What are the real user needs?

It is said that making products must meet user needs, but what exactly is “need”? What is the difference with “pain point”? I myself don’t even know what the use of my product is. How to tell users? In fact, when we talk about marketing , what we are actually talking about is "user needs" .

1. What is marketing?

Let’s go back to a concept: What is marketing?

The essence of marketing is to profitably satisfy consumer needs.

When we do product marketing , all we have to do is answer the question "What needs of what kind of users does my product meet?"

For example, if I want to make a fruit wine for women, how can I judge whether the user demand I have discovered is a "real demand" or a "false demand"?

1. Let the data speak. Generally speaking, including what I did before, is to study the market data and overall trends of the entire wine industry. I need to see if there is such an opportunity in the market development? Is this commercial possibility?

However, in many cases, this kind of "purposeful" industry data research has become evidence to support my point of view. We tend to be savvy about filtering out data that is more favorable to our point of view.

Data can lie, can embellish, and may not reveal the truth behind it.

2. Let the users speak for themselves. Or find a group of target audiences to conduct research. A questionnaire survey was conducted among young white-collar workers aged 20 to 35 to see whether such a "fruit wine" meets their needs.

The questionnaire came back, and there were very few participants, most of them were friends. The final result may be: after a questionnaire survey, 60% of female users are willing to accept such a "fruit wine".

But do users really know what they want? Can your questionnaire really ask clear questions?

A classic case: the user says he wants a cheap car .

• Expressed need: The user wants a cheap car;
• Real needs: Users want a car with low operating costs, not a low initial selling price;
• Unstated needs: Expectation to receive good service from dealers;
• Pleasant needs: happy to have dealers equip their cars with navigation systems;
• Secret need: Want friends to think that you are a savvy consumer.

You see, what the user says and what he wants may not be the same thing at all. Can you really find out what user needs are by surveying people around you with about 20 questions?

To answer these questions, the first problem to be solved is to understand what exactly the demand is.

2. What is demand?

Concepts in Marketing Management:

Demand refers to people's ability to pay and willingness to buy a specific product.

Economics defines "demand" as follows:

The quantity of a good that consumers are willing and able to purchase at each price level in a given period of time.

In summary, we try to summarize the three elements of demand:

1. Have the desire to buy (have demand);
2. The price of the item is acceptable;
3. The income in hand can pay for it.

In other words, a willingness to buy without the ability to pay does not constitute demand, and demand is not equal to need.

So, what is the difference between user needs, desires, demands, and pain points? Can marketers create user demand? Are user pain points and needs the same concept? In Kotler's "Marketing Management", the interpretation of demand is placed in the first chapter of the core concepts of marketing.

3. Needs vs. Desires vs. Requirements vs. Pain Points

Needs: basic human needs, such as food, air, water, leisure, entertainment, etc., such as people need a place to shelter from the wind and rain

Desire: A need becomes a desire when it points to a specific item that can satisfy the need.

For example, the need for a place to shelter from the wind and rain has been transformed into a desire for a house (which was previously a need for survival, but may now have developed into a need for social status)

Demand: refers to the desire of people to buy a specific product with the ability and willingness to pay. Here "desire" is transformed into "need". For example: My desire for a house turned into wanting to buy a villa. (The premise is: I must have the money to buy a villa before I am willing to buy a "villa")

Therefore, when a company produces a product, it must not only estimate how many people desire the product, but also how many people are actually willing and able to buy it.

Pain point: the point that makes users unhappy in the process of meeting their needs / Meeting user needs is to eliminate pain points

I have money to buy a villa, and I want to buy one. I have the need to "buy a villa". But I don’t know how to compare prices, how to choose a place, or how to calculate a more cost-effective loan. At this time, an agent came and was willing to give me a complete solution. Then he solved my pain point.

So, you see, demand is not equal to pain point. The difference between demand and pain point is like the difference between disease and the pain it produces. Clearly defining these two is the basis for building a business model and clarifying the starting point and core of product and service design.

For example: everyone needs to drink water, and everyone also needs beverages. But many people want to drink a beverage that can quench their thirst and replenish energy after exercise, and this is a pain point. That’s why there are so many sports functional drinks.

For example: You want to drive your family out for a short trip, which is a very normal "leisure and entertainment" need. But you can’t afford a car. The pain point has come, and the car rental platform has solved this pain point. You can rent the car for a few days and return it anywhere. The money spent is really not worth mentioning compared to buying a car.

Let me tell you about a darker need.

Boys want a girlfriend and want to chase girls. This is a common "courtship need". But he didn't know how to chase her and always failed. At this time, many people with bad intentions saw this pain point.

They opened a distorted PUA course called "Teaching Boys How to Hook Up ", attracting these boys to buy the course and become members, thereby making money. In order to hit the pain points more directly, have more selling points and be more exciting, they not only teach the skills of defrauding money and sex, but also PUA courses with "suicide encouragement", "pet training" and "crazy exploitation" as selling points, and even encourage girls to commit suicide in order to achieve the purpose of emotional manipulation.

I would also like to say here that the level of human needs are basically the basic needs of human beings and are essential for human beings. However, when it comes to converting into demands and pain points, it cannot be ruled out that some marketers will take advantage of user pain points, distort and blacken them in order to obtain maximum benefits.

This may also be the significance of our understanding of the underlying logic of demand: clarifying our own needs and pain points so as not to be exploited by unscrupulous businesses.

Above, we can see:

1. Marketers cannot create needs (needs exist before marketing), but marketers and other social factors influence "desires". For example, people’s need for cars is to satisfy their “need for social status”, so marketers promote the idea that “Mercedes-Benz cars can satisfy people’s need for social status”. In this process, you will find that marketers cannot create "people's need for social status"; it already exists.
2. Marketers cannot get people to buy something they don’t want, so marketing activities that fail to clearly understand user needs are doomed to fail.
3. Demand does not equal pain point. Discovering needs and solving pain points may result in completely different products or services.
4. It is difficult to understand customers' needs and desires. They are not aware of their needs, and we must help them understand "what they need". First, we need to analyze clearly what "demand" is, so that we can later understand "how to explore user needs", "how to classify needs", and "how to apply demand theory in specific operations".

Don’t underestimate the understanding of “concepts”. If you want to build a house, you must have a solid foundation. Otherwise, the house will be unstable and will collapse. If the construction method does not match the foundation structure, it will float.

Luo Pang's interpretation of the concept in "Learning of Our Generation":

"Concept" means learning efficiently by constantly collecting new concepts.

Teacher Li Xiaolai said that when he was in junior high school, his mother told him that at the beginning of each semester, after the textbooks were distributed, he should preview them and master the key concepts. Then when I got to class, listening to lectures and doing homework became a breeze.

For example, the first volume of "High School Physics" is all about concepts such as what is force, what is motion, Newton's three laws of motion, what is work, and what is kinetic energy. That's all. Then the overall picture becomes clear and any fragment of knowledge can be picked up and placed on the concept.

We humans are super-patterned animals. The world itself is very complex. How does it become knowledge? It is to precipitate into concepts one by one. Mastering knowledge is essentially mastering concepts.

Through practice, polish the concepts into your own "meta-knowledge" and then guide practice more effectively.

Of course, in the process of "conceptualizing" and "practicalizing" my knowledge, I constantly overturned my previous cognitions and slapped myself in the face.

Maybe the louder the better, it feels good to get slapped in the face.

Source: Wang Mumu