The Emotional Alchemy Podcast
Welcome to the Emotional Alchemy Podcast where safety is medicine, connection is never automated and everything is relational.
The Emotional Alchemy Podcast
144. Shifting from Pain Point Marketing to Relational Marketing
In this episode, I decode the exact formula of pain point marketing and discuss the ethical implications of using these strategies. This is especially relevant for space-holders who are trying to share work about nervous system regulation and somatic healing but feel like there are no ethical ways to market their work. By understanding the tactics of pain point marketing, you'll be able to see through the veil and create choice and nuance both as a consumer and as a spiritual entrepreneur.
Kat HoSoo Lee is an Emotional Alchemy Coach, Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Emotional Alchemy Podcast.
She loves playing in the space where science and spirituality converge because this is where we get to experience emotional alchemy. In her work, she educates space-holders about somatic physiology and environmental biology so they can deepen their practices of listening and presence which ultimately helps them expand their capacity to hold space for others.
As a Spiritual Business Mentor, she guides soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. The work bridges the emotional landscape with practical tools which allow them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, relational marketing and purposeful service.
This podcast is made possible with sound production by Andre Lagace.
Hello, my dear friends. So last week I recorded an episode with my friend, lindsay Lockett. That's episode 143. And we talked about the ethics that we're seeing showing up in nervous system regulation work, in somatics, and the kind of marketing that we were talking about is pain point marketing. And after that conversation I really sat down with it and wanted to even just for myself kind of map it out and be like okay, so what are the different characteristics? That is indicative of pain point marketing, so that I can identify it within myself and then also be able to teach about it. So I wrote it up as an Instagram post. It's called the pain point marketing formula decoded, and I realized as I was writing it there is so much more than I can fit into a 10 slide carousel. So I've been feeling this pull, naturally, to create more long form content. So I'm doing this experiment here. I'm taking the concepts that I outlined in Instagram and I'm going to be putting it up on YouTube and on the podcast, because they can't confine me to 10 slides on YouTube and on the podcast. So I'm glad that you're here for this experiment. I'm going to be reading this slide and then also be sort of like expanding on some of these concepts that we talk about. So here we go Pain point marketing formula decoded. So we start out with the title.
Speaker 1:A lot of these pain point marketing campaigns, content pieces that we see floating all over the internet, but particularly so in social media. They begin with a catchy clickbaity title that promises some sort of dreamy, tangible result. So I'm going to sort of stick with my particular niche, which is business, and I've seen so many different titles. I actually pulled all the examples in this post from people's websites and from their content. I'm not going to share who they are, but they're all different people. So something like steal my strategy to 5x your income. Now the name of the game in social media marketing is being able to hold, or rather capture, your attention and then hold it. And why this kind of title feels so compelling is because it triggers a dopamine response in your body. Dopamine is the neuromodulator that regulates desire and motivation. It is the neuromodulator that gets you to look outside of yourself, and so it pushes you away from this like here and now sort of a situation and more looking towards the future, which isn't necessarily bad, right, but it shifts you from being internally focused to being externally driven and moving towards the goal of whatever it is that this offer is promising. The pieces that I find really problematic about this is that a lot of the work of being trauma informed is that we want to be encouraging our clients to be looking internally, within themselves. We want them to be focusing on okay, so like what are your goals? And then let's help you get there what are some of your desires and help you get there.
Speaker 1:And a lot of these titles like even just the title, feels problematic because it is very prescriptive. It asks you to look outside yourself and be like oh, that's how people are defining success. Is some sort of income marker that is five times more than what I have right now. So that's step one. Step two is to pound on pain points, and so essentially, what we're doing with pain point marketing is we're painting a picture of the pain, the fears, the worries, the insecurities that you might be experiencing. So an example of this is again pulled from somebody's website you don't know what to do to make a real impact on your bottom line. Maybe you're tired of hearing crickets every time you launch while you're working endlessly and missing out on your family, friends and your life. Now, this step is a little bit confusing because even in relational marketing we talk about pain, and so I'm going to say here that it doesn't mean that you're doing pain point marketing by naming pain, but intentionality matters so, so freaking much here.
Speaker 1:Imagine where the seller is when you are hearing and reading through that list of pain points. Are they walking beside you as they're talking about pain? Are they walking beside you as somebody who's an equal, somebody who might have been there before and has some guidance and support, some tools, because they know how they would have wanted to be supported back then? Do you feel understood? Are they naming things that have felt previously unnameable to you? One of my favorite comments from this post that I put up is somebody shared that this post has entirely described what I feel every time I look at some coaches posts and I wasn't sure what was happening inside me many of the times. That she says is so great, but at the same time, I feel like I go into a black or white feeling inside me and I start feeling a lot of anxiety. Thank you so much for putting it into words, and that's exactly what I mean is you know when you are using relational marketing and talking about pain points. It's coming from a place of like hey, like, I understand this and I want to further understand you and in that process, it helps you understand yourself better.
Speaker 1:Now pain point marketing does something different. Pain point marketing puts the seller above you. So if you think about relationally in space, they are placing a hierarchy, they are leveraging themselves as an expert. They are saying you have to do the things that I say, that you do. And in that process of them talking about pain pain that is incredibly real to you, it might actually make you feel more vulnerable, it might make you feel broken and they also do this thing where they leverage themselves as a rescuer. So, by putting this hierarchy into place, they're saying, hey, like, I can rescue you, my program can rescue, my tools can rescue you out of this suffering that you're feeling.
Speaker 1:Step three that I see out there in the world and this tends to come right after there's a formula here, right, this tends to come right after the pain points is the freedom picture. So the focus now shifts to compelling you to imagine what your life could look like if only your life was more free. Live where you want, take on clients where you want, or take on clients that you want, charge what you want, go where you want. And then these often come with pictures of Mai Tais on the beach in Bali. Maybe they're showing off their brand new luxury handbag next to their luxury car. They're, you know, showing off photos of them being able to spend all this time with their kids and go on dates with their husbands, and you know so like. You get this picture of like oh, that's so different from what my life looks like, and if only I signed up for this program, then maybe my life can also look like that.
Speaker 1:Now, this concept of freedom is so compelling because, when you are struggling, your nervous system narrows your focus down to binary choices. Narrows your focus down to binary choices. That's exactly what this commenter was sharing is that she feels her nervous system go into this black and white sort of feeling right, and so when you feel trapped in your present life, what you're craving is freedom. Little caveat I say this all the time, every time I talk about the nervous system and binaries is this doesn't mean that your nervous system is wrong. It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you. It does not mean that you have to fix anything. This does not mean that you're in a functional freeze. What it means is that there's something that feels really threatening in your life and, like full disclosure, that threat might be lack of money in capitalism. And so, you know, when we're in that place, we start to narrow our choices down to one, like, to two things. Right, and this is what our nervous system has done for generations and generations.
Speaker 1:We don't want to be looking into the eyes of a bear that might is trying to attack us and think, oh, like, I have to create some nuance here. I want to understand what this bear is, is all about. Like, no, like. You need to narrow down your choices to fight or flight. And so your nervous system doesn't understand the difference between a bear that is coming after you or you trying to build a business within this extractive capitalistic system, because they both register as threats in your nervous system, and so your nervous system is going to do the thing that it knows what to do, which is binary choices, right, and so the pain point marketing.
Speaker 1:What it does is it preys on this desire for freedom, because, again, when you're in binary choice mode, you're feeling trapped, and so you know your body is craving that sense of exhale, that freedom, that the nuance, the choice. And so, because pain point marketing understands this, they're going to paint that picture for you and even if that picture is something that, like, you might not even want, right? Like I know, I have fallen for pain point marketing from a particular business coach and she showed pictures of her life that had nothing to do with how I wanted to live my life. Right, she had pictures of her at Burning man and going to a bunch of different parties and, you know, renting these gorgeous houses on the ocean side, gorgeous houses on the ocean side, and that's totally not my vibe. But what it did is it preyed on my own desire to create freedom in my own life.
Speaker 1:Now, this is particularly compelling. If your present moment is so painful for you that you want to run away, the freedom picture catalyzes that disassociation and again we're looking at dopamine here as that neuromodulator. It shifts that focus from here and now, what you are experiencing in this moment, here and now, which feels incredibly painful, which you might equate with suffering, to something outside of your present experience. Your body, your life and again I want to bring in this like trauma-informed nuance in this lens is part of our work of doing trauma-informed regulation with our clients is bringing them back into the here and now, even if it's painful, even if it feels like suffering. We want them to really understand what is happening in their body in this present moment, so that they are able to move forward with regulation instead of moving forward from a place of fight or flight.
Speaker 1:Step four is that they highlight student success stories, but only the best of the best, only the top student success stories are highlighted and they tell stories of you know this client used to be just like you and how you know their overnight success was so easy and this program was the magic sauce that, like, made everything happen. And I want to just like focus in on this. Concept of easy easy is highlighted, it is underscored and it is in bold. And concept of easy Easy is highlighted, it is underscored and it is in bold. And one of the things that I really want to like like stress here is that a lot of the things that we want to accomplish, a lot of the goals that we want to accomplish and again I'm going to bring this in the context of business like business is meant to be hard and I don't say that in the like you know, martyred, like I just love torturing myself sort of way.
Speaker 1:But you know, what business does is. It asks you to look at your own triggers within yourself. It's asking you to identify some of these belief systems that don't work for you. It's asking you to move through layers of things that haven't felt safe historically for you. And then you put that in the context of like society and culture and the collective, and we are fighting against essentially this extractive capitalistic system and so like to do that it is really fucking hard. And so you know, in a little bit I'm going to name some other coaches that I think who are doing a really excellent job of relational marketing. But in each of their niches, what I see is they are trying to do really hard work. So why would their business and how their business comes into fruition, why would that? Be super easy.
Speaker 1:I also think that we have this idea, particularly in the last, I want to say like five to 10-ish. If it's not easy, people tend to not want to do that thing and what we're seeing is there's this like lack of resiliency that is showing up in our collective culture and to me, like this is the underpinning of a lot of different cultural dynamics that I don't necessarily want to get into, but, like, like one of the things that I see nowadays is it's so hard to have conversations with somebody who disagrees with you, like that is a hard thing to do, and I find that people are like, like moving away from that dynamic because it feels so hard instead of actually sitting there and having the hard conversation with somebody that they love and you know, trying to move the collective needle towards understanding instead of disagreement, and this like fissure that we're seeing, right. And so if, at every point of difficulty, you were hit with this pain point, marketing that says, oh no, it's easy, you just have to download this thing, you just have to take my program, you just have to work with me thing, you just have to take my program, you just have to work with me. Again, it creates that dynamic of rescuer and victim. And so, you know, one of the things that I really want to highlight about all of my programs is that there is a variety of results that happen through moving through my programs. Right, I do have clients who you know. I have one client who's about to bill half a million dollars this year through an offering that she created through this program, through my program, and I also have students who go through my business outcome as mentorship program and decide that they don't actually want to create an online business. I think that, for me, actually want to create an online business. I think that for me, the more compelling story is, did moving through the program help you get closer to who you are?
Speaker 1:And I would say, fundamentally, you know, everyone looks different on the outside between not following the path to online coach world to being able to, like, create this amazing business on the other end of it, the common thread between them all is that they all feel closer to themselves and they all feel closer to their purpose. They understand a bit more about what drives them and then they're able to, you know, create their life from that place. And to me, that is so much more important than you know. I had one coach where I took her business program and she had us report each month how much we were making each month. So then that that way she could take that into her marketing and say like, oh, my students collectively made x, you know, thousands of dollars, um, in this last month and so like. To me, like that is just. Oh, I guess I guess the thing that bothers me about that is just there's a superficial layer to it that doesn't account for the nuance and different experiences and different life paths that everyone is meant to take. So something that I wrote on this post is like pointing out the buildup feeling right so, between the pain points, the freedom picture and the success stories that that wave of dopamine is like finding its crest, and to me, like that is like where pain point marketing is like yes, like we're hitting the nail on the head. And to me, like that's like a pretty gross way to sell to people.
Speaker 1:Step five is to tell people to invest in themselves. This is the perfect time, as that wave is cresting, to make the offer, and oftentimes the price is named as a investment. This one word is subtly manipulative, and I say that as somebody who has actually used this word before. And so full disclosure. I've changed a lot of the copy on my website. If anybody out there who is like going through my website and sees the word invest on there, please let me know. I think I've caught it all, but there might be a couple of words out there that I haven't caught. But there might be a couple of words out there that I haven't caught, but I moved away from that word because it feels manipulative. Think about how you justify the money that you're spending when you're making an investment versus when something is a cost. And so I'm really explicit that this is a cost because I bet that you're willing to spend a little bit more outside of your comfort zone. If something is an investment, then that's something that I see, that's vocabulary that I see a lot with coaches these days, and something that feels like kind of icky to me.
Speaker 1:And then step six is to create pressure. This is the cherry on top right. So if that, that, that dopamine wave hasn't pushed this person to buy yet, the little cherry on top is the seller is going to sprinkle in a little push of pressure in the form of scarcity and FOMO. Pain point marketing relies on pushing you into an adrenalized fight or flight state to mobilize and make a purchase right. Essentially, like both with relational marketing and with pain point marketing, what we're hoping for is that the person on the other side is going to move towards us. Pain point marketing uses the nervous system and again, nervous system and dopamine to push people into a state of fight or flight so that they'll go and make that purchase. In relational marketing, um, what we're hoping for is this person feels so understood, they're in a parasympathetic state, they are feeling empowered in their choice, they're they're looking at their choice as an autonomous one, and so then when they move towards us to make a purchase that comes from a place where there's regulation, there's understanding, there's sovereignty, right, and to me, like that is the fundamental, like biggest difference between relational marketing and pain point marketing is what nervous system state is that person in who is buying? So, just in case that buyer isn't quite there yet, that last little bit of pressure will get you there.
Speaker 1:That oftentimes looks like a very, very narrow window of a launch cycle. There's a reason that business alcoholist mentorship I am my launch cycle is actually two months because I want people to like A if they haven't heard about it before, like I want them to understand that they have like a full two months to like make that decision. If they haven't heard about it before and they've been thinking about it and they're sitting on the fence about it, I want them to come to that decision from a regulated place, and so it's not uncommon for my launch cycles to be really, really slow in the beginning and then towards the end is when, like, most of my people end up buying. And it's because I've given them all that space to consider. I've given them all that space to like, think about, you know, like my program is a year long, like that's a big commitment, both financially and with time, and so like, does that make sense to fit that into your life in this moment? Right, and um, I think that, like, short launch cycles paired with, um, artificial reasons to create scarcity, right, um, I don't think there's any reason for something that pre-recorded to have a ton of pressure, that that's like the, the, the perfect offering to not put pressure on to people. And yet those are the offerings that I see with the most pressure, where you know you click and you buy one thing, and then you go through their funnel and there's an upsell after an upsell, after an upsell, and this deal is going to expire after 10 minutes and you have to buy this now, otherwise it's going to go up in price, and so to me that's oh so, very, very icky.
Speaker 1:So a couple more things that I want to just share as we're going through this. Let's just take a moment and sit with the body. I've just given you a ton of information. These are likely things that you've thought about and felt before and you might not have been able to like name it as such, right? So sit with us all for a moment. How does going through the anatomy of pain point marketing feel in your body? And I'll just give you a moment to like just sit with whatever is arising for you.
Speaker 1:So for me, when I sit with these concepts of pain point marketing and feel where it lands in my body, the immediate thing that comes up for me is shame. I feel shame in my own body for how many times I've fallen for this kind of marketing. Also for how I have used these tactics myself. You know, like I've shared pretty explicitly that I have taken business courses before and this is what I was taught. I've been taught formulas and templates, and you know this whole idea around don't let that person get off the sales call without a yes. And so we need to find ways to adjust these objections before they're even having them, ways to adjust these objections before they're even having them, and you know the ways in which content marketing is really sort of taught these days, like I don't see anything else out there that isn't pain point marketing. So I myself have used these tactics before. Luckily, I didn't use them for very long because it didn't feel good in my body and I was like I'm going to do something different. I have no idea where this is taking me, but I can't do it this way anymore.
Speaker 1:I also feel anger that this is the water that we all swim in these days, I think in particular in the online and social media spaces. It's one of the reasons why I feel this pull to move. I don't know if I'll ever get off Instagram completely, but I do feel a pull to move towards long-form content. I feel like long-form content is inherently going to be less pain pointy, because part of the um, part of that like push energy that you feel from your content creators is because they feel limited in their space. Right like instagram only gives us 10 slides to work with and you know if you put up a story it's like one minute at a time and so to me, like as somebody who's coming in with this like creative energy, it feels really stifling to put it in those boxes. So, yeah, I feel anger.
Speaker 1:I also feel rage that I am seeing this tidal wave of pain point marketing being used to sell nervous system work and somatics. I think that nervous system work and somatics are sacred, sacred medicines. Lindsay and I spent this last episode 143, talking about all that, and I have a feeling that we're not quite done talking about it because it's just rampant. Because I talk about the nervous system, the algorithm loves showing me these 30 day somatic trauma healing courses that I need to take and, you know it, it just feels so gross that it's being marketed in this way, because that is not what nervous system work is meant to do essentially. So I am in the middle of launching business alchemist mentorship right now, and none of these tactics are going to show up in my content, even though if I use pain point marketing, I would probably get more enrollments in BAM if I marketed in that way. And the reason why I refuse to use pain point marketing in my content is because I don't think more is better. I think that a lot of ways that people are taught how to do business these days is always this idea of more is better, and I fundamentally disagree with that.
Speaker 1:I think that the work that we do in BAM is really hard. Like I sort of alluded to before, we are disentangling threads of trauma, years of misunderstanding. You know stories and beliefs that no longer align for you. We're restructuring what community support looks like. We're dismantling these extractive business practices and choosing something that, honestly, like I feel like it doesn't always feel like it has form, and so I'm not looking for more people to be on that journey with me.
Speaker 1:If I use pain point marketing, what it would attract is entrepreneurs who are idealistic in their desire to deconstruct capitalism while still wanting capitalism to work for them, and what I would be attracting are people who basically want to continue to act like wolves and put on a sheep's outfit, and that's not what I'm interested in. So, yeah, I'm going to get less people. In addition to that, it would repel the exact kind of people that I want to attract in and who I think are going to find belonging in the BAM community. We are a small army of witchy, sensitive, nerdy, feral weirdos who see business as a spiritual practice, and that is not the journey for everybody. That's not the journey for really most of the entrepreneurs that I see out in the world, for really most of the entrepreneurs that I see out in the world, and so you know, I gave a lot of examples of what pain point marketing looks like.
Speaker 1:I also wanted to give you some examples of what relational marketing looks like, and so I have some folks that I want to send you to, and you know a couple of them are horse people, some of them are business folks, some of them are creative mentors. You know, even if you're not particularly interested in horses, let's say, because not everybody's into horses like just go and read through some of their content and and just like sink into what it feels like to be in their spaces. So the first two I want to name are Lockie Phillips from Emotional Horsemanship and Shannon Bahan from Humming Horse Equestrian. These two are my two horse trainers. So it's like not a coincidence that you're going to see me naming folks that I either am students of, or they were students of mine, or they're students of mine, or they're collaborators of mine, or some mix and combination of those. Those three roles right is because, you know, if I find relational marketing to be so important in my own business, you better damn well understand that when I choose to work with somebody as my coach. I'm going to be leaning into people who I also see doing this relational marketing thing, even if they they don't have the vocabulary vocabulary to put on that on the way that they're marketing. So, lockie Phillips, emotional Horsemanship. Shannon Ban from Humming Horse, equestrian. What they have in common is they are trying to shift the dynamics of the horse world, which is actually incredibly abusive, and abusive to both horses and to equestrians, I would say and they're really trying to bring in a safe, relational dynamic between horse and equestrian. And so I think about my sessions with them as like, almost like, translation sessions. They're not even horse training sessions per se. They're helping me understand my horses better.
Speaker 1:The other folks I want to name here Lindsay Lockett, if you've been around with me, she's been on my podcast a bajillion times. I've already referenced that. We just did one, 143. And like, the thing I want to point out with her stuff is that it is long right Like. She's also another woman who is like long form content and that is because the concepts that we get into it's so hard to make them fit in the boxes. Another one in that category is Sarah Cook from Freelance Feminist. She's got a beautiful sub stack and you know, again, like sub stack creates a different platform where long form content is a little bit more accepted and to me, like when I jump into her writing, into her writing, it is again nuanced, it is tender, there's zero prescription, and so like that's really kind of what I'm looking for when I'm looking at relational marketing. Other folks in this world Emma Rose Tate she's a dear friend of mine, she's also a business coach and you know she talks about very, very similar things to me Nadine Zumat and Cecily Saylor, also worth mentioning here. Nadine talks about money, trauma and Cecily Saylor, she runs Typewriter Tarot and she has a series on this podcast with me where we compare and contrast, uh, the tarot and the itching again.
Speaker 1:These are folks who are doing difficult work right, and difficult work means that we are for lack of a better way of saying this like, like we're not, we're not dumbing our shit down, right. So the markers that I look for when I look at relational marketing is are they getting super fucking nerdy about their communities? Are they listening? Are they getting really curious about what these folks are experiencing and then creating content that helps those people feel understood? Are they honest, like that's such an important one is like I feel like I now have this like like sniffer when it comes to honesty in the social media spaces, because I can fucking like sniff that stuff out when people are being completely dishonest and when they're showing a facade and the energy of it just feels like just real sticky. Yeah, the energy just feels really sticky to me. Um, are they focused on creating oxytocin and serotonin connection rather than dopamine connection? And that is going to feel really different in my body.
Speaker 1:It also means that it's probably going to take a little bit longer for people to warm up, and so, for example, I followed him for years and I had him on my podcast and then I've been on his podcast and like it was just this like like back and forth of like quite honestly, kind of testing the waters to see if he was the right horse trainer for me. And it was only after years that I signed up to do private sessions with him and then also go to his in-person clinics. And you know, the really wonderful thing about relational marketing is that you end up creating a very, very loyal base of community members, because it's built on trust, because it's built on accountability and it's built on transparency and honesty. I also think that when I look at relational marketing, there's a really lovely balance between education and sharing the work through stories and lived experiences. And so to me, like I, I can get so nerdy about these concepts and I honestly love sharing because I want people to be educated, even if folks never work with me. What I love to do is teach and I love to educate people and help them see through some of the stuff that like is so pervasive in our, in our culture and through that process.
Speaker 1:You know, hopefully you're making different decisions in your life when it comes to who you're choosing as a coach, who you're choosing, as you know, even like in your personal life, who you're choosing as a partner, who you're choosing for your therapist. Right, like, all of these threads of finding safety and finding feeling into if that person is regulating or dysregulating, like it ripples out into everything that we do. And then, um, just to like, continue to like. You know, bring this home. Is this idea of like. Stop simplifying shit. That's complicated.
Speaker 1:That's like one of the things that just drives me nuts about using pain point marketing with somatics and with nervous system regulation work is, because I know how complicated and nuanced nervous system work in somatics can be, because I have been in that world for the last decade and if it feels too good to be true, you know like I'm seeing those same ads that you're seeing. Heal your nervous system, heal your trauma in 30 days by using this somatic exercise program. Like, doesn't that sound like fishy right off of the bat? You know, I've talked with so many people in my DMs who have shared with me that they've taken these classes or they've bought that program and they feel immediately icky right after and they share that the reason why they ended up signing up for those programs is because of FOMO. The reason why they ended up signing up for those programs is because of FOMO. Like, you put enough pressure on a person until they buy and at the end of their buying process they don't actually feel supported, they don't feel nourished, they actually feel FOMO.
Speaker 1:So that is all I have to say about pain point marketing. Actually, that's not all I have to say. I'm sure I've got lots more to say, but that's all I have to say about pain point marketing. Actually, that's not all I have to say. I'm sure I've got lots more to say, but that's all I have to say today about pain point marketing and you know, like I had shared, if you're hearing this on my podcast, I'm going to be putting a lot more stuff up on YouTube. These days I'm already starting to feel that pull, and so if you are somebody who's into YouTube, please come subscribe, and if you're listening on the podcast, subscribe through whatever platform you're listening through, and that really helps other folks, just like you find this work and I would love to just continue to build this community. So thanks for listening and we'll see you soon.