Make them Pain Aware, Not Product Aware

Can you remember a time when you didn’t realise you had a problem until someone described it so perfectly that you couldn’t 'un-see' it?

That’s what great messaging does. It doesn’t start with the product. It starts by framing the pain. Because if your customers don’t feel the problem, they simply won’t care about the solution.

The Common Messaging Mistake

Too many marketing teams lead with what their product does. But before people can see your product as essential, they first need to see the pain as unavoidable.

As product marketers, our job isn’t to make people product-aware. It’s to make them pain-aware.

The moment they truly understand their problem, they’ll start searching for a solution, and that’s when your product becomes the obvious answer.

How to Frame the Pain

Let's look at a simple example. Imagine you're selling a time-tracking tool.

Don’t say: “We help teams track hours effortlessly.” 

Instead, paint the picture: "Ever finished a week wondering where all your time went? You’re not alone. 40% of work hours disappear into untracked tasks."

Now, the reader clearly sees themselves in the story. It's tangible—they’ve discovered they are losing time without realising it. Suddenly, they’re looking for a fix.

When customers see their world reflected in your message, they trust that you ‘get’ them.  And once they trust you, they’re much more open to your solution; not because you pushed it, but because you made the pain impossible to ignore.

To make your messaging more pain-aware, focus on these three elements:

1. A real moment your customer experiences

2. A statistic or insight; evidence that makes them pause

3. A shift in thinking that leads them to action

Then ask yourself:

✅ Is this something they’d instantly relate to?
✅ Have I made the pain clear enough for them to feel it?
✅ Am I speaking to where they’re at this week, this year?

Try rewriting your next piece of content with this approach, and let me know if it lands differently.

Great messaging isn’t about introducing something new. It’s simply about making the customer recognise a struggle they already have.

Speak soon,

Peter

P.S. If you want to focus on the pains that drive real decision-making, consider scoring them using the High-Value Jobs framework. I wrote about it here.