Ok if you remember 2 posts ago (a looooong time online   I told you the five main stages of awareness a prospect goes through in relation to your product or service. I also told you that whenever we’re called in to help a client who’s not doing as well online as they’d like to it’s because they’re marketing to their prospects at the wrong stage of awareness.

In my previous post we started the process of how to market to your prospects depending on what stage on their awareness cycle they were at, we started at phase 1- Your prospect knows about their problem and knows that your product can solve their problem.

This time we move on to stage 2:

Your prospect knows about their problem but does not know that your product can solve their problem.

Here, your prospect isn’t completely aware of all your product does, or isn’t convinced of how well it does it, or hasn’t yet been told how much better it does it now that you’ve updated it.

For 95% of people reading this will be the state of awareness of your prospects. Here we are dealing with a product which is known, which has established a brand name, which has already linked itself with an acknowledged public desire, and has proven that it satisfied that desire.

Here your online ad is faced with one of seven tasks:

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

(b) To strengthen your prospects understanding of how your product fulfils his need;

(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 your product to enable it to satisfy that desire even better;

(f) To announce a new mechanism in your product that eliminates former limitations (as your prospect perceived them);

(g) Or to completely change the image or the mechanism of that 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 either in the ad headline or in an equally large logo and use the remainder of the online advert to point out its superiority. The body of the ad is then an elaboration of that superiority including visualisation, documentation, mechanisation. When you have finished weaving in every strand of your product’s superiority, your ad is done.

Here are sample headlines presenting solutions to all seven of the problems of this state of awareness:

(a) To reinforce your prospect’s desire for your product by using:

ASSOCIATION:

“Steinway—The Worlds finest Piano.”

Notice how Dove targets skin dryness in this ad aimed at men, no fluffy language required to get the click just an offer to get rid of dry skin, proof that it works (the clinically proven part) and a strong call to action (get $1 off)

(b) To sharpen your prospect’s image of the way your product satisfies that desire (Much like the sensory sharpening illustrated above; but concentrating here on the physical product itself, or on the mechanism by which it works):

“skip the lines” aka get VIP service with Hertz Gold, this ad worked very well for hertz prospects who wanted a more VIP service.

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

Alamo telling their prospects that they also serve Europe with their network of car rentals.

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

Here’s a simple example of this from weight watchers, note how the use of a man also appeals to women in this ad.

(e) To announce a new mechanism in that product to enable it to satisfy that desire even better:

Here Hertz polled it’s customers to find out their problems, a major one was poor quality in car sat nav so Hertz fixed it  by joining forces with Tom Tom

(f) To announce a new mechanism in an existing product that eliminates former limitations:

Here auto trader adds new features to it’s flagship car selling platform, the addition of more images removes a former limitation that consumers had flagged.

(g) Or 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.

Here tide differentiates itself from other laundry detergents by telling people that tide cleans their washing machine too, anyone who washes clothes will realise that their washing machine must be clean to clean so this ad works.

Here we are dealing with the State of Sophistication of our market—the amount of exposure the y have already had to similar products . Every product during its life history encounters this problem .

In part 4 we move on to the less aware markets—with their more difficult online advertising challenges, these prospects require MUCH different skills and creativity to reach them.

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