It’s not about you. Know the 5 stages of awareness.

Written communications are about your audience!

Whether you’re putting together a website, a social media campaign or any kind of corporate/marketing communication program, you often tend to focus on the product, service or idea you’re promoting. It’s understandable. But your communications effort is NOT primarily about you, it’s about your audience and their needs. Not your product but their problem.

In fact, the first question they may ask about you and your product is, “Why should I care? As a consumer, you do the same thing.

So try getting into their heads by showing that you understand their problem and offer a viable solution – and they just might hesitate to click you off and go for coffee.

Not about length, but understanding

A clear example of this kind of challenge is deciding how long your landing page should be. But the real question isn’t about length or how much copy and content you include. It’s about your knowledge of your audience and their level of awareness when they arrive on your landing page. That’s why many writers, including the most legendary among us, will answer the question with the five stages of awareness:

1. Most Aware: Visitors know and trust your brand. They arrive at your landing page directly, or after searching for your brand name plus a word like “sale,” “coupon,” or “new release.”
2. Product Aware: Visitors know you offer solutions they may need but they have yet to choose your product or service. Visitors arrive after searching for your brand name, through a partner or affiliate site, or via email.
3. Solution Aware: Visitors know solutions exist for their pain but don’t know about yours. Visitors arriving via your blog or through referrals from another blog.
4. Pain Aware: Visitors are aware of their problem but not of any solutions. Visitors arrive through unbranded long-tail keyword phrases.
5. Unaware: People who are not necessarily in need at this point. It’s unlikely that the Unaware would arrive on your page, though they might accidentally land there after following a link – but that makes them a very weak lead and not necessarily worth optimizing for.

What is motivating your audience?

By understanding how aware your visitors are when they arrive on your landing page, you’ll have a better understanding of what’s motivating them and how much you need to say to persuade them to choose you.

For example, those who are Most Aware need just a little copy – largely focused on your offer. But those who are only Pain Aware will require a lot of education to get to the point of trusting and choosing you.

Because awareness levels vary so greatly among your prospects, you might want to craft multiple targeted landing pages. You may want to start by writing a landing page for those who are Pain Aware and then cut sections to create a page for Solution Aware, repeating that process to create a page for Product Aware, and finally creating a shorter version of the page to serve Most Aware.

Bottom line: It always, always, starts with understanding your audience and their needs, so you can do your thing to meet them. While you may have a great product or service, remember, it’s not about you.