Your future and current customers are looking for products and services that will enhance their lives personally, professionally, spiritually, emotionally or physically. You will enhance their lives either through alleviating or eliminating some kind of pain for them OR providing them with something pleasurable and enjoyable.

You're probably thinking that I've "dumbed" it down too much but it really is that simple. Your prospects and clients will go searching for something when they have pain or want some pleasure.

Or maybe I should say they will pay money to you to change how they feel - positive or negative. They might go looking for solutions out of curiosity but the majority of them won't hand over their hard-earned money to you unless they are actively needing something.

So that means your marketing needs to target people's points of pain, discomfort, dissatisfaction or on the flip side, it must show how they can add more pleasure, enjoyment, joy, happiness, satisfaction into their lives.

Of course, sometimes the two (pain and pleasure) aren't mutually exclusive....get rid of some pain and the person will feel better, but the important thing is that the person went looking for pain relief.

Before you can determine if your marketing message and communication is around pain or pleasure, you need to figure out what your products and services promise.

What benefits do you guarantee your business offerings will provide? Does your product help people alleviate pain or obtain pleasure?

Remember that people make buying decisions because they believe that a service or product will help them in some way.

It may help them gain more: money, health, success, love, time, recognition, security, confidence, respect, and control.

Or it may help them avoid: danger, losing money, ridicule, losing love, frustration, pain, risk, failure, embarrassment.

To find this out you need to ask some questions of your target group, so that you can get at whether they are predominantly looking to "add" something (i.e. pleasure) or to "take away" something (i.e. pain).

Here are some good questions that will help you get to the heart of what your prospects and clients want and need from you:

* What do they like about themselves?

* What do they dislike about themselves?

* What would they like to change in themselves, their lives, their jobs, etc?

* What do they enjoy doing?

* What are they afraid of?

* What frustrates them?

* What issues and problems do they have?

* What fear or worry wakes them up in the middle of night?

* What are their favourite things?

* What gives their life meaning?

* What do they get excited and passionate about?

Take the time to understand exactly what your prospects and clients are looking for from you and then give it to them. That should be the basis of all your marketing and business dealings, and if you stick to that maxim, you'll be rewarded with happy and satisfied customers who'll keep coming back for more!