11 Pain Point Questions to Ask for Market Research

If you’re ready to up-level your marketing content and write copy that gets to the heart of your reader’s problem, you need to start asking some questions. Specifically, questions revolving around your audience’s pain points.

When you dig deep enough to truly understand your customer’s pain points, you can write compelling conversion copy – a unique subset of copywriting that allows you to position your product effectively, validate your ideal client, and justify why they need the solution you’re providing.

Conversion copy is an essential ingredient needed to land sales and grow your business. So if you’re looking to write website copy, sales page copy, landing page copy, ads, or any other copy selling a solution, you’ll want to keep reading!

But first, what are customer pain points?

Pain points are the big challenges or issues your customer faces in their life, business, or any other situation they find themselves in. Pain points often result in frustration, confusion, or some negative feeling or emotion (i.e., pain) for your ideal customer.

Customer pain points can be anything from a website not working to feeling stagnant and stuck in their 9-5 job. 

Why Pain Points Matter

When you understand what’s frustrating your ideal customer, you’ll have a better idea of what solution you can provide to help them solve it. And you can tailor your message (aka your copy!) and marketing to appeal and entice your potential customers to take a specific action that alleviates their problems.

This is why identifying pain points and expanding on them in your marketing content matters. Pain points are a key to writing conversion copy that encourages a reader to take action – whether that action is investing in your services, buying your product, or just downloading your freebie. But writing to your audience’s pain points isn’t the easiest thing to do.

According to an IBM study, 78% of customers don’t feel understood by brands. That’s why it’s important to convey to your audience that you understand their problems and truly want to help solve them. When your audience knows they’ve been heard, they are much more likely to listen to the message you’re trying to convey.

But wait, how can you convey the true value of what you offer your clients if they don’t even know their own pain points?

Someone might need what you offer, but they might not know it…yet! To identify your customer’s pain points, you need to do some market research and ask the right questions Because we’ll take a wild guess that your potential customers aren’t walking around announcing their troubles and frustrations to the world.

So it’s up to you to uncover what problems they are struggling with so you can provide a solution for them using your area of expertise!

But don’t worry, we’ve got you.

In this post, we’re going to explain:

• What the 4 main types of pain points are

• How to use pain points in your conversion copy (aka, your messaging)

• 3 tips to identify the right pain points

• And best of all – the 11 pain point questions to ask for market research, so you can get straight to your customer’s pain points without wasting any time

First, you need to understand what types of pain points there are to ask the right questions to get to the root of your customer’s pain. Only then can you tailor your messaging to reflect the insight you’ve learned. 

The 4 Main Types of Pain Points

Usually, pain points fall into four main categories, financial, productivity, process, and support. If you can identify which type of pain point your potential client is dealing with, you can position your solution, tailor your messaging, and let them know exactly how you can help them alleviate their struggles.

1. Productivity Pain Points

How productive is your potential client? Are they coming up against roadblocks that waste their time or prolong their process? Productivity pain points focus on what’s stopping your customers from achieving their goals and can usually be solved with efficiency, streamlining, and automation solutions. 

2. Financial Pain Points

What is your potential client’s financial standing? Money (or lack of it) is a common and critical pain point for many customers. Not everyone has the cash to spare, but everyone wants to solve their problem.

It’s important to emphasize why your offer is valuable, worth the investment, and will solve their problem (i.e., pain point). If your offer is cheaper than competitors, let them know! And always emphasize the ROI your customers will get.

The key for online business owners is to find that balance between a reasonable price and the perceived value of alleviating pain points.

3. Process Pain Points

Similar to productivity – process pain points are a result of the internal processes and systems that are currently in place. Are these systems and processes causing bottlenecks, disorganization, miscommunication, or poor workflows?

4. Support Pain Points

Support is crucial for your customer’s journey (and your customer’s customer’s journey). Lack of support often leads to unresolved issues, which is why smooth processes and appropriate support are key.

If your potential client is dealing with slow response times, connectivity, and lack of product knowledge from their customers, they might be dealing with support pain points.

Audience Research Questions To Include

Here’s the thing, no customer is the same. So you need to ask the right questions if you want to provide them with a solution to their specific pain points. And that’s where a little market research comes in!

Below you’ll find 12 questions to ask potential clients, current customers, and past clients to best identify their pain points, gain insight into their challenges, and ultimately, understand how you can solve these problems with your product or service!

Questions to Ask Potential Clients and Customers

1. What attributes are most important in the solution you’re looking for?

Knowing exactly what your potential customer is looking for can help you cater your message to what they truly need. Knowing which piece of your offer they identify with most can help you write directly to them by highlighting that specific element.

2. What are the biggest challenges stopping you from solving this problem?

When you know the big roadblocks your potential client is facing, you can outline where they’re at, and where they want to go –and then offer your expert solution to help move past this roadblock and on towards growth. 

3. What do you spend your time thinking or worrying about as the owner (or whoever the decision maker is)?

It’s essential to understand what the decision-maker’s primary concerns are and if they align with the rest of the companies. When you know what your potential client is worried about, you can address their concerns immediately instead of getting stuck in hierarchical issues.

4. What is the biggest thing holding your business back from growth?

Show potential clients that you’re looking at the big picture and then show off your knowledge and expertise in supporting them on their journey towards growth.

Questions to Ask New Clients and Customers

5. What attracted you to my [product or service] as a potential solution?

Knowing what you have going for you and what attracts customers to your solution is key to understanding what you’re doing right. Because when you see what’s working, you can capitalize on this element and perfect it in a way no one else does.

6. What are you currently doing to resolve your problem? Is it working?

You need to know if your customer has a plan of action (and if it’s working) or if you need to come up with one before you start working. Because at the end of the day, you want to provide the right solution for that client’s journey.

7. What is your deadline?

When you know the time frames you’re working in, you can better prevent scope creep, manage expectations, create realistic goals, and provide them with the quality of service they’re looking for.

8. Who is currently responsible for fixing this problem?

When you know who is responsible, you can work closely with this person to discover more about what’s working, what’s not, and find the best solution.

Questions to Ask Long-Term Clients and Customers

9. What would you improve or change about our offer to help it better fit your needs?

Knowing what you can do to improve your client’s experience and your solution provides a considerable advantage –because you know exactly what your client is looking for in addition to what you offer. Improving your client experience is an ongoing process in business ownership, but you won’t know what to improve upon unless you ask!

10. How would you describe this offer to an industry peer?

When you know how your clients would describe your offer to their friends or peers, you better understand the language they use –which you can turn around and use in your messaging–like in your website copy, sales copy, email funnels, and more. 

11. What would your alternative solution be if you weren’t working with us?

Knowing who your competition is and what they can get your customers provides a huge advantage in packaging what you offer and how you offer it. When you know what’s working elsewhere, you can implement some aspects into your solution –as long as they make sense for your business and brand!

How should you invite a potential or current customer to a market research call?

Depending on your audience research, you can invite a potential or current customer to a market research call in a few ways: via social media channels, email, personal phone calls, or on video chats like Zoom or Google Meet. 

How should you ask a customer about their pain points?

For prospects or potential customers, inquiry forms or polls, or questions on social media channels might be the best option to make an ask without them having to commit too much before they decide to invest in you. You can also offer an incentive to hop on a 15-minute call with you, like a $5 Amazon gift card or similar.

If your asking current clients (new or long-term), the obvious channels to use are phone calls or video calls. Contact with customers should be personal, and the communication channels should be kept wide open, so they always know they can come to you and you to them – within set boundaries, of course.

3 Tips to Identify the Right Pain Points

1. Active listening

When conducting your customer research, asking questions is only one piece of the puzzle. You need to actively listen to everything your potential, current, or past client tells you. Let them speak. If you hear them speak on a specific pain point, repeat the pain point back to them by asking them to expand on it or ask a question that directly relates to it.

2. Ask open-ended questions

To get as much information as possible when you conduct your market research, avoid asking questions with yes or no answers, as this can limit the view of your customer’s problems. Open-ended questions allow your customers to expand on their thoughts and provide in-depth explanations that might give you a broader view of the problem. 

3. Ask follow-up questions

Don’t think you’re limited to the 11 questions we’ve listed above. Use that as a starting point or as a reference, but be open and ready to follow up their answers with any questions that will help provide an even greater understanding of what your customers are trying to accomplish, how they use your product or service, and what will keep them coming back for more!

Hopefully, these pain point questions will help you uncover what your potential clients and current clients are struggling with at different stages of their journey and write high-converting copy that speaks directly to their… pain points!

Because when you ask meaningful questions and get detailed answers, you can create incredible solutions tailored specifically to your customers.

If this feels overwhelming, check our BDCC Market Research Guide, which shows you how to use social media to collect market research on your ideal clients with DM swipe files, prompts, sample survey questions, and more.

If you’re looking for more copywriting tips, we have a post for beginner copywriters and one for expert copywriters to learn more!