Conquer Those Marketing Challenges with Clear Problem Definition

As marketers, we’re often presented solutions for problems that we  may not actually have.

• Do you want to buy an email list of anyone who’s ever seen a website like yours?
• Do you need an AI tool to help you?
• Don’t miss out on my copywriting technique book!

All of that stuff could be useful (except for that specific email list). These taglines are written by marketers, so, of course, they sound useful.

But the problem with these catchy taglines is that they are written in the hopes that someone somewhere needs these solutions. They can’t possibly be attuned to what you need in every single moment. And I say this as someone who writes about solutions our company can provide to people who need them.

The thing is, a solutions-first approach doesn’t get to the heart of any major challenge. The first step is digging in enough to understand the root of a problem.

Example: Cause of a Digital Advertising Problem

Think about how companies sometimes just throw more money at advertising their products.

Yes, the bigger budget means a product will get in front of more people, but more money does not guarantee more sales. Even if the increased spend does net more sales, how much more efficiently could that money have been spent with a proper analysis of what’s going wrong?

What are the potential issues in this scenario? (The problem behind the problem of “we need to sell more stuff.”)

• Maybe the product isn’t meeting customer needs.
• Maybe the ad copy doesn’t highlight a need worth solving.
• Maybe the ad isn’t getting in front of the right people.

You can see how wide the range of problems are here. Do we have a failing product, or do we just need to make some tweaks to our ad campaign? The answer selected would drastically affect the amount of work that would go into the potential solution.

Thankfully, this particular problem is a fairly well documented occurrence, with available solutions mapped out.

A marketer could check customer satisfaction scores (whatever metrics your company uses) to understand how well the product is performing.

They could write new ad copy and run tests to see what performs better.

A thorough review could help expand any audience targeting issues.

We could go deeper into solving this scenario, but the main point here is just to say that the real issue isn’t immediately known. We could spend a lot of effort and time on the wrong area if we’re not careful.

What do we do with a problem that doesn’t have thorough documentation on how to solve it?

Solving the Right Problem

The Harvard Business Review has an excellent article on this topic called Are You Solving the Right Problem? by Dwayne Spradlin. He lays out his overview of the problem-definition process as the following:

• Establish the Need for a Solution: Why are we doing this? What’s the need, and what is the desired outcome?
• Justify the Need: Is this problem the right fit for your company? Is it aligned with what you do?
• Contextualize the Problem: Review past efforts, both internal and external to your company. Why didn’t anyone solve the problem before?
• Write the Problem Statement: Don’t solve the problem yet. Just be very clear about the problem and what a solution should entail.

Spradlin does an excellent job of clarifying that “the problem” may actually be a series of problems that need resolving.

“The aim here is to drill down to root causes. Complex, seemingly insoluble issues are much more approachable when broken into discrete elements.”

– Dwayne Spradlin

Example: Stagnant Sales

Let’s quickly take a look at how this process could play out. Keep in mind here that I’m using a make-believe scenario, and I’m skipping over all of the hard work of actually researching the problem enough to thoroughly define the answer.

Actually going through this process takes real time and effort.

Establish the Need

Stagnant sales are clearly going to be a problem. Competitors will have time to create a better solution than what your product offers if you can’t change the situation. Also, your profitability as a company will take a dip at some point in the future.

More clearly put, the need is to increase sales for better profitability for the company.

Justify the Need

Increased profit is easy enough to justify, but Spradlin also recommends going ahead and setting some sort of budget suggestion (and cap) around what a solution might cost.

In the case of increasing sales, a new marketing campaign and sales effort might easily fit within a company’s budget and timeline. Developing a completely new version of the product might not—especially if no product development has been in the works.

Contextualize the Problem

What has the company done in the past to improve sales for this product? Did they offer an incentive to salespeople for the highest sales? Did they try more than one marketing campaign?

During this hypothetical scenario, the people tasked with solving the problem of increased sales would certainly want to dig deep into understanding what product development efforts had been considered, even if that’s not the most desirable solution at the moment. Perhaps small improvements would show steps in the right direction for the market.

Don’t forget to look at what other companies have done in this scenario, as well. Many companies have dealt with stagnant sales.

You may find examples directly within medtech, or you may need to look outside the industry. Just remember that you may have to adapt any solutions you find, regardless of industry.

Write the Problem Statement

Improving sales could very well be two separate problems instead of one. “Product development needs to accelerate” could be problem one. “Marketing and sales need to roll out their next efforts for increased sales” could be problem two.

Again, we jumped past all the research to quickly come up with these problem statements, but you can get a feel for what it would take to make this process work.

Tools and People to Find the Problem

There are many methods you can choose to help you with diagnosing challenges your company faces. Let’s focus on just a few actions you can take to help you with the problem definition process.

Talk to Your Customers

This won’t solve everything for you, but it will help with establishing the need and maybe justifying the need. So very much of your company’s “why” should be wrapped up in your customers.

Learn More Technical Skills/Language to Speak to the Problem

You can’t be an expert at everything.

But, how much do you need to learn to truly ask the right questions, to better understand the limitations and the power of the tools and teams at your disposal?

In a previous post, I argued that a thorough review of will allow for the following:

• You’ll better understand what you’re asking of your teams and agencies.
• You’ll be able to sell your wins more effectively to management.
• You’ll be able to advocate for different tools for your team when needed.
• You’ll fully understand how the pieces all fit together.

We discussed this in a podcast episode with Lindsey Dinneen, who explained how marketers can work with the engineering team to better understand the product and the problem it is solving.

Lindsey said, “It’s easy—especially when you’re in a small company and probably wearing a lot of hats—to silo yourself. In medtech marketing it’s really important to have a strong collaboration between the engineers / scientists / inventors and the marketing and salespeople. We as marketers need to understand the technical aspects well enough to translate them to normal people talk.”

I also spoke to Tyler Hissong, an engineer from Treace Medical Concepts, to understand the engineer’s side of things. When asked how engineers can help to shape the marketing message, he said:

“The time spent creating and solving the problem statement is the perfect way to translate that need for marketing. Having a foundationally sound problem statement, built on end user conversations, should ultimately drive the marketing message. 

“Marketing and engineering are both a balance of giving the end-user enough information, in digestible amounts, to convince them that your device/product solves their problem. Especially in medical device, where novel devices are more and more rare, your device must solve their problem better than anyone else.”

Cultivate the Right Contacts

Does your organization have specialists to turn to when run into particularly pesky problems? Your team of specialists might include your staff plus a series of vendors you can consult.

At times, just getting the right insights can create a major breakthrough in the way you approach a challenge. We’ve saved weeks of time and avoided customer frustration by involving specialists at critical moments.

Engage Regularly in a Community

Finding a community of folks in your industry can be a huge help, but it requires actual participation. The value I get back from a community is directly related to how much I put in.

There are so many times when participating in a community can feel like one more thing to have to squeeze into my schedule—until I actually need help or want to talk about something. (I’m trying not to be so selfish.)

If your role is specifically in marketing, you might find value in RISE or in the Marketing Ops community. If you’re in medtech, take a look at the Medical Device Group weekly discussions on YouTube.

Beyond the different group functions in person, on Discord, or on Slack, I’ve also had some amazing times getting to sit down over lunch or coffee with colleagues I’ve met through some of these communities.

So if you’re in the Nashville area sometime, consider this your invitation. I’d be happy to buy you a cup of coffee and chat.

Related Resources

Business Requirements Document – Much of the process described above will help you in creating your business requirement document.

From Product Experience Stats to Satisfaction: Optimize for Retention – Here are ways you can use available metrics to help inform your decision-making.