual pain you feel is created in your brain’s emotional center… which might explain why we cry when we are hurt physically and also when we hurt emotionally. The response is similar.

Your body’s response to pain also involves the parts of your brain that are activated by social rejection.

That’s why breaking up with a partner or being ostracized from a group feels so painful.

One more thing researchers have discovered about pain… focusing attention on pain makes the pain much worse. So agitating pain… talking about it… thinking about it… dwelling on it… makes it hurt even more.

Pain isn’t physical, it’s emotional. 

Just like every buying decision our prospects make.

And when we as marketers focus our copy on the pain they experience, they feel it even more deeply. Which makes it among the most powerful triggers to use in your marketing and copy.

When you identify your customer’s pain in a way that shows you understand what they are feeling, customers naturally see you as an ally.

Long ago, Alka-Seltzer ran a series of ads featuring a middle-aged man with serious gastro-intestinal distress.

“I can’t believe I ate the whole thing,” he moans.

If you’ve felt that pain, you’re primed to try Alka-Seltzer to get rid of it.

So let’s take a look at some examples that show how copywriters have identified the pain their customers are feeling so they can propose a solution to help them.

Here are a few lines from a sales page written to promote Ramit Sethi’s course, Mental Mastery. The copy mentions that while some people accomplish amazing things in life, the vast majority of us feel stuck and unable to move forward. Then, Ramit identifies a bit of the problem…

Can you relate to any of that? We can. 

Trying new apps and routines to address the ability to get things done. It nails a particular psychological pain for those who are busy… but don’t really accomplish anything. His course addresses that.

Or take a look at this example from Basecamp that we grabbed during the COVID virus shutdown. Notice how they immediately address the pain that remote workers were feeling during the crisis… and how they solve it.

Also notice the not so subtle social proof… 5 star reviews and short testimonials plus the kicker that 4,413 companies signed up in the last week alone. 

This is good copy.

Here’s another example from online business coach Amy Porterfield. This isn’t heavy handed like a lot of pain-oriented copy can be because that wouldn’t match Amy’s brand. But she still makes a point of calling out some of the struggles her audience may be feeling in this pitch for a $99 guidebook…

The pains she’s identified for her prospects include the feeling that they’re stuck on the sidelines and struggling to generate results… then, she gives them hope.

Here’s another example of how Dan Kennedy taps into the pain that his entrepreneur prospects are feeling before he pitches them on his 7-figure academy…

See if any of these sound familiar to you in your own business… roller coaster income that leads to stress, anxiety and wondering if you’re going to be able to keep the lights on next month. This is a huge worry for small business owners.

So is stagnation thanks to a down economy, changing buying habits and downward price pressure.

When it comes to writing about the pains your customers experience, you can ease into them or go a bit harder and agitate the pain so prospects experience it all over again as they read your copy. What you can’t do is ignore it.

Most of the products we sell are solutions to real pains that are felt just as strongly as a broken bone or lost relationship. Solving that pain and offering hope is a power persuasion technique in your copywriting tool belt.

References:
O.F.G. Kilgour, Mastering Biology, Chapter 13, pp. 270-303.
George R. Hansen MD, “The Psychology of Pain,” Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America, Vol 23, 2005, pp 339-348.