How aware is your market of your product?

The markets stage of awareness

When selling a product. You need to tap into the deepest desires of the public. Then, we must determine the market's current stage of awareness. The more aware your market is, the easier the selling job and the less you need to say.

Every market passes through each stage of awareness. Each of these stages is separated from the others by a psychological wall. On one side of that wall is indifference and the other, intense interest. To find out what the current stage of awareness is, we need to ask certain questions.

• How conscious is your customer of that desire? How close is it to the surface of his consciousness? (Unaware)
• Is he even aware that he has a problem or a need? (Problem aware)
• Is he aware that the desire can be satisfied or the problem solved? (Solution aware)
• Does he realize that the solution lies in a product like yours? (Product Aware)
• Does he realize that the solution lies in your product by its name or at a given price? (Most aware)

Let's explain each stage of awareness, starting with the most aware and proceeding to more and more difficult problems, requiring more and more creative solutions.

The most aware.

This is when the customer already knows your product, what the product does and that he wants it. He just hasn't gotten around to buying it yet.

Here, your ad is simple, it just needs the name of the product and a bargain price. The rest of the ad can summarize the most desirable selling points. Then, add the name of the store or a coupon, and close. Here we take advantage of all of the advertising that everybody has done on the same product.

For example: A bottle of Johnny Walker black label sold by a liquor store. We already know that the prospect is fully aware of this particular bottle of whiskey. Its add on, needs to be the price, a free gift or instant delivery. We just need to come up with a phrase, but the price is still the most important part of this ad.

The prospect is aware of the product, but doesn't want it.

He is not convinced if your product does a good job at solving his problems. Here, in the approach to this market-is the great bulk of all advertising. We are faced with one of seven tasks.

(a) To reinforce your prospects desire for your product.

(b) To sharpen his image of the way your product satisfies that desire.

(c) To extend his image of where and when your product satisfies that desire.

(d) To introduce new proof, details, documentation of how well your product satisfies that desire.

(e) To announce a new mechanism in the product which enables it to satisfy that desire even better

(f) To announce a new mechanism in your product that eliminates former limitations.

(g) To completely change the image or the mechanism of the product, in order to remove it from the competition of other products claiming to satisfy the same desire.

In all seven cases, the approach is the same. You display the name of the product within the headline or in an equally large logo, and use the reminder of the headline to point out its superiority— including visualization, documentation, and mechanization. Showcase your products' superiority.

They are aware of the solution. Unaware of your product.

We need to introduce a new product to the market. Here, the prospect recognizes that he wants what the product does, but he doesn't yet know that a product exists—your product— that will deliver that for him.

Here, we have two problems.

1. Pinpoint the problem, as yet-uncrystallized desire, that is slowly spreading all over groups of people.
2. To crystallize that desire and its solution so sharply and so dramatically that each prospect will recognize it at a glance.

There are 3 simple steps to this process.

1. Name the desire and its solution in your headline.
2. Prove that that solution can be accomplished.
3. Show that the mechanism of that accomplishment is contained in your product.

Here, execution is important. The copywriter contributes to the value of the product in the public mind and to its total volume of sales. Here the innovator comes into play. This is the domain of the idea man.

As an idea man. He needs 3 attributions.

• Analysis of the audience and their position in relation to your product.
• Be able to sense trends as they start, and gauge their force and direction.
• Capture a desire, a hope, a fear in words. Focus on emotion and give it a goal.

Examples

“light a lucky, and you'll never miss sweets that make you fat”

“how to win friends and influence people”

“the 4-hour workweek”

The 4-hour workweek is basically a book on schedules and productivity. But that sounds boring. It did the job of taping into the desire to have a descent work-life balance that people desperately need. Here, amorphous desire has been crystallized in the headline.

“How to win friends and influence people” needs no verbal twist.

The prospect is aware they have a problem.

How to introduce products that solve needs.

Here, the prospect has—not a desire—but a need. He recognizes the need immediately. But he doesn't yet realize the connection between the fulfillment of that need and your product.

This is the problem-solving ad. You start by naming the need and or its solution to your headline. Then dramatize the need so vividly that the prospect realizes just how badly he needs the solution. And then present your product as the inevitable solution.

Again, this type of ad turns from the most naked statement of the need alone to the most complicated verbal twist to bring it to the peak of impact. To start at the beginning, the most effective possible headline for your particular problem may be as simple as this.

“Headache?”

Here only the problem itself is mentioned-nothing more.

Or, you can state both the problem and solution immediately.

“Stop maddening itch.”

Combine tree elements. Problem. Solution. Removal of limitation.

“Lets portable transistor radios play on ordinary house hold current.

Or you can prevent a future problem before it occurs

“Look mom, no cavities!”

What if we don't know what the problem is? We may know just a part of the problem—for example—people's embarrassment at speaking poor English. But you may not be sure of an effective way to teach them. Here, the emphasis of a single word— the emotional sharpening of an already easily identified image-provides the answer.

If the solution to his need has been promised before— if the direct statement of the solution has lost its force and freshness-then verbal twits are needed to restore that novelty.

”the 4 hour workweek”

How to open up a completely unaware market.

And finally— the most difficult. The prospect is either not aware of his desire—or he won't honestly admit it to himself without being led into it by your ad— or the need is so general and amorphous that it resists being summed up in a single headline— or it's a secret that just can't be verbalized.

This is the outer reach of the awareness scale. These are the people who are still logical prospects for your product and yet in their own mind, they are hundreds of miles away from accepting that product. It is our job to bridge that gap.

Each of these stages is separated from the others by a psychological wall. On one side of that wall is indifference and on the other, intense interest. A headline, which will work for a market in one stage of awareness, will not work with a market in another stage of awareness.

Most products are designed to satisfy a specific need or desire. They are born into markets that are in at least the third or fourth stages of awareness. They may therefore never be faced with the problem of an unaware market.

However, many products actually fade out of the awareness of the public—or out of public acceptance—at some time or other during their history. The desire they satisfy dries up, or other products serve it better, or they are branded “old-fashioned”.

• When sales drop even if the advertising budgets increase.
• When the name of the product no longer sells as much.
• When a direct statement of the desire or need that the product fulfills no longer sells.

Then the product needs to be reborn, and its problem is the problem of opening up an unaware market. This is the most difficult and challenging problem of all. There are some rules that can eliminate many blind alleys, and set you face to face against your task. Planning a headline for a completely unaware or resistant market, then, is first of all a process of elimination. Here are the first parts.

1. Price means nothing to a person who does not know your product or want your product.
2. The name of your product means nothing to a person who has never seen it before. Keep your product out of the headline and don't use prominent logos.
3. A direct statement of what your product does, what desires it satisfies, or what problem it solves, simply will not work. This is not a sophistication problem, is a complete indifference problem. Don't mention the desire it satisfies.

So, you can't mention price, product, function, or desire. What do you have left? Your market, of course. And the distinct possibility that by broadening your appeal beyond price, product, function or specific desire, you can increase reach in a potential market and make money at a fantastic rate.

Concentrate on the market's state of mind. Call your market together. Write an identification headline. Here, you have no intention of selling. You echo an emotion, an attitude, a dissatisfaction that picks people out from the crowd and binds them together in a single statement.

This post is what I learned from the teachings of Eugene Schwartz

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