By business mentor Faye Mac (pictured), founder of Faye Mac Consultancy.
There’s a question I ask every business owner I work with when we start looking at their
marketing: are you selling paracetamol or vitamins?
It sounds simple, but the answer tells me everything. Vitamins are, in lots of cases, a ‘nice to
have’. Yes there will be people who are deficient but lots of people take vitamins simply
because they think they probably should take them. They may buy them occasionally, use them when they remember, feel vaguely virtuous, and then forget about them once the latest health kick is over.
Paracetamol? When you need it, you need it right now. You’re not browsing, you’re
not comparing options, you’re not waiting for a sale. You’re buying it.
That’s the difference between marketing that gets ignored and marketing that converts. And if your business isn’t growing at the rate you want it to, I’d put money on the fact that your
marketing looks a lot more like a trendy vitamin bottle than a blister pack of pain relief.
Start with the pain, not the product
The foundation of paracetamol marketing is understanding your ideal client so thoroughly that you can articulate their problem better than they can themselves. Not the surface-level problem that they should get around to figuring out but the one that keeps them up at night.
The one that’s costing them money, time, or both and they need to solve it and keep moving forward. Time and money are almost always the biggest urgent pain points, and they’re the best place to start when figuring out how to position what you do. Not because they’re the only things that matter to people, but because they create urgency.
When someone is haemorrhaging money or drowning in wasted hours, they’re not looking for a nice-to-have. They’re looking for a solution. They’re looking for you. If you’re showing up in the right way of course.
The mistake most business owners make is leading with what they offer rather than what they solve. “I’m a business coach” tells someone what you do. It might sound appealing to someone who thinks ‘I should probably get one of those at some point. However, “I help personal trainers stop leaving money on the table with marketing that actually converts into my clients rather than getting ghosted by prospects” tells them what changes.
Lead with the resolution
Once you know the pain, your marketing job is simple: lead with the resolution. Not just the
aspirational lifestyle content of you drinking champagne or being on a yacht. The “join me on a journey” language sounds lovely but leading with an outcome is much better.
What does life look like on the other side of working with you? Not just the glamorous side but what problem no longer exists? What’ the tangible, measurable difference? Whether that’s hours saved, more time spent with kids, doubling their client base. That’s what goes at the top of your content, your website and all your socials. The transformation comes first.
This is where so many businesses get it backwards. They spend paragraphs explaining what
they do and how they do it, and leave the “so what” as an afterthought at the end. By that point, you’ve already lost people.
Your ideal client is scanning for proof that you understand their problem. Give it to them in the first line.
Credibility is your proof of concept
Here’s where paracetamol marketing really pulls ahead. Paracetamol works because we know it works: it has a track record. Again, it’s not just about fancy client pictures but the proof that you made their life easier.
Share the stories but go further than that. Break down the before and after by showing the
specific, tangible differences. Talk about the client who came to you overwhelmed and
overstretched and left with a system that gave them their weekends back. Talk about the
business that doubled its revenue in six months because they finally got their positioning right.
Real examples, real outcomes, real people will beat any luxury content on social media at the
moment.
Testimonials matter but so does the way you talk about your work day to day. When you
consistently show up with content that demonstrates you understand the problem and have
solved it for others, you become the obvious choice.
The bottom line
People don’t go looking for vitamins when they’re in pain. They go looking for the fastest, most trusted route to feeling better. If your marketing is built around what you offer rather than what you cure, you’re asking people to invest in a nice-to-have. Even if they do buy, nice-to-haves are the first thing that gets cut when budgets are tight or time is short.
Get specific about the pain. Lead with the resolution. Back it up with proof. Do that consistently, and you stop chasing clients and start attracting them.
That’s the difference between marketing that gets scrolled past and marketing that makes
someone stop and think: that’s exactly what I need. And that, right there, is your paracetamol moment.
About the author
Faye McCann is an international speaker and business mentor, working with business
owners to help them become more visible , gain more clients and make more money.
For more information visit: https://www.fayemac.com/
