If you want to truly engage with your ideal prospects, it’s crucial to design your messaging around the problems you solve—and exactly who you solve them for.

Without that level of clarity, it’s easy to end up with generic marketing that just blends into the background and gets lost in the noise.

That’s why one of the most important marketing-related questions you need to ask yourself is…

“What specific problems do I want to solve?”

Here are some examples of what that might look like for different industries. Think about how these might relate to your training, consulting, or coaching business.

Imagine that you’re a…

Website designer: Instead of building a generic business that does “website design,” you focus on creating and maintaining simple, flexible micro-websites for SaaS startups that are looking for ways to quickly test, validate, and iterate their offers.

Why this positioning approach?

• You love the tech startup scene.
• Your strengths include working in fast-paced environments and the ability to quickly build clean, effective, simple websites.
• There are enough SaaS startups that find it challenging to market themselves in a flexible way, and really need this type of agile go-to-market resource.

Now imagine that you’re a…

Financial advisor: Instead of building a generic business that offers “financial advice,” you focus on helping people invest in companies that represent their values around sustainability and environmental responsibility.

Why this positioning approach?

• You’re a passionate advocate for environmental causes.
• Your strengths include doing deep research on companies to uncover the reality behind their public-facing cultures, missions, and business practices.
• There are enough like-minded investors that find it challenging to weed through all their investment options, and really need this type of focused guidance to help them make investment choices that align with their values.

Finally, imagine that you’re a…

Sales trainer: Instead of building a generic business that does “sales training courses,” you focus on helping small sales teams troubleshoot their selling process, diagnose what’s working and not working, and quickly boost revenue by doubling down on their most effective tactics.

Why this positioning approach?

• You love discovering and sharing cutting-edge sales methodologies.
• Your strengths include digging into the granular details of a selling process, discovering bottlenecks, and figuring out ways to overcome them.
• There are enough sales teams that are struggling to make their numbers, but don’t necessarily want to learn a canned sales approach or start from scratch.

So ask yourself: “What specific problems do I want to solve? Are they aligned with my authentic talents and interests, or are they just based on what’s currently trendy?”

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