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As a savvy marketer you know that it’s important to understand who you’re talking to before you begin marketing. However, understanding your ideal client involves more than knowing their demographics or even their lifestyle information. You must know how aware they are of your products and services.
What does your prospect know about what you offer and the satisfaction that it delivers to them?
Just like a promotion that speaks to single women 45-55 years of age most likely won’t catch the attention of teenage girls, a headline that works to a market in one stage of awareness will not work to a market in another stage of awareness.
Identifying Prospect Awareness
With the help of my mentor, the late Eugene Schwartz – a veteran direct response copywriter – here are four awareness levels from his book Breakthrough Advertising:
1. Fully Aware
This is the easiest market to address. Your prospects know about your product – what it does – and know that they want it. They just haven’t gotten around to buying it yet.
2. Not Completely Aware
They know about your product, but aren’t completely aware of everything it does, or not convinced of how well it does it, or haven’t yet been told how much better it does it now. This, according to Mr. Schwartz, is “the great bulk of all advertising.” Some examples of headlines written to this state of awareness include: “Joy – the costliest perfume in the world” or “At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in a Rolls Royce is the electric clock.”
3. Less aware
Your audience either knows or recognizes immediately that they want what the product does; but don’t yet know that there is a product – your product – that does it for them.
4. Completely unaware
This is the most difficult market to address. These folks are either not aware of their desire or need – or they won’t honestly admit it to themselves without being lead into it by your message – or the need is their own secret that just can’t be verbalized yet.
How aware are you when it comes to understanding how aware your prospects are of the product/service you have to offer?
Give this some thought as you’re putting together your marketing plan. Then, when you’re ready to sit down with your creative team, you’ll be equipped with the information you need to pass on to get a great job done.
Please share your thoughts in the comment section below because I’d love to hear from you.
