People get online for entertainment, to talk with friends, to get information, pay bills, do their shopping, settle an argument. In addition to all those daily tasks and amusements, people also get online to solve problems.
They search for “back pain,”computer problem,” “fix iphone,” “shoe repair,” and “swine flu symptoms,” just to begin with a few of the top global searches.
If your website can provide a solution to the problems being searched by your potential customers, patients, and clients, you have a good way to make them aware of your products.
The key is to show up when someone searches for a solution to their problem. And the key to showing up is to phrase some of your website’s content in terms of problems and solutions.
We don’t want to get carried away. Those infomercials that show people driven to despair by their saucepans are not convincing. But we can take a leaf from their book and think about the problems our products might solve.
- If we make great spice blends… we solve the problem of bland food.
- If we offer physical therapy… we solve the problem of back pain.
- If we sell board games… we solve the problem of boredom or of too much TV.
Use this approach for blog posts or authority pages rather than your homepage unless your product or service is truly focused on solving a problem. If what you offer is more about benefits than about solutions, make some special posts or pages showing the problem-solving aspect.
Here’s how to create a page that is more likely to come up when people search for solutions to their problems:
- Get creative and brainstorm all the problems your product could possibly solve. For example, our clients the Natural Fruit Corporation make delicious frozen fruit bars. There aren’t any obvious problems associated with a tasty treat like this, but we’ve come up with some: gluten sensitivity, snacks for parties where some people might have allergies, time-consuming recipes that require the cook to pare and cook fruit with a syrup, high calorie ice cream, milk sensitivity, desire to take frozen treats camping… It’s amazing how many problems you can come up with when you think, “If we solved a problem, what would that problem be?”
- Use keyword suggestion tools or search engines to find out how people search for the particular solution you’re offering. We found that “gluten sensitivity” gave us medical resources and “avoiding gluten” gave us research and news, while “gluten free” turned up restaurants and mommy blogs. We use “gluten free.” Create a list of the phrases and questions you find in the course of your search.
- Use these phrases and questions for blog post titles: “Gluten Free Snacks for Kids,” “Gluten Free Parties,” and “Gluten Free: What Do Labels Tell You?” will all relate to the concerns of customers who might value the fact that those frozen fruit bars are gluten free. Note that our titles are all cheerful — no need to go all “heartbreak of psoriasis” if that doesn’t suit your brand.
- Write the answers to the questions and the details for the solutions. Don’t skimp on research at this point. You may not really have anything very new to say about the problems you’re discussing, but you can say it in a way that communicates especially well with your target customers.
Your potential customers’ problems can indeed be opportunities for you, if you think ahead about how your products can solve those problems.
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