Pain leads to gain

Seth Godin had an interesting post about how proximity to pain provides with the best options for creating a truly great business, ie the bigger pain point you solve, the more successful your business will be.

He argues that this is precisely why Google and the Yellow Pages are so massively successful: They are there to solve a pain - finding the right information NOW - whenever their customers need it. All good. But what about newspapers?

What true pain point do they try to cure? Is curiosity about what’s happening in the world today a pain for customers that needs someone to take care of it?

To some extend, yes. And I have no doubt that if there was only one newspaper, it would be a massive success. The problem is however that there still is an abundancy of newspapers out there essentially doing the same thing and reporting on the same issues. And if we define the pain of not knowing what’s going on as less than the pain of needing to find a specific information right here and now, it’s no surprise that the newspaper business model is threatening to implode.

Newspapers need to do two things fast:

They need to diversify from the competition, so they stop doing the same thing over and over again.

They need to figure out what pain points their customers have, which a newspaper is suited for solving. And then start solving them!

Vad NU! is a consultancy company owned by Mads Kristensen and specialized in helping clients take advantage of the business opportunities created by new media. Click to learn how I can help you and your company.