I found a target audience, now I need to find a pain point!
Over the past year or so I've gone through the process of submitting a US Patent application a few times. The process feels antiquated and inefficient and I want to solve that with software. I'm just not sure what the real problem is (if there is one).
Does anyone have advice or example questions for gathering information from a group of potential customers to find their real pain points? Because I've only experienced this processes from one side, I don't want to assume anything about the group, the process, or their potential pain points. I'd like to start by soliciting feedback through cold connections, ex: email or Linkedin. I'd love feedback as I start testing ideas!
Cheers,
Find out where they hang out online and "eavesdrop" into their conversations.
Some places include Facebook Groups, Reddit, YouTube comments section.
Let's say your audience is are wedding planners.
You can easily go to reddit.com/r/weddingplanning and ask "What's your biggest pain point right now with planning a wedding?"
While I don't think you have really found your audience yet, once you know who they are, I would suggest you check for local community meetups. People there always love to complain about their problems, and it will give you the chance to validate immediately if any given idea resonates with their perceived pains.
(I think you have found a problem, not an audience. That is good! Now extrapolate the problem into occupations. Who files those patents often? Corporate lawyers? Normal lawyers? Inventors? Big companies? Only when you have narrowed that down would I speak of an audience.)
Hi, I think you haven't found your target audience, or at least it is not clear to me.
If you know who is your target audience, you should know where they are, physically talking.
If you can reach them physically, go there and ask them what are the issues they are having.
They will have several issues, pick one, just one, it should be frequent and serious, then build something to fix the issue and test it with your target audience.