Welcome to Episode 29 of Write with Influence. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the importance of awareness. The way that you talk to your prospect (in your ad copy or marketing message) should depend on their current state of awareness.
What is your prospect’s level of awareness when they read your marketing?
Eugene Schwartz’s fantastic book Breakthrough Advertising outlines the five stages of a prospect’s awareness – this refers to the degree to which your prospect knows about their own pain points, solutions, your product, and your product’s ability to solve their problem. I will be walking you through these different stages of awareness today and then talking about the type of content that you should focus on for each stage so that you can identify where your prospects are and know exactly what you need to say to them.
Listen to discover:
- The five stages of a prospect’s awareness.
- How to avoid frustration by pinpointing which stage your prospect is at.
- An additional state of awareness you need to consider when addressing your prospects.
- Industry examples of how to advertise according to the different stages of awareness.
Knowing when it’s time to transition from attracting leads and trust-building to sales is crucial and making an offer at the wrong moment really can lose you customers. When you understand the stages of awareness, it gets a lot easier to organize your marketing materials and speak to prospects in a way that will get their attention. In order to emphasize the value of Schwartz’s philosophy, I have included a couple of sketches to get you thinking about the consequences of treating every prospect the same – be sure to stick around until the end for a bonus sketch with possibly the world’s worst doctor.
Sometimes it’s easy to think that your prospects are only on either end of the scale, but this is a mistake. I am going to show you how to gauge where your biggest audience lies so that you can take all of the marketing you’re already doing and make it more effective.
Links:
The Write With Influence Course
5 STAGES OF MARKETING AWARENESS
DON’T BORE CUSTOMERS IF THEY’RE READY TO BUY
AMY HARRISON:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Write with Influence. How are you doing? I hope you’re having a good week and if you hit some bumps in the road, well, I hope they pass and that you’re on to brighter and better things in no time, because it’s not always easy being a grownup. I don’t know if you’re like me, but some days I feel like I can tackle any challenge with a smile in my heart and a whistle while I work and then other times, well, the other night I couldn’t sleep because I wasn’t sure if I had the right balance of things in my compost bin – I had no idea that you could put egg boxes and cardboard in your compost. I’ve been overloading it with greens for many months now and I’ve got to stop. Come on Amy, next job…
Right, so today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the importance of awareness. What is your prospect’s level of awareness when they read your marketing whether that’s your sales page, newsletter or emails in your sales funnel? Awareness of what? You might ask. And that is a very good question. Eugene Schwartz, a legendary copywriter, outlined five stages of a prospect’s awareness in his fantastic book, Breakthrough Advertising. If you’re serious about studying copy, if you really like to think about the themes and the psychology of sales angles when you write, I highly recommend it. So I thought today I’d walk through these different stages of awareness and then talk about the type of content that you want to focus on for each stage. So first let’s run through the different stages.
Stage one is unaware. At this stage, your prospect is oblivious to the problem, she doesn’t even know it exists. Instead, she keeps heaping on vegetable scraps and coffee grounds into the compost without breaking it up with dry materials, not realizing what carnage she may be creating six months down the line.
Stage two is problem aware. Stage two means your prospect knows something is wrong, but she doesn’t know there is a solution. For example, someone may have pain in their joints, but they put it down to old age – they just accept it. They don’t realize that perhaps changes in diet or exercise or taking supplements may help.
Stage three is solution aware. This is where your prospect is aware that there’s a problem, they know that there are solutions, and they are shopping around for solutions. Now, he or she may not know how to choose the right solution for, and they may not know that you offer a solution.
Stage four is product aware. At this stage, the prospect knows about you. They know what you offer, but they need a little more convincing before moving to the next stage, which is stage five.
Stage five is most aware. At this point, your prospect wants what you have, they just need to see the right offer.
There’s a couple of things I’ll say about these stages briefly, and then I’ll add my own awareness stage that I think you need to think about when writing copy. First, not all customers will be at the same stage. That may sound obvious, but I’ve seen marketing courses advise you to pick the stage of awareness that your customer is at as though you may just have one and that’s unlikely to be the case because the more marketing you do, and the more visibility you have, the more people will move through those stages of awareness. However, I would say it’s a good idea to start by focusing on the biggest section of your target market. If your business is brand new, in a brand-new niche, and a brand new product, you’re going to be doing a lot of educational content because the majority of your target market may be at stage one. But if you’re launching a product to an audience that you’ve been marketing to for a while, well, those people may be at stage four or five, and you would tweak your marketing content accordingly. I’ll give you some examples of what to think about for each stage.
Now, I’d add in another awareness state into this mix that I think you, as the marketer, need to think about. And this isn’t always mentioned when people are talking about the five stages of prospect awareness and this additional state of awareness is your awareness of the last possible piece of your marketing that your customer may have seen. Now, that’s as a bit of a mouthful, but let me give you a few examples. When I’m asked to write a sales page, for example, I don’t just want to know about the target market, the pain points, transformation, etc. One of my big questions is also going to be, where is that traffic coming from? What are people seeing before they get to the sales page? Before they visit it, what else are they seeing? Is it a cold ad? Is it from social media? Is it an email list? Because there should be continuity in that message.
Another common example is, a business wants to send out an email blast promoting an upcoming webinar or online event, but they don’t always stop to think, when was the last time I emailed this list. This particular person on my list, what was the last communication that I had with them? If it wasn’t for three months, then you may need to reintroduce yourself or remind them why they’re on that list. If it was yesterday, perhaps you can build on or refer to the content they’ve already received so it seems more conversational and personal. So, it was always worth asking before you sit down to write a piece of marketing content or sales copy, what was the last piece of content that someone may have seen before they came to this bit? Because it can give you some valuable information.
So, Eugene’s stages of awareness are a really important consideration when it comes to the type of content that you create because if you go direct to an offer pitch and people don’t even know that they have a problem, you’re likely going to get very little engagement, but it’s just as much of a problem to over pitch to people who are familiar with you and what you sell. The distinction between these different stages and what you serve as content is important because if you treat every prospect the same, if you force everyone to go through your entire sales content, no matter what their stage of awareness or where they are in their journey with you, it’s very likely that you’re going to frustrate your audience.
[OPEN SCENE – Elite Training Camp]
Amy: Hi, I’m looking for the elite training camp.
Member of staff: Yes, of course. Can I take a name?
Amy: Amy. A M Y.
Member of staff: Here you are, here’s your wrist band. If you want to go over there, the first class is about to start. You’ll be partnered with Jessica today.
Amy: Which one is Jessica?
Member of staff: There she is – green shorts, red t-shirt, Dora the Explorer lunch box.
Amy: What??
Member of staff: Can someone do a tissue run with Jessica? Yes, get a hankie to her quick! So, first you’re going to work on your catching and your throwing, and then we’ll take you through a tipple-tail.
Amy: A tipple-tail? What the flip is that?
Member of staff: Don’t worry, it’s not as difficult as it sounds. You’ll crouch down, tuck your head under and then roll forward. There will be a crash mat. Jessica is really good at them.
Amy: I’m sorry. There must be so mistake. I’m an Olympic athlete. I’m representing Great Britain in Karate.
Member of staff: That’s not an Olympic sport.
Amy: It’s just been added.
Member of staff: I can’t just put you in the advanced class, that would look like favoritism.
Amy: That’s not favoritism. It’s pure meritocracy.
Member of staff: Well, we definitely don’t want to be accused of that. I’m sure today will be a breeze for you. We’ll be doing an audit of all the athletes ability here, and we’ll be judging on poise and posture and how big your smile is. Are you happy? Do you know it? Can you clap your hands for me? See, Jessica’s on board. You’ll learn a lot from her. Jessica, take this nice lady to the crash mats and show her how to do a tipple-tail. Now she’s a little bit nervous so be nice to her, okay? Hold hands.
Amy: Fine. Nice to meet you, Jessica. Why are your hands sticky? I dinner with Seb Ko once you know ..
Jessica: I like moons and unicorns.
[END]
Okay, so let’s walk through these different stages and look at the kind of messaging you want to consider for each stage.
Stage one is, as I said, unaware – this person has no idea there’s a problem. So, how do you get their attention? Well, you have to talk about something that they are aware of. It has to be something that they can recognize about themselves and it’s got to be something that is causing the problem that they don’t know that they have. Thich sounds a little bit complicated and it is going to take some thinking about on your part if this is the audience that you want to reach, but one thing to think about is their behavior. So, is there something that your prospect is doing that is contributing to a problem? We see this a lot in health advice, for example: sun tanning beds can lead to skin cancer/ if you eat these types of food, you may experience these ailments later in life. So, think about the problem that you solve. Is there a behavior that is causing that problem to occur? For example, it might be, why apologizing might mean you never get promoted, or why stretching before a workout can lead to injury. Take my compost example, I swear I still have more sleep to lose over this. It was a simple article that said, “If you’re not putting enough dry product into your compost, you won’t be able to use it.” And this caught my attention because it was a behavior that I recognized, and it highlighted the consequence I didn’t want. Then in the rest of the article, it showed me an alternative behavior. So, stage one content – what is someone doing that they know they are doing but could be causing them a problem that they don’t know about.
Now, stage two – problem aware. This is where our prospect knows there’s a problem but doesn’t know there’s a solution. In in this stage, you’re going to want to show them that the problem is painful but more importantly, the problem is unnecessary. I’ve talked about using symptoms before to show that you understand the prospect’s problem and I’ll do a deeper dive on symptoms in an upcoming episode, because I do get a lot of questions about how to use them effectively, but at this stage of awareness, you’re going to want to focus on why the problem does not need to be a problem. If they’re already aware that something is wrong, you may not need to agitate the pain too much. They could already be very frustrated. But what you do have to overcome here is the belief that they have to put up with that problem. Humans are very adaptable, and it has helped us to survive for many, many years, but unfortunately, this also means that we can be very good at accepting a problem instead of solving a problem. So, stage two – this is someone who doesn’t even know there is a solution. The content that you’re going to want to share here is what’s possible. And you’re really going to want to drive home that that current discomfort doesn’t have to be endued. So, you may want to explain why they deserve to have a better life than the one that they currently have or show examples of other people that have solved the problem – that’s the kind of content that is going to get people’s attention at this stage. It’s all about showing your prospect that there is another, better way.
Let’s say someone is in a job that they hate, and you help people explore career paths based on personality assessments. Your messaging could be as simple as explaining that look, the nine to five grind doesn’t have to exist, there’s more opportunity for varied and diverse careers that suit all types of personalities, skills and strengths. You may even then go on to showcase people who you’ve helped, or you might pick some surprising career choices to educate this person that there are other options available to them. You might then also drill down about why they deserve more and why they don’t want to look back on their life and realize they don’t have any adventure stories because for 40 hours a week, they were just showing up. Now how far we would actually go with that line of messaging depends, but it just shows you the slice of the story that we would talk about here at this stage of awareness. It’s all about showing the other way – what else is possible, compared to what they know.
Now on to stage three. This is solution aware. Your prospect knows they have a problem, they know there is a solution, but they haven’t chosen one and they don’t know about yours. So, at this stage content that’s going to be useful is content that guides your prospect and helps them make a decision. This could be guides, fact sheets or comparisons of different solutions. For example, “How to choose the right camera for vlogging” or “Best cameras for vlogging in 2021”. For this type of audience at this stage, you’re really priming them for a sales message. If you can reach them with authoritative, trustworthy content that helps them see how different solutions provide different experiences, then you’re putting yourself front of mind when it comes to the time to make a decision, and that is what happens in stage four, because stage four is all about being product aware. They know that there are solutions on the market, they also know about your solution but they’re just not sure why yours is better than the others. At this stage, the messaging and the content is all about differentiation. Your customer doesn’t have to know that a solution exists, they need to know which one to choose. So, this isn’t, should I get a dog? This is, what dog should I get? And the answer to that of course is, as many dogs as you can possibly get in your house – any type of dog. Dogs are brilliant.
Differentiation – there are many ways to carve out your differentiation and to be honest, the biggest amount of my time when creating sales messaging is to uncover and describe this differentiation. One approach I like to point out is why other methods don’t work as well as yours. I have to say that this isn’t about bashing the competition or blaming your customer because they’ve tried something that didn’t work. For example, you wouldn’t say that your customer hasn’t found their ideal career because other employment coaches aren’t as good as you, they’re rubbish, or that your customer is lazy and unimaginative. Instead, you would just point out the difference in solutions and then position yours as superior. In the career coach example, you might say, “Job opportunities have changed drastically in the last couple of years so what your career counselor told you at school might have been great advice at the time, but it just didn’t include the thousands of new vocations that are now available.” Or you might say, “A lot of career advice gets you to look at your strengths and weaknesses and advises you on a career, but it doesn’t necessarily look at how that career relates to your personality characteristics and this can affect the happiness you have in your job. As a result, you might find that you’re advised to take a type of job that can align with your capabilities, but leave you miserable. So, if you’re a high performer at work, but feel unfulfilled at the end of the day, then this might be what’s happened to you.” Stage four is all about differentiation – your content is still going to talk about the pain and the discomfort of the problem, but it’s used to reinforce the value of your specific solution.
The final stage of awareness is number five – most aware. This means they know about your product and they are close to buying it, but they may just need to see the right offer for them. At this stage, it’s all about reducing friction and making the path to the product as simple as possible. I always think a great example of this are sites like Airbnb, booking.com or hotels.com. They’re not selling you on the idea of taking a break or going away, they’re not talking about the pain of picking the wrong hotel or having a bad holiday, they give you a search bar and allow you to pick the dates and boom, you’re straight into the listings. When you’re thinking about content at this stage, which may be a sales page, or it may be an email announcing a new offer on the back of extensive marketing – clarity and simplicity are going to be good buddies of yours. Make everything clear – what the offer is, what people get, how much it is, what happens when they sign up etc. And make it simple – let them know how easy it is to accept your offer. Perhaps you provide a good guarantee or returns process to build trust and confidence?
I recently purchased a camera that I’ve been wanting to buy for a while. I was definitely at the I know I want this stage, but I wasn’t sure who I was going to buy it from. I knew the camera and the lens were going to be the same from all providers, but the level of service and the level of trust … that was something that I had to figure out. I ended up buying it on eBay and the clarity and the message from the seller that I chose was what persuaded me. It mentioned that it had the original seller’s warranty and free returns for 30 days – very simple, very clear, and helped build confidence around that sale. So, just to recap, the five stages again are:
- Stage one: Unaware – oblivious that there’s a problem.
- Stage two: Problem aware – they know something’s wrong, but they don’t know there’s a solution.
- Stage Three: solution aware – aware of solutions but hasn’t chosen one.
- Stage four: Product aware – knows about you but needs convincing that you are the best (that’s all about differentiation).
- Stage five: Most aware – wants what you have but needs to see the right offer.
Bear all these stages in mind when writing sales and marketing copy. Sometimes it’s easy to think that your prospects are only on either end of the scale. That is, you either have to do a really long and hard sale trying to convince everyone from start to finish, which could be frustrating if someone is ready to buy, or we just assume we need to let people know what we have and then we’re surprised when we don’t make sales. Do your research, try to gauge where your biggest audience lies and start with that content. That’s all for this episode, I will be back with you soon. I’m going to go and add some egg boxes to my compost so that I can sleep at night. And remember that with stage five, if people are really, really, really ready for what you have, please make it simple for them to get it.
[NEW SCENE – Doctor’s office]
{Amy knocks on the door}
Doctor: Come in. What seems to be the problem?
Amy: I fell over in the garden while I was composting and I’ve got this deep cut in my shin. It won’t stop bleeding.
Doctor: Oh yes. That is nasty.
Amy: Can you help?
Doctor: Let me ask you, do you want to know the secret ingredients for the ultimate success in treating deep cuts? Would you like the medical freedom to know that you can solve your own cuts at any time?
Amy: It really is bleeding.
Doctor: Let me tell you the shocking, true story of how an ordinary GP skyrocketed his practice with one simple trick for solving deep cuts.
Amy: I’m feeling a little faint.
Doctor: Why not download my ultimate guide, blueprint, playbook and cheat sheet for gash resolutions? Amy: I think it might be getting infected.
Doctor: This simple formula I’m about to share is a proven step-by-step process to rapidly stop bleeding and administer the stitches. You also get a free seven-day trial which gives you access to valuable resources such as bandages, antiseptic, medical gauze, and more. I’ll also reveal five unusual things that patients do when treating a cut, and number three will shock you.
Amy: Jeez …
Doctor: But first, perhaps you’d like to hear what other patients just like you have said about the service? Mandy had a deep cut above her left eye, but now it’s no longer bleeding, she can see again, and it saved her marriage. Isn’t that amazing? You can sign up now and
{Amy faints}
Doctor: Damn it! Nurse?
Nurse: Yes Doctor?
Doctor: I think she’s passed out. Can you take her away? I don’t know what it is. I just can’t seem to convert these leads into sales. Put her down for a follow-up call in a week’s time. I’ll see if I can get her with my abandoned sales pitch.
Nurse: Yes, doctor.
[END]
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