Remember your visits to Starbucks and others with me. Do you think you go there because their coffee is the best?

But coffee is like vitamins.

What's strange about vitamins is that we don't see them working, we are advised to take them regularly but we don't know if they are actually beneficial in any way. That's why we hesitate to take them and it's hard to turn them into a habit even if there is great benefit to them.

Different painkillers

They are mostly not helpful to us in the long run. But we still like to consume them. Just like Starbucks, it's expensive and coffee itself has disadvantages (of course, you know about the amount of sugar in Starbucks drinks). A latte drink is about 500 calories and costs $3,000 a year if you buy it every day.

So how does Starbucks sell this expensive vitamin as a painkiller that is beneficial?

Painkiller sectors are those that we cannot live without.

This means you will become attached to the product, and Starbucks will link you to the product by providing a comfortable place suitable for work away from home.

By making the product part of your routine and linking it to a motivator (work time, meetings, etc.), you find yourself in the café as usual.

This story is different in the East.

In China, for example, tea farms are everywhere, and hot drinks are 70% tea (my personal favorite tea is Chinese black tea).

Coffee consumption increases by 25% annually. Because the new generation sees cafes as a "trend" or "fashion" in Saudi dialect. Simply put, going to certain cafes makes me appear smart, educated, rich, etc.

Cafes in the East are homes of the pain of not feeling successful.

What we notice is the possibility of presenting a vitamin as a painkiller.

It depends on the product position. If it is good and useful it will not succeed greatly, but if positioned as a painkiller it will become a product that cannot be lived without.

The principle is related to repeat consumption. The more consumption is part of the routine, the more it becomes an addiction.

The book "The 5am Club". Just from the title, it turns from "How to improve your morning routine?" to "This is the routine of entrepreneurs and successful people. Are you successful? You need the book."

The book sells affiliation, not information.

5am club - book

Let's take a practical example

A digital course about writing might be called "Write faster". This is added value (vitamin), something good, but good luck convincing people who are convinced of their current situation to join you.

After researching and understanding the real target audience's desires, we decided to change the title to "Learn to write articles that make companies contact you and make the community recognize you as an expert in your field."

The pain we address? Finding customers and selling.

Because most writers write, but don't understand marketing, sales, or social media. They love writing. So by solving marketing challenges through writing, this is the dream.

Yes, in the course they will learn to write better, but now there's a motivator. And there's routine. The more I need to find customers, the more I will write. Until I write, I need to review the course.

Here is the reliance.

Note that even to reach the painkiller, we had to specialize in the topic and the audience. Course-market fit again.

Why do we need this persuasion strategy?

People don't make decisions today to get value in the future, but for immediate value. Or the better option? To solve current problems.

The environment today is bad, and we've known this for decades and haven't moved. Today the danger is clear and imminent, so we started to panic. The issue has become a priority.

Starbucks turned the vitamin into a painkiller and succeeded.

Creating the need to work outside the home for better productivity created a habit. Habits are hard to break. Even though they are expensive.

The right positioning for any product doesn't come from thinking with yourself. But from talking to the target audience and monitoring their behavior.

Seek to understand before being understood.

Which product is a vitamin and which is a painkiller.

Painkillers work and sell better.