How Do You Choose the Main Problem You Want to Be Known for Solving?

Your Audience Can Have Several Problems Without All of Them Belonging in Your Positioning

Your audience can have several real frustrations at the same time.

They may want more leads, better sales, clearer content, more visibility, a stronger profile, or an easier way to explain what they do. None of those concerns has to be false just because you choose one main problem for your positioning.

The mistake is treating every frustration as if it belongs in the positioning statement.

Positioning has a narrower job. It needs to tell people what problem your business actually helps solve.

That means separating the main problem from all the things that can happen around it.

For example, someone may say they want more leads from LinkedIn. That may be true. But if people don’t understand what the business helps with, the problem you solve may be unclear positioning rather than lead generation itself.

The lack of leads can be one consequence of the problem without being the problem your offer directly fixes.

The same thing happens with visibility, sales, and content quality. Those may all improve when the main problem is addressed, but that doesn’t mean they all need to become part of the positioning.

If you try to include every frustration, the business starts to sound like it solves everything.

A clearer approach is to choose the problem that best represents the help your offer actually provides, then let the other frustrations remain what they are: related consequences, symptoms, or concerns that can still show up in your content.

Your audience can have many problems.

Your positioning needs one main problem people can clearly connect with your business.

Start With What Your Audience Says Is Wrong

The first version of the problem usually comes from what your audience already notices.

They may say, “I’m not getting enough leads,” “My content isn’t working,” “People don’t understand what I offer,” or “I’m posting consistently, but nothing is coming from it.”

Those statements are useful because they tell you what the person is experiencing.

You don’t need to correct them immediately or jump straight to what you think the deeper problem is. Start by capturing the situation the way the audience sees it.

That gives you something concrete to work from.

If the person you chose in How Do You Choose One Audience for Your LinkedIn Positioning Without Excluding Everyone Else? keeps running into the same frustration, that frustration can help you understand why they would pay attention to your content or look for help in the first place.

But the first thing they notice doesn’t automatically become the problem in your positioning.

Someone may notice low sales, for example, while your offer actually helps fix unclear messaging. Or they may notice weak engagement while your work is really focused on helping them create more useful content.

The visible frustration is the starting point, not the final answer.

Write down what the person says is wrong before you try to explain why it’s happening. That keeps the problem connected to something the audience actually recognizes while giving you room to look more carefully at what your business is built to help solve.

Separate the Frustration From the Problem Causing It

What your audience notices first isn’t always the problem your business should be positioned around.

Someone might say:

“I’m not getting leads from LinkedIn.”

That tells you what they aren’t getting. It doesn’t tell you why.

To find the more useful problem, look at what keeps happening around that frustration.

Maybe their posts cover too many unrelated topics. Their profile describes several different services. People read their content but still aren’t sure what they should contact them about.

In that situation, the missing leads are the result they’re concerned about. The problem underneath them may be unclear positioning. That’s the distinction the Content Authority System uses when it shows how several visible issues can point back to one problem the business can directly help solve. 

That changes what belongs in the positioning.

If your work helps people clarify what their business stands for, who it helps, and what they should be known for, positioning yourself around “getting more leads” can create the wrong expectation. You’re naming an outcome the customer wants instead of the problem your work directly addresses.

So when someone tells you what’s wrong, keep asking what’s happening underneath it.

What are they doing now?

Where does the current effort break down?

What keeps preventing the result they want?

Those questions help you move from the frustration the customer notices to the problem your business is actually equipped to solve.

The two are connected, but they aren’t automatically the same.

Choose the Problem Your Offer Can Actually Help Solve

Once you’ve looked underneath the visible frustration, the next question is whether your offer is actually designed to help solve the problem you found.

That matters because an important customer concern can still sit too far downstream from the work you provide.

Someone may want more sales, for example. But if your service helps them clarify their positioning, you’re not directly solving every part of the sales process. You’re helping fix the problem that makes it harder for the right people to understand what they offer and why it matters.

That’s the problem your positioning should reflect.

It can be tempting to choose a bigger-sounding problem because it feels more valuable.

“Get more clients.”

“Increase revenue.”

“Grow your business.”

Those outcomes may matter to the customer, but they can create the wrong expectation if your offer doesn’t directly help create them.

The Positioning Worksheet uses a practical standard here: choose the problem your work can directly help solve, not one simply because it sounds expensive or urgent. It also asks you to name the problem underneath the frustrations that your work can honestly address. 

So look at what you actually do for the customer.

What problem is your product or service designed to improve?

What can you reasonably help them change?

What would still be accurate even if you removed the bigger outcome they ultimately hope to achieve?

That’s usually a better positioning problem because it matches the help the customer is actually buying.

Your positioning becomes clearer when the problem sounds important because it genuinely matters to the customer, not because you made it sound bigger than the work you provide.

Don’t Build the Whole Business Around One Narrow Symptom

The problem can also be too narrow.

You might choose something your offer genuinely helps with, but if it only represents one small symptom of the larger problem, it can make the business look smaller than it really is.

For example, suppose your offer helps business owners clarify their positioning so their profile, content, and offers all communicate the same business clearly.

One symptom might be:

“My LinkedIn headline is confusing.”

That’s connected to the work. You may absolutely help fix it.

But if you position the entire business around confusing LinkedIn headlines, people can start thinking that’s the main thing you do. They may never understand that the headline problem is only one place unclear positioning shows up.

The same thing can happen in your content.

If your positioning is built around one narrow symptom, you can end up teaching that same small issue again and again because that’s what you told the market your business is about.

Meanwhile, the larger problem stays hidden.

The better question is whether the problem you chose is broad enough to represent the full help your offer provides.

You want enough room to discuss the different ways the problem appears without making the positioning so broad that it stops meaning anything.

A useful positioning problem sits above the individual symptoms.

Those symptoms can still become LinkedIn posts, examples, questions, and situations. They just don’t have to carry the entire business.

That gives potential buyers a clearer understanding of the larger problem you help solve and the range of ways your work can help address it.

Look for the Problem That Explains Several Connected Frustrations

A useful main problem can sometimes explain several frustrations that look separate at first.

Imagine a business owner notices three things on LinkedIn:

Their profile visits are inconsistent.

People respond to posts but don’t seem to understand what the business helps with.

And potential buyers sometimes ask what they actually sell.

You could treat those as three different problems.

Or you could look at what connects them.

If the owner’s posts discuss several unrelated topics, the profile describes different services without showing how they fit together, and the offer is explained differently from one place to another, unclear positioning may explain enough of those frustrations to become the more useful problem.

That doesn’t mean unclear positioning is automatically the cause of every weak profile visit, confusing response, or sales question.

The point is to reason through the pattern.

Ask whether several frustrations keep pointing back to the same issue your business can actually help solve.

If they do, that underlying problem may represent the work better than any one symptom.

Now the positioning has enough breadth to make sense of several situations.

You can talk about a confusing profile, disconnected content, unclear offers, or people misunderstanding the business without pretending those are four separate businesses or four unrelated problems.

They can all be different ways the same larger problem shows up.

But don’t force that connection just because you want one neat answer.

Sometimes two frustrations really do have different causes. Your job is to find the problem that explains the connected issues well enough to represent what your offer helps with, while leaving unrelated problems out.

That gives you one main problem without making it vague.

Make Sure the Problem Gives You Enough Useful Content to Teach

The problem you choose also needs enough depth for you to teach from more than one angle.

That doesn’t mean you need dozens of completely different problems.

It means the one main problem should contain enough real questions, situations, causes, consequences, decisions, and mistakes that you can keep helping the same audience understand it more clearly.

For example, if your positioning is built around unclear positioning itself, you could teach about why someone’s profile feels disconnected from their offer, why their posts keep attracting the wrong people, why several services are difficult to explain together, or why the audience doesn’t know what to contact them about.

Those are different lessons.

They still connect back to the same larger problem.

That’s useful because recognizable authority doesn’t come from repeating one piece of advice over and over. It comes from helping people understand the same area of work more deeply across different situations.

If the problem you chose only gives you one thing to say, it may be too narrow.

You may find yourself writing the same post with slightly different examples because the positioning is centered on one small symptom instead of a problem with enough depth to support continued teaching.

A better problem gives you room to explain how it shows up, why it happens, what it affects, what decisions improve it, and what people need to understand before they can solve it.

That gives your content variety without making your business look like it changes from post to post.

Check the Problem Against the Result Your Offer Helps Create

The problem also needs to connect cleanly to the result your offer helps create.

If the connection feels forced, something is probably off.

You should be able to look at the problem and say, “If this improves, what becomes different for the customer?”

For example, if the problem is unclear positioning, the result might be that the right people can understand what the business helps with and why the offer matters.

That relationship makes sense.

But if the problem is unclear positioning and the result suddenly becomes “double your revenue,” the jump is too large. Clearer positioning may support better business results, but the positioning itself doesn’t control everything that affects revenue.

That’s why the problem and result need to be checked together.

The problem tells people what your work helps improve.

The result tells them what becomes possible or easier after that problem is addressed.

You don’t need to choose the final result in this section. But you do need to make sure the problem you’ve chosen can lead naturally to a result your offer is actually designed to help create.

Ask yourself:

If this problem improves, what change should reasonably follow?

If you can answer that clearly, you probably have a problem that fits the work.

If you can’t, the problem may be too broad, too narrow, or too disconnected from what your offer actually does.

How Do You Choose a Result for Your LinkedIn Positioning Without Overpromising? goes deeper into choosing that result.

For now, make sure the problem gives you a logical path to the change your work is meant to help create.

Choose the Problem That Best Represents the Help Your Business Provides

The main problem in your positioning shouldn’t be every frustration your audience experiences.

It also shouldn’t be one narrow symptom that only represents a small piece of the work you actually do.

You’re looking for the problem that sits between those two extremes.

It should be clear enough that the right person understands what you help with, broad enough to explain several connected situations, and directly connected to what your product or service is designed to improve.

That means starting with what your audience notices, looking underneath the visible frustration, and checking the problem against the work you actually provide.

If several connected frustrations point back to the same issue, that can help you see the larger problem more clearly. But the connection still has to make sense. You don’t need to force every customer concern underneath one explanation.

The final test is practical:

Does this problem accurately represent the help my business provides?

If it does, you now have something useful to build the rest of the positioning around.

The next decision is the result.

Once this problem is addressed, what becomes different for the customer? That answer gives you the other side of the positioning: not only what you help solve, but what your work helps make possible.