Your buyer's problems

Your buyer's problems come in 2 flavors.

Vanilla (Logical)

Logical problems include high customer acquisition costs, missed revenue, churn, bad reviews, etc.

Chocolate (Emotional)

Emotional problems can include feelings of insecurity, imposter syndrome, shame, and anxiety.

In marketing, knowing one without the other is tying one hand behind your back.

Because your buyers use both flavors to make a decision.

(like deciding to have a yummy ice cream on a hot summer's day)

P.S. Want to guess which one is more persuasive to tap into? Yep, emotional.

Frequently Asked Questions

What counts as a "vanilla," or logical, problem for a buyer?

Concrete, measurable issues like high customer acquisition costs, missed revenue, churn, or bad reviews, problems that can be quantified and directly tied to business performance.

What counts as a "chocolate," or emotional, problem for a buyer?

Feelings like insecurity, imposter syndrome, shame, or anxiety, the internal, personal experience a buyer has around the problem they're facing, separate from the purely logical business impact.

Why is knowing only one flavor of problem, logical or emotional, described as tying one hand behind your back?

Because buyers use both dimensions to make decisions, addressing only the logical side, or only the emotional side, misses half of what actually drives someone toward a purchase.

Why does the ice cream analogy fit this concept so well?

Because choosing to have ice cream on a hot day involves both a logical justification, cooling down, and an emotional pull, genuine enjoyment, mirroring how buyers weigh both dimensions of a problem before deciding.

Which flavor is actually more persuasive to tap into in marketing, according to this piece?

The emotional one. Despite logical problems being easier to quantify and describe, tapping into the emotional dimension tends to be the more persuasive lever in actually moving a buyer toward a decision.