What would bring your business to a halt?

The other night, I went to my daughter’s hockey game. It’s at one of those rinks the parents love because it has a bar upstairs with good food and drinks. So, while the team prepares for the game, the parents get something to eat, have a drink, and warm up before moving to the cold stands.

Well… not last night… the internet was down.

For a business, especially a bar, they rely heavily on the internet to function, to run their systems and most importantly, accept payments.

This one shut down for the day, completely closed up. They maybe could have gone cash only, but do you even carry much cash anymore? They could have used one of those carbon copy credit card swiping machines, if they could find it…

For this one night with multiple games going on… think of all the business that was lost.

This is what is also considered marketing gold.

It’s a pain point, but not just some annoying thing, it’s detrimental to the business, enough that a solution, positioned in the right way, has business owners opening their wallets, ready to jump in head first to solve that problem.

Years ago, I was working on a campaign in telecom and we did one thing exactly right – before starting creative, drumming up slogans or building the campaign… we brought together our ideal customers in a focus group – one of those sit in a room with a moderator answering questions, giving opinions and sharing stories while the client sits and listens behind the glass… yes, we actually sit there, soaking up everything said.

We wanted to know small business owner’s biggest pain point when it came to the internet. They talked about speed, price, dead spots, but as soon as someone mentioned “when it goes down” the entire group lit up, relating their own stories of the time (or times) the internet brought their business to a halt.

Needless to say, that campaign was wildly successful because we just so happened to sell a backup internet solution, one that adds that safety net, ready and waiting to save the day, so that business wouldn’t skip a beat.

Too bad the rink didn’t have that ready go last night.

So the next time you to go create a campaign (or hear those amazing ideas from your agency)…Stop. Listen to your customers first – and dig into what real pain is like for them.

Tell me, what would bring your business to a halt and how would that impact your business?