How Aware Are Your Prospects

Do You Know If They Know You

When it comes to marketing and advertising, understanding which level of awareness your prospect is can not only help with marketing but also be the difference between the success and failure of your organization.

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Do Your Prospects Even Know Who You Are

As the Founder, Marketer, or Sales Executive of a company, this might come as a shock to you, but your Prospects probably have no idea that you even exist. Furthermore, they might not even be aware that they have the problem that you created a platform to solve.

There are several different awareness levels that you need to understand when thinking about product positioning and copywriting for your content and ads.

5 Levels Of Awareness

When thinking of awareness, there are five levels that you'll hear from prospects, and understanding each of them is valuable to ensuring each of them doesn't get stuck in a lifecycle stage, instead, becomes a customer.

• I Know Who You Are
• I Know Your Product
• I Know What I Want
• I Know My Problem
• What Are You Even Talking About

Understanding which stage your current prospect is in will not only help your sales executives initiate the next steps but also influence all your marketing strategies.

Marketing to people who are aware of the problem they have vs having no clue what you are even talking about is going to be entirely different messaging.

This becomes important as you decide to scale your SaaS organization.

Early adopters are going to be aware of the problems they have and are intentionally looking for solutions whereas the mid-market is going to most likely be behind the eight-ball clueless as to what you're even talking about and will need more educational content to help them understand what you even have to offer.

Level One: I Know Who You Are

Who Are They: These are the people who have engaged with your sales team, they just haven't said yes.

What To Share

When messaging these types of Prospects keep the messaging simple, they don't need all the bells and whistles, so try sharing:

• Promotional Offers
• Customer Reviews focused on their pain points
• Customer Case Studies focused on their pain points
• Key Functional Results & Claims focused on their pain points

How You Target Them

The best way to target these people is sending them either an email segmented from your CRM, calling them on the phone, or running display ads that retarget Prospects who visited your pricing page, demo request form, or are part of a free trial or freemium subscription.

Level Two: I Know Your Product

Who Are They: People who are aware of your product but aren't quite sure if they want it.

What To Share

This group of Prospects is like the awareness group above, so keep it simple but focus more on the emotional and status capabilities to drive an emotional response, try sharing:

• Platform Pictures & Videos
• Promotional Offers
• Key Functions, Emotions & Status focused on their pain points

How You Target Them

If you have your different feature sets or solutions broken out into different pages, you'll be able to understand what the prospect's pain point is and you can send them retargeting ads, email, and have your development reps reach out to them via phone to get them to set up a meeting to talk to sales.

Level Three: I Know What I Want

Who Are They: These are the types of people who are aware of their problems and have an idea of the results and solutions they are looking for but haven't heard of your platform.

What To Share

This group is where it starts to get more difficult because these types of people fit your ideal customer profile but you're not exactly sure what their pain points are or the ideal solution they are looking for is.

When sharing here, you want to share your best functional, emotional, and status claims, varying the ads and messaging until you can get the Prospect to click on something.

This is the reason that when you are looking to tap into new markets or even the mid-market, it gets expensive because you have to start back at ground zero with the new audience and get them to notice you, try sharing:

• Bold Funcational Claims
• Competitive Comparisons

How You Target Them

This group's targeting isn't like the previous ones because you're not going to have any contact information on this group nor have they visited your website so retargeting doesn't work either.

The way you are going to set this up is by relying on competitor hacking and Google Adwords.

Competitor Hacking

Competitor hacking is a social media tactic where you run ads against those who have followed a competitor's business page. Because Prospects are aware of what they want, they are shopping for solutions and have probably spoken to one of your competitors, you just need to introduce yourself.

Google Adwords

Google Adwords takes a similar approach. Your prospects are aware of their problem and they have the intention to find a solution so they are going to be Googling terms and phrases looking for solutions. Running ads against these terms can help you capture attention for your Platform.

Level Four: I Know My Problem

Who Are They: This group is aware they have a problem but either hasn't had the time to think about possible solutions or doesn't have the resources to change anything.

What To Share

This group is going to be a little double-minded. They want to solve their problem but they just don't know how. When sharing with this group the key thing to focus on is the ease of use, their job is tough right now, and you're here to help.

The idea here is that you want to be persuasive and get them to take action, try sharing:

• Problem Pain Points & Solutions
• Bold Functional Claims
• Reactive Emotional Claims

How You Target Them

This group is even tougher because these people have no intentions of finding a solution, they aren't following your competitors, and aren't going on Google to find solutions.

The way you target these guys is by doing lookalike digital advertising where you pull your customer list and share it on social media and say find me people like these people.

You can also run influencer programs where you find people who talk about your industry and have large followings where these Prospects follow them. Aim for Generalist Influencers as they'll have the broadest reach and attract a variety of different followers.

Level Five: What Are You Even Talking About

Who Are They: These are the Prospects who aren't even aware they have a problem and aren't experiencing any type of missing out.

What To Share

You're rarely going to be targeting this group as it's really expensive to gain the attention of someone oblivious to the problem. Unless you have something truly groundbreaking like Steve Jobs did with the personal computer, you're probably going to fall on deaf ears.

Like the previous level, try sharing:

• Problem Pain Points & Solutions
• Bold Functional Claims
• Reactive Emotional Claims

How You Target Them

With this level, these tactics are going to be case-by-case specific. You need to be experimenting with your ideas and the ways you go about targeting these people and you need to be super bold to get their attention. Two great cost-effective ways of reaching a larger audience that can relate to your product are YouTube Preroll Ads and Podcast Advertising.

Concluding Thoughts

When it comes to creating content, copywriting, and paid media, understanding the awareness level of those you're targeting is a must.

Sending the wrong message to someone who isn't ready is not only a waste of time but also might upset them and turn them away from your brand.

Classic Example Of Awareness Gone Wrong

How many times has someone followed you on LinkedIn and immediately sent you a private message and claimed they can change your life, book a meeting now?

You most likely have no idea what they are talking about, what they have to offer, or what pain point they are solving for.

Make sure you don't do this.

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