The Secret to Finding Your Next Customer? Focus on Their Problem, Not Your Product

Your audience doesn’t want a product. They want their problem to go away.

It’s reflected in a scenario that happens all the time: A business gets too close to their own offering and starts talking about how their product or service was built—the features, the roadmap, the mission—instead of communicating its value. 

Suddenly, customer acquisition costs go through the roof and they’re left wondering why.

But think about a potential customer. 

Imagine them reading your company’s latest blog post. They’ve got a dozen unread browser tabs open, a Slack message they’re ignoring, and a vague sense of anxiety over falling behind on something important.

That’s your first competition. 

Not another brand. Not another product. Just reality.

And the more your content speaks to that reality, the less you have to spend convincing the right people to care.

The Real Job of Top of Funnel Content

That’s why good Top of Funnel (ToFu) content doesn’t start with your product. 

It starts with your audience and whatever problem they’re trying to solve in the middle of a busy, distracted day.

The goal is to create an initial moment of recognition: “This is exactly what I’ve been dealing with.” 

But too often, ToFu content is treated like a polite introduction: “Hi, sorry to bother you, but we exist.”

A far more impactful introduction comes from walking into the room, spotting the frustration on someone’s face, and saying, “Tough day? Been there.”

ToFu content is empathy at scale. It’s where you prove that you understand the problem before you ever introduce the solution.

And the best way to do that?

Start with pain.

Pain Points Are the Content Strategist’s Best Friend

There are a hundred frameworks out there for building content: funnel stages, personas, messaging pyramids. 

They’re all useful. But if you skip straight to writing content without understanding the pain that drives your audience’s behavior, you’re doing the marketing equivalent of buying someone a gift without asking what they want.

Pain points cut through the guesswork.

They’re specific. They’re emotional. They’re the exact thing your future customer is Googling at 11:43 p.m. on a Wednesday night.

If you can identify those pain points, your content writes itself because it finally has a purpose.

Why This Works (And Isn’t Just Another Content Marketing Trend)

There’s real evidence behind the idea that pain-driven messaging is more effective than happy-feel-good branding.

Loss Aversion

Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky famously found that people are more motivated to avoid pain than they are to pursue pleasure. 

This is known as loss aversion. 

Basically, if I offer you a dollar or the chance to not lose a dollar, most people will take the second option. Now replace “a dollar” with “another failed product launch,” “a missed deadline,” or “a feeling of being completely overwhelmed,” and you’re right where your audience lives.

Fear & Frustration Are Powerful Emotions

This is further confirmed by marketing studies from BuzzSumo and Contently that show how emotionally resonant content—especially content that taps into fear, frustration, or uncertainty—consistently outperforms neutral or overly polished messaging. 

Not because people like being sad. But because people like being seen, heard, and understood.

When someone reads a blog post or even a headline that makes them think: ”That’s exactly what I’m going through,” you don’t need to convince them to read on. They already are.

Storytelling Function

A problem or pain point also serves a deeper, almost instinctive purpose: It gives the audience something to overcome.

In storytelling, this is the inciting incident. The disruption. The thing that knocks the hero out of their comfort zone and forces them to act. Without it, there’s no tension, no momentum, and no reason to care what happens next.

Content works the same way.

When you lead with a pain point, you're not just identifying a challenge, you're opening a loop. You're saying, "Here's what’s wrong," which implicitly promises, "And here’s how we might make it right."

That structure—problem, struggle, resolution—is baked into how we process stories. It’s also how we move through buying decisions. We go from recognizing a problem, to understanding it, to looking for a way out.

So How Do You Actually Find These Pain Points?

To find these types of pain points, you ask, you listen, and you pay attention to where and when your audience winces.

This doesn’t have to be complicated. You’re not hunting for secrets. You’re just getting closer to the language your audience already uses when they talk about their day, their job, their stress.

Here are a few ways to do that:

1. Talk to Sales

If you want to know what’s bothering your audience, ask the people who hear it daily. 

Sales teams hear both objections and what real customers need to solve all the time. Both are pain points, just framed differently. And both tell you where the story should start.

2. Read Reviews (Yours and Everyone Else’s)

Customer reviews are goldmines—not just for what people like or don’t like, but for how they talk. 

What frustrated them before they found a solution? What words do they use? The patterns aren’t subtle if you’re looking for them.

3. Lurk Where Your Audience Hangs Out

Forums, Reddit threads, Twitter replies, LinkedIn comments—anywhere your audience vents, asks questions, or swaps advice—is a great place to listen. 

The best pain points don’t come from your imagination. They come from real people trying to get through real problems.

4. Look at Search Behavior

Google is the internet’s complaint box. 

Google Search Console, or even autocomplete can show you what your audience is typing when they’re overwhelmed, confused, or trying to fix something that isn’t working.

Each of these sources not only gives you insight, but also language. And that’s important because when your content mirrors the way your audience talks about their problem, it feels less like marketing and more like understanding.

Want to generate a full list of pain points and content ideas in minutes? 

There’s a tool for that.

The Hypelocal Empathy Engine for ChatGPT

Here’s a simple prompt that turns ChatGPT into a content strategist obsessed with your audience’s real problems. Copy it. Paste it into ChatGPT. Use the input fields as fully as you can.

Then, get back content ideas rooted in pain points. And start creating the kind of ToFu content people actually want to read.

You are an experienced content strategist focused on creating Top of Funnel (ToFu) content that connects with potential customers by speaking directly to their pain points.

Your goal is to help me generate pain-point-driven content ideas that reflect what my audience is struggling with — in their words, not ours.

This content should help them feel seen, understood, and supported — before we ever mention a product or solution.

Context:
Target Audience: [e.g., HR managers at mid-sized tech companies]

Industry/Niche: [e.g., SaaS, healthcare, marketing, etc.]

Product/Service: [One sentence about what this offering helps people do]

Sales Insights: [Optional: Paste objections, friction points, or frustrations heard from prospects]

Customer Reviews: [Optional: Paste excerpts from customer reviews and user feedback here]

Community/Forum Behavior: [Optional: Paste posts pulled from Reddit, Slack, social comments, etc.]

Additional Inputs: [Optional: Is there any other information that could help refine the pain points your product/service solves?]

Instructions:
Use the context above to identify the most relevant and resonant pain points this audience is likely experiencing. Your output should prioritize pain points that meet the following criteria:

Emotionally resonant (frustrating, stressful, high-stakes)

Frequently occurring (across multiple inputs or sources)

Clearly actionable (a reader would want to solve it immediately)

Specific, not abstract (“Can’t track projects in real time” > “lacks visibility”)

In the audience’s own words, based on the language from the sources provided

Your Output Should Include:
A ranked list of the top 5–10 pain points, written in plain language the audience would actually use.

For each pain point:

2–3 ToFu content ideas that speak to this pain without pitching a product

A working title for each idea that is clear, specific, and emotionally compelling alongside a brief description.

Keep the formatting structured. Each pain point followed by its content ideas, titles, and brief description.

Important Notes:
Focus only on Top of Funnel content: awareness, education, empathy. Avoid anything salesy, product-led, or mid-funnel.

Use conversational, human language — reflect the tone of how the audience talks in the inputs provided.

Prioritize pain points that show up across multiple sources. If something appears in both sales calls and reviews, it’s probably worth spotlighting
    

Lead with Empathy and Conversions Will Follow

If your content isn’t rooted in your audience’s problems, it doesn’t matter how clever your writing is or how nice your brand guidelines look.

Show potential customers that you understand where they’re coming from, and you’ll earn the right to show them how you can help. This is how you convert more leads while spending less time and money pursuing your next customer.