Don't address pain points you can't solve
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It feels like every small business software company thinks it can do the same thing: help business owners get paid faster. Go ahead and google the term "software get paid faster" to see what I mean.
If you didn't click that link, I'll spoil it for you: it's a litany of business software providers insisting that their software can help you get paid faster. They do this with features like the ability to automate reminders, or the ability to add a "pay now" button to an invoice. Seems compelling on the surface of things.
But it’s not.
They've identified a pain point
Copywriting is all about pain points. Good copywriting identifies something that's causing the target audience pain, then shows how their product or service remedies that pain.
Getting paid faster is a major pain point for just about every small business. At best, getting paid late is irritating. At worst, it puts a business at risk.
So you can see why "get paid faster" keeps coming up. It's a solution to a near-universal problem.
But here's the problem: these companies are promising to resolve a pain point that software generally cannot resolve.
Here are some of the actual reasons a business owner might not get paid on time:
The client just forgot to pay.
The business owner forgot to send the invoice in the first place.
There's a dispute.
There's a Kafka-esque process the client needs to go through to pay suppliers, and that process takes weeks.
The client went out of business.
The client is just a straight up deadbeat.
Do you see the pattern here? All of these are people and process problems. They are not problems that software can solve. Software providers who promise they can help me get paid faster have identified a problem, but none of them can actually solve it - even though they insist they can.
Here's a Venn diagram showing how this should actually work:
To write compelling messaging, you need do more than just identify the pain point. You also need to have a credible solution that makes that pain go away.
I don't think any of these software providers can hand-on-heart say they are helping people get paid faster. They've only really articulated the left-hand side of the Venn diagram, then sort of fudged the right-hand side to make it work.
But invoice reminders, "pay now" buttons and other cool features aren't going to resolve all of those people problems I mentioned earlier on. If a client goes bankrupt, I can remind them about their outstanding invoice every day for a year. I'm still not going to be paid. If a client and I have a dispute, a "pay now" button is not going to resolve it. We're going to need to get on the phone and work something out, and I'm not aware of any software that can help with that process.
It's about pain and a solution
This is an easy trap to fall into. A strong pain point feels like a magic spell. It gets peoples' attention. It helps them understand that you empathise with them.
But it doesn't automatically turn your product into a remedy for that pain point. In fact, some pain points can't be solved by any product.
When you're copywriting, you need to be really ruthless about this. If your product just doesn't resolve the pain point you've identified, you need to leave it out of your messaging. Otherwise, you're telling people that you empathise with them, but you're not telling them what you can actually do to make their lives better. And empathy without a solution is nice, but it’s not actually that compelling.
So cast your mind to your own messaging. What would your Venn diagram look like?
Think it over, and let me know what you come up with.
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