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Marketing Solution: Solve the Problem, Close the Sale 

A Marketing Solution is problem solving. 

The marketing solution does not involve selling the product, it sells the solution. Or as an old marketing cliche goes, "You don't sell a drill bit, you sell a hole."  The marketing solution using a more common example may be to say that people don't buy ab machines from those TV ads, they buy washboard abdominals. People don't actually buy products or services per se.  They buy the benefits they expect to derive from those products or services. They buy solutions to problems. The marketing solution involves communicating these benefits rather than product features. 

The problem-solving approach of the marketing solution provides the impetus for people to act in their own best interest, to improve their life in some way or another. The marketing solution should communicate this information of benefits in a way that helps people to connect with the benefit in an emotional way.  You may find that people may rationally consider the many features of various products then never seen to purchase or make a decision. Features usually do not sell, benefits do. Although people seem to think relatively rationally, they frequently actually make decisions emotionally.  The best opportunities to actually make a sale are to tie the benefits of a product, to your market in an emotional way. 

Some of the problems to be solved by your marketing solution might be critical to an individual’s survival or may be relatively whimsical. Following the psychological theory of Abraham Maslow, people's needs are arranged in a hierarchical fashion beginning with their basic physiological needs (food and water) moving all the way to higher-level psychological needs such as loving relationships and self-fulfillment in their occupations. After people have fulfilled their basic survival needs, then they are more interested in pursuing needs higher up the needs hierarchy. Marketing solutions which address these basic needs, and provide solutions to these problems will have more of a tendency to motivate people to actually act to provide for their own self-preservation. Also, marketing solutions geared toward any of these basic needs (including prestige, status, health concerns etc.) communicated in an emotionally charged way, will always enhance the level of marketing success.  The mission of marketers is to provide people with products and services which fulfill their needs at every level. 

The marketing solution recognizes that everything starts with a felt need, whether it may be for a new flavor of ice cream, new tires for your car or a haircut.  Something in you says, "I have a problem….," "I want…," or "I need…". The felt need then prods you to look for ways to satisfy your craving. You then search from among the various alternatives and make a purchase.  You use the product and are actually helped by its use to solve a problem or perform some task and you're satisfied.  Or maybe it doesn't work like you thought it would, in which case you may be looking for an alternative product. You are now looking for the marketing solution which provides an alternative product to solve that problem.  In any case, what motivates you to buy a product or service is some need, usually associated with a problem, to which you're looking for a solution. 

Some of the information from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Marketing Basics 

By Paul Susic M.A. Licensed Psychologist Ph.D. Candidate President/CEO Susic Psychological Consulting P.C.