Most marketing assumes recognized pain points. Customers know they have issues, so they search for solutions. Your job as a marketer is to position your product as the best answer.
But what happens when your innovation solves a problem audiences haven’t recognized yet? When customers are satisfied with the status quo, even though better alternatives exist? When the pain is invisible because it’s how things work?
One of marketing’s most complex challenges is creating demand when the problem itself isn’t recognized. Traditional tactics fail here because you can’t capture demand that doesn’t exist. You have to generate it.
Why traditional marketing fails
Search optimization, paid acquisition and comparison content all assume existing search behavior. People recognize problems and look for solutions. Your marketing intercepts that intent and converts it.
This breaks down when audiences are satisfied with inadequate processes because they’re not searching for alternatives to problems they don’t recognize. For example, many organizations view manual processes and legacy systems as established infrastructure instead of inefficient obstacles to growth. This is what they’re familiar with, so why would they make any changes?
Research from HubSpot shows 30% of marketers still cite generating leads as one of their primary marketing challenges. The gap between having valuable technology and getting customers to recognize they need it determines whether innovation reaches markets or remains unknown.
Competitive differentiation is premature when audiences don’t understand that the category exists. Feature marketing is meaningless when audiences don’t know why features matter. You can’t win a race when customers don’t know they should be running.
From unknown platform to category authority
Dwolla, a payments platform designed to simplify account-to-account transfers, faced exactly this challenge. Their technology could save businesses time and reduce costs in payment processing, but their core obstacle was convincing potential customers that their payment systems were broken.
For fintechs in the payment space, the marketing challenge revolved around digital transformation: how do you create demand when audiences are satisfied with paper checks and legacy ACH files? Traditional tactics couldn’t work because businesses weren’t searching for payment alternatives. The problem was invisible.
Over 90 days, the company shifted from product marketing to problem education. This strategy focused on securing media coverage, developing executive thought leadership and positioning company leaders as experts who understood payment infrastructure challenges businesses hadn’t articulated.
The approach targeted over 100 media outlets and secured hundreds of pieces of coverage and social media engagements. Rather than explaining features, its marketing reframed how businesses think about moving money. By defining the problem space first, the brand strengthened its position as a credible voice in fintech.
The framework for marketing invisible problems
Creating demand for unrecognized problems requires three strategic stages:
Stage 1: Make the invisible visible
Audiences need to recognize inefficiency before they consider alternatives. This means educational content that reveals hidden costs in current approaches. Quantify what “how things work” actually costs in time, money or missed opportunities.
Don’t lead with solutions. Lead with problem diagnosis. Show audiences that their normalized processes are costing them more than they realize. Use data, comparisons and reframing to make familiar challenges suddenly visible.
Podcast placements work particularly well for problem education because they allow deep exploration of challenges audiences haven’t fully considered. Long-form conversations reveal complexity that short content can’t address. Turn the most insightful pieces of the conversation into sound bites and quotes you can amplify on your social networks.
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Stage 2: Build authority in the problem space
When audiences don’t know they have problems, product marketing is premature. First, establish credibility around understanding the pain.
Executive thought leadership, media presence and speaking opportunities position your company as experts who deeply understand challenges audiences are just beginning to recognize. If you know the problem this clearly, your solution becomes worth evaluating.
This stage builds trust in your diagnosis before introducing products. Authority in defining the pain transfers to credibility in solving it.
Stage 3: Create the category through education
Demand creation requires introducing new vocabulary and frameworks for thinking about familiar challenges. Yes, you’re marketing a product, but you’re also teaching a market to see problems differently.
This is where media-forward strategies matter most. Secure coverage that introduces concepts, not products. Pitch problem-focused stories that help audiences reframe their thinking. At this stage, it’s better to monitor conversation shifts instead of conversion metrics.
Track share of voice in problem discussions and measure the quality of media coverage and executive visibility. Monitor whether target audiences are discussing the problem, even if they’re not yet considering solutions. Shifts in conversation and evolution in awareness predict future demand better than current conversion rates.
When to apply this framework
This approach applies when audiences are satisfied with the status quo, no existing search behavior exists for your category and you’re creating rather than competing in a market.
Traditional marketing works when pain points are recognized, alternatives already exist and established search patterns reveal demand. Knowing which challenge you face determines your entire strategy.
If customers are searching for solutions, capture that demand. If they’re satisfied with inadequate alternatives, you need to create demand by making problems visible first.
From capture to creation
The gap between having transformative technology and getting markets to recognize they need it separates category creators from unknown innovations. Category creation requires patience and educating markets before selling to them.
When organizations successfully market solutions to invisible problems, they teach audiences to see challenges before introducing answers. The marketing shift is fundamental, from “here’s why we’re better” to “here’s why what you’re doing costs more than you realize.” Problem recognition comes before solution evaluation. Always.
When your innovation solves problems audiences haven’t named yet, your marketing must create the vocabulary they’ll eventually use to search for you.
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