Make a general pain point specific to your shoppers

Vague problems are just that. Vague.

People don’t take action on vague problems. But they do take action when a problem feels like it’s specific to them.

So take a broad, widely applicable problem, then reframe it to sound like it’s tailored to your customer’s job or lifestyle.

Case in point: You’ve seen today’s newsletter sponsor, Basecamp, the project management tool.

Basecamp is good at taking the universal pain of tool overload and making it specific to different audiences:

• Project managers see copy saying things like, “For many, tools like Asana, Trello, Notion, Monday, ClickUp, and Slack were underwhelming stops along the road before finally arriving at Basecamp”.
• Founders and CFOs see “Your whole organization for one fixed price. Every feature & upgrade. No per-user pricing or fees.”
• Agencies see “Got clients? Be partners, not adversaries. Basecamp keeps both sides organized, everyone’s feedback on the record, and all decisions, approvals, files, tasks, deadlines, and communications safe and centralized.”

In other words, Basecamp takes the pain of “too many tools” and makes it specific to the tools customers and decision-markers actually use, making the pain feel urgent and personally relevant:

Remember: Generic pain points won’t work unless you frame them in the shopper’s context. So identify a pain you solve, and adapt it to different roles, tools, scenarios, etc.

Quiz your audience

Quizzes can be your brand’s version of personality tests or palm reading.

They feel interactive, rewarding, and insightful on a deeply personal level… even if the insight is generic.

What you can do: Use quizzes as lead magnets, onboarding tools, or conversion nudges by framing them around self-discovery or problem-solving.

The trick is to make people feel like they’re learning something meaningful about themselves while showing your brand holds the answer or next step.

This is applicable whether you’re a D2C or a B2B brand.

Don’t believe us? Here’s how Zapier does it:

Look at the very first question. Do you spend time at work on repetitive tasks? Duh. Most companies do.

Develop a Barnum statement, offer a quiz that personalizes the problem, and show your features and solutions address the user’s unique needs.

And voila—you have a perfect product.

For negative statements, speak from a position of authority

In 1987, psychologists Furnham and Schofield expanded on the Barnum effect studies and found that people generally accept positive Barnum statements regardless of who says them.

… But if you need to point out something negative, it’s best to do so from a high-status source.

A personality test that says “You avoid responsibility and struggle with follow-through,” for example, is… well, quite uncomfortable.

If it comes from a BuzzFeed quiz, you’d laugh it off. But if it comes from a licensed PhD psychologist after a thorough analysis of your responses, you’d probably take it seriously.

The toothpaste brand Sensodyne is a good example of this:

Sensodyne takes one of the most generic dental problems ever and presents an expert who offers an immediate solution.

So naturally, you think to yourself, “Yeah, my teeth also sometimes feel sensitive when I eat something cold. This dentist is right. I should get a toothpaste to fix this.”

Yes, it actually works like this. Try it out.