The painkiller/vitamin analogy, myth or fact?

I wonder if this idea is more for B2B rather than B2C.

As a consumer, I spend a lot more on "nice to have" products than "need to have".

I mean, literally speaking, I spend way more money on vitamins and nutritional supplements than I do on ibuprofen and other medicines.

LoL who's buying all those vitamins? I need to take painkillers when I have headaches for example. When do I need to take vitamins? Like really as a purchasable extra?

I think the analogy is not about sales, the analogy is more about showing that problems hurt, that they are seen much more consciously by the customer. The intrinsic value of overcoming pain is greater than taking vitamins.

If you are vitamin deficient IMO, a vitamin could fall under the category of a painkiller. Otherwise, vitamin products are sold as "good for you" but in reality, they don't do much or harm you (financial, opportunity cost etc).

Aside from vitamins and painkillers, I think the analogy has a missing pillar - sugars. Sugars satisfy temporary cravings. People buy sugary products just because it feels good, at least at the moment and gives a boost of dopamine (literally). A lot of entertainment products, and consumer purchases fall under the sugar category.

Focus on painkillers? I don't really agree with that, seems like it's encouraging a very narrow viewpoint.

This is how I see it... The "painkiller" metaphor mostly aims to send the message of solving a problem, while a "vitamin" is a product or service that mostly delivers the message of... hmm... "whatever you're doing or whatever it is you have/are, do you want better/more?"

I see it as...
Painkiller: "Get out of debt with this proven strategy!"
Vitamin: "Interested in multiplying your income?"

I'm sure a lot of people would argue there's a fine line between something that aims to solve a problem and one that sells an improvement, as solving a problem is by itself an offer of improvement.

Regardless... BOTH can be extremely profitable...

Another example. A lot of people are here on IndieHackers wanting to find a solution to a start-up problem, while others are here looking for smart hacks to increase their profit while not being mainly concerned about solving a business problem. And then there are people who are here for both. Some people need painkillers. Others want to get a hold of more vitamins. And some want both.

I've definitely experienced the pain (no pun intended) of building a "vitamin" startup several years ago. We built a personal development product for large corporations to offer to their employees. It was easy to pitch and get a foot in the door, but hard renew our contracts. In some cases, we experienced stellar enagement from employees, but without clearly showing what our product's impact was on the bottom line of the business, we still couldn't convince the buyer to renew the contract.

The only true painkiller is these drugs, literally painkillers. Everything else is a vitamin.

Thanks a lot for your post. Relating informing,

I think we need to think about this less abstractly…

Let’s think about problems in terms of

• Frequency - How often does this occur and how much effort is required
• Severity - What is the cost/impact to the business if this fails, is inaccurate or not done.

Now if we plot that on a 5 x 5 matrix you get a quick and easy score card that can be used to measure business impact objectively.

What you tend to find is that problems that score 15 and above (Severity x frequency), essentially one’s that are higher in both frequency and severity (Painkillers), generally get more attention from buyers.

From my experience when selling into enterprise clients, you need to objectively justify contract value against business impact/returns and this tool, alongside a credible ROI goes a very long way.

Also, don’t forget that selling is only half the battle. In order to be successful you need to have user adoption. Changing the way people work is incredibly hard if they’re not motivated/incentivised and sometimes removing a little bit of pain that happens too often is enough get them to WANT to change.

I can’t comment on B2C as that’s a bit of a different beast and not something I have any experience with…

Hope it helps and I would love to chat with anyone further on the topic if you’re interested.

For vitamins industry it is very difficult to outcompete the performing "painkiller" brands, because behind each and every purchase there is an emotional aspect: a person with any pain comes and grabs what he or she believes will help. And exactly on this moment the giant brands work: they create the brand awareness for the moment, when a person comes and grabs.

It's not about volume, but rather urgency.
Vitamins probably outsell painkillers, but it is considerably harder to differentiate yourself as a vitamin seller, the customer has choice and time. But a person with a screaming headache is going to grab the first painkiller they can find. So it's less about convincing them they should buy and more about simply positioning the product in front of the customer. Same holds true for advertising. Urgency equals conversions, and advertising without conversions is incredibly expensive because you are competing with monster corporations spending millions on brand awareness.

I don't have hard numbers but surely - surely! - it must be that painkillers sell better than vitamins. Especially when talking about consumers who's hands you need to pry money from. Painkillers, imo, are going to get you money. Vitamins get you passive followers.

I think the more important question is how to know when you're building a real honest painkiller and when you're off target. I'm still working on this myself, but it seems the best painkiller tests are those that confirm people will give you money: fake doors, pre-sales, signed contracts. That sort of stuff.

From my personal experience, it's 100% fact and is a great analogy. I have 3 failed attempts at building products online, although one of them in hindsight was a painkiller but I did not know much about marketing or it's importance (I thought people would magically find it online).

My last attempt was building a very niche Instagram account. Grew it successfully to over 18K engaged followers in just over a year, and then tried to monetize via a low-priced eBook - was not able to sell much. Though the audience was engaged, this problem didn't 'keep them up at night'.

Now I'm on my 4th attempt, and have seen more interest and downloads of my new 'pain-killer' product in just a few weeks, than the entire 1.5 years trying to sell a 'vitamin'. The product is currently free (its a Business Idea Bank), but I am getting useful information and feedback on other products I can build and monetize.

Painkillers have been shown many times in studies to work on the placebo effect. Just look at the ingredients of both vitamins and painkillers... vitamins address actual deficiencies in the body. Painkillers are synthetic chemicals

l like this analysis .. generally speaking I don't take most of the common knowledge for granted cause I just think that most of the things are highly contextual (time, location, demographics, condition, people's beliefs etc) and the vitamin vs painkiller is just another thing that shouldn't be taken at face value. Thanks for sharing.