Triggers

What most people mean

“Pain points.” The problems your customers face. The frustrations. The challenges. Marketers list them on whiteboards and build campaigns around them.

The assumption: if the pain is bad enough, people will act. If we describe the pain well enough, they’ll buy.

Where the definition breaks

Pain doesn’t make people act. You can have a truly painful lower back for more than a decade without doing anything about it. It’s only when you learn that your grandkids are coming over to visit next month that you finally book an appointment with a physio so you can play in the park together.

The back pain is the struggle. The grandkids visiting is the trigger. Without the trigger, it’s just a whole lotta nothing.

This concept doesn’t come naturally to folks. Even seasoned marketers get stuck on “pain points,” which don’t explain what makes people act. And that’s your edge, especially as an underdog going up against big corporations. While they’re busy analysing abstract pain, you can connect with the real, relatable triggers that get people moving.

How we define it at STFO

Triggers are events or situations that motivate people to make progress towards their goals and seek solutions to their problems. They are the most important piece of information you can collect about your segment.

People behave just like TNT. Extremely stable compound. Can be poured into shells. Doesn’t interact with water. Can be shaken vigorously without exploding. But if triggered by a small starter explosive, it will unleash a boom symphony that would leave Michael Bay speechless.

Three characteristics of good triggers:

• Event-based. Specific moments in time, not vague pain points. “I’ve been invited to a wedding this summer” is a trigger. “I feel self-conscious about my appearance” is a struggle.
• Not always tied to a specific decision. They can occur days, months, even years beforehand. Or seconds before.
• Diverse. Biological (hunger), social (seeing someone use a product), emotional (anger), situational (moving house).

Three things make people act: a job, a struggle, and a trigger. Without the trigger, the first two just sit there.

There is always a trigger. Either a single event or a series. Sometimes they’re cumulative and that last event is just “the final straw.” It could be tiny and seemingly insignificant. But there is always one.

What it is NOT

• Not “pain points” (pain is ongoing, triggers are specific moments)
• Not always rational (a friend’s Instagram post can trigger a purchase years later)
• Not something you can create from nothing (you find them and show up when they happen)
• Not the same as “intent signals” (intent data captures late-stage triggers only, missing the early ones)
• Not optional in your positioning work (without triggers, you don’t know when to show up)