Finding customers in unknown territory

As a founder, and while doing marketing for various other startups, I've noticed that quantifying the pain point solution in a way that finds and resonates with the customer is rarely obvious at first.

The product/service is usually so new that the customer may not be looking for your solution because they don't know it exists. Or the solution might be carving out a niche vertical that overlaps across a couple of different traditional problem verticals. In some cases, the sweet spot for the customer is found somewhere between the two existing customer bases.

I found that answering these questions in a timely and cost-effective way is essential.
Who is the right (motivated) customer?
What is the most significant of their pain points being solved?
How to communicate this message in a way that clicks with them?

-Who is the customer?

Look at similar leading companies (traditional ones solving problems the old way) to see what content the customers want.
Check their top-ranked pages, and most broadcast content.
Leverage the fact that they've usually already done the homework regarding their SEO and articles.
Do keyword research to see the closest search terms to your product. Even if it's new a product. Search broadly, think laterally, and dive deep to get a real insight into answering the question: "This is what my customer wants to know (because their pain level wants to be resolved)".
Based on the information found, test to find the Most significant pain point.

Do

Write content articles on your website similar to that, but make sure it's unique and not plagiarised.
Run FB (or social media of choice) ads that link to that content.
Test for conversion rate, CTR.
Repeat with the next article.

Loop until best CTR found.

Or run the ads consecutively. The more tests done, the more accurate the results will be. Be careful making assumptions. Follow first principles and test each hypothesis. The untested presumptions usually end up in front of the wrong audience with mediocre results and you end up crying in the shower, or shouting profanities at co-founders.

Once it's clear which article has the winning content based on the CTR, add that as the leading question/pain point to target the customers. Often this shows some spectacular insights that would have been very difficult to guess. And the plus side is, that your customers will think you are amazing for finding them.

Then start to work on the FB ads themselves....

What I found was that a picture was truly worth a 1000 words.

Put yourself in the customer's shoes; what picture is going to make them stop in their tracks. What ad doesn't look like an ad but looks like the answer to their pain, or presents a curiosity and drives motivation to take action.
Most ads are really bad. Scrolling through the feed is irritating, seeing boring, plain ads. Even worse are the ones that try to use cheap tricks to get your attention for something unrelated.

Polarizing or attention grabbing images and headline I think is ok. Because the product is new, the brand awareness is unknown. Why be boring at this stage? It might be a headline about something they have argued with their friends or family about, and now they find a company with enough balls to make a statement on that topic, which is of itself novel to them. Even though the landing page may not be quite so polarizing, the ad title is enough to create engagement.

As an example of an image for an ad, I ran that was super popular. The ad used a somewhat polarizing question as a headline and a custom photo we took ourselves that stood out. The polarizing question caused a lot of engagement. Some people were annoyed with it, but most people were supportive, and they were the ones that matched the customers that suited the product.

The headline and the image had a similar theme. This is important, when text and image have a resonance, the customer digests it well. And when the overall ad has a resonance with their pain point, they excitedly click through to the content advertised. If the advertisement leads to a great product (even a simple product is great, especially for MVP) the customer will be happy. But rather than promoting the product directly, promote the website content article as bait to then introduce the product or gather email addresses for the funnel.

This customer-centric approach shows that I have taken the time to understand you and your problem and here's how we can help resolve this problem as now you understand the problem and solution better. Because I have already worked on helping solve it.

As startup founders we are always looking to 'hero' our customers. Make them the centre of their journey and we are just guiding them to the solution. This is the essence of happy, motivated customers who become your best free marketers, way more valuable than any marketing campaign. Consider Tesla cars - zero advertising budget.

Being customer-centric above product-centric pays off.