Maybe It's About the Pain
Posted On: 2014-07-11
Well I am so glad that this week is slowly grinding down towards the weekend.
This time last week we were getting ready to head off on a rather long road trip to visit family. The plan was that we would be back sometime Tuesday and I would be back in the office by Wednesday ... that was the plan.
Everything went well while we were on the road and visiting the family but once we got home I began to feel like crap and at the moment it looks as though I may not even be back in the office by Friday. It wasn't exactly how I was hoping the week would go but at least I can still get some work on my own projects done from home.
On that trip we spent around 32 hours on the road ... 16 hours each way ... and we spent some of that time talking about business as well as listening to some business-related podcasts. A couple of those certainly gave me some great ideas for a change of direction I'm thinking about for my business.
Just lately we seem to have been working with far too many people who apparently think that my staff and I are their slaves rather than their web designers and it's all starting to get a little old. I've actually found myself on several occasions thinking back to the days when Steve and I did adult related stuff full time from our home office and I guess that's a sure sign that I'm not enjoying being in mainstream as much as I have in the past.
Anyway, enough of that. One of the podcasts got me thinking about how adult webmasters might be able to come up with a marketing strategy that could possibly appeal to a market place that has almost become immune to our sales pitches.
What got me thinking about that was an interview with an entrepreneur who has developed a million dollar business writing software. Now this is a guy who can't write a line of code ... has no idea of HTML or any other coding language ... who isn't even passionate about writing software ... and yet he has made heaps from software.
His point of difference is that he goes to a number of people in a particular industry and asks them what is the one thing that is causing them the most pain in their business. What is the repetitive or most difficult thing that they do that could be made pain-free with software.
Once he knows what their pain point is he then looks at what needs to be done to provide a way around that pain. Once he knows that he then finds a coder who can write the code for a program that will take away that pain and he then makes that software available online and sells access on a recurring basis.
From just one piece of software that he has had written that businesses can access for $2k per month he is making hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. And because everything is almost fully automated there is very little in the way of overheads.
That's definitely a sweet business model but it wasn't the business model I was thinking about when it comes to marketing in the adult industry ... it was the pain point.
Put yourself inside the head of the average porn surfer ... or porn buyer. What is their pain point? What is it in the porn surfing and porn buying cycle that causes them the most pain and what could you do ... what could you offer ... that would take away that pain and deliver the outcomes that they want?
Think about all the things that get in the way ... all the hassles that porn surfers and porn buyers have to deal with ... all the hoops that they have to jump through to get to what they want to see ... and then tell them why your sponsor can make their porn surfing and buying totally pain free.
Is there something that you can offer potential buyers that will take their pain points away? If there is and you can really push that then you may just find that you've got an edge that will help you sales to soar.
Of course it may take some thought to identify those pain points and how your sponsor can remove them but if I think that it would be well worth the effort because people will buy just about anything that makes life easier for them.