Understanding your online audience’s phases of awareness
Not all online traffic is equal. Businesses often forget that their site visits and success metrics aren’t just numbers.
They’re living, breathing people that are driven by behavior.
By understanding and creating content to suit the various online awareness stages of that “traffic”,
you’ll not only draw more – but efficiently turn those clicks into conversions. After all, businesses aren’t built on visits alone.
This article will show you the three main awareness stages of online traffic, what sort of content fits in these, and a way for auditing your existing content.
Remember, every customer goes on a journey. this is often about ensuring you’re at the finishing line when they’re able to convert.
The importance of knowing the notice stages
Now, bear with us, but answer this: would you are trying and sell roller skates to a neonate or its parents?
a touch extreme, yes, but sometimes these make the simplest examples.
the purpose is that the baby may grow into someone that needs or wants a pair of roller skates, but they’re not at that stage yet.
Understanding the various stages your potential customers are at and the way they’re checking out your products/services (both directly and indirectly) will offer you the accuracy to focus on them better.
These stages are awareness, consideration, and decision. Just knowing these won’t be enough, you would like a balance.
A website that features content only suited to the primary stage of awareness will struggle to convert,
whereas a site only focused on conversions may struggle to urge any traffic to convert in the first place.
Research and roleplay will assist you massively here. to urge within the head of your audience and understand
what their journey seems like, you ought to be asking yourself “What would I do if…” at almost every corner.
To better explore these stages and the way they apply to content, we’ll stick with one example for the subsequent three sections.
We’ll advance from the baby with the roller skates, and instead, specialize in a hypothetical
Manchester-based SME that sells hearing aids and is looking to grow its customer base.
Stage 1: Awareness
This awareness stage is when the customer is simply beginning to realize they have a drag which they need an answer.
Before this stage, they’ll not have even realized that their issue might be fixed, or that it had been a problem, to start with.
Good content at this stage plants seeds in their head that they don’t get to continue this manner anymore.
With that in mind, you don’t want to overwhelm the reader here.
Yes, they’ll now realize that they need an answer, but it’s exceedingly rare that a bit of content can tick all three boxes in one go.
Those being – making them conscious of the matter, helping them consider the choices, then plan to accompany your option. That’s why we’ve different content for various stages.
In our example of the tiny business in Manchester that sells hearing aids, the content at this stage may appear like this:
‘Five common signs of hearing loss
‘Data shows that deafness is on the rise’
‘When to hunt help together with your hearing’
If we were writing content for this fictional company, we wouldn’t open these articles with “Now you’re here, view our huge sale on hearing aids!”.
Instead, we’d relate to the issues the reader could also be having.
In fact, throughout all of those stages, your language should be empathetic, solution-focused, and relatable to the reader in the maximum amount possible.
Picture a lady in her 40s that has been playing guitar during a rock group since her youth. For her, not having the ability to listen to the nuances of music would almost desire to have an oxygen supply stop.
She could be having some hearing issues, but her search won’t start immediately with “hearing aids near me”.
She’d attempt to study her issues if they’re common and the way they will be fixed. In these pages, we’d relate to hearing problems and ultimately
(but without sounding too sales-y) suggest that hearing aids have helped many people by the top.
By writing content targeting this stage, you’ll be there right at the beginning of the consumer’s journey.
While they’re going to be more likely to convert at the top of that journey, and honest content strategy is all about balance.
This brings us to the subsequent stage.
Stage 2: Consideration
If the primary stage is all about letting them know they need a drag, this is often all about showing them how they will fix it.
Here, the reader would actively be trying to find an answer and considering their options.
While our hypothetical business could also be experts at helping deafness, there are other ways to try to do so than simply providing hearing aids.
We can’t just assume that hearing aids are instantly the well-liked option for each visitor
. The challenge here is about balancing knowledge, empathy, and delivering content that’s objective and genuinely useful to your consumer.
However, while you educate your audience about their options, you’ll add in smart CTAs that prompt the person towards a landing page that will drive revenue for your business – making this more a choice that your consumer made vs what you wanted to force down their throat.
Sticking to our example of that Manchester SME selling hearing aids, content at this stage may appear as if this:
- ‘Six ways to assist your hearing loss’
- ‘The five best hearing aids within the UK’
- ‘Why even teenagers should consider hearing aids’
As this is often the center stage, you’ll want to avoid leaning an excessive amount towards ‘awareness’ and an excessive amount towards ‘decision’.
You won’t want to talk right down to the reader and spend paragraphs explaining the very basics of deafness.
you furthermore may want to open up and ramble about your great new sale on hearing aids.
Picture a scale, with ‘inform’ on the left and ‘sell’ on the proper. you would like this to be pretty evenly balanced, but leaning slightly to the left and on the side of ‘inform’.
Show the reader their options, and educate them on the solutions available.
Then, if/when they decide that what you provide is the fix for them, they’re already on the proper website!
they only need a page where they will convert and make that final judgment. That leads us on nicely to…
Stage 3: Decision
We mentioned before how awareness content gets you ahead of the buyer at the beginning of their journey.
While there are tons useful to being there at the start, it’s content suited to the present stage that turns clicks into customers.
That’s why pages here will move far away from the blog/article format of the content suggested for the opposite stages.
Instead, you would like pages designed specifically for selling the reader on your product or service, with the choice to convert right there.
For our hypothetical hearing aid business, the pages designed for this stage may look like this:
- Category pages showing off their best brands
- Product pages where you’ll purchase hearing aids
- A service page to arrange a hearing test (with a contact form)
These pages are going to be laser-focused on selling,
while still informing the readers why your business may be a more sensible choice for them over all of your competitors.
This suggests an enormous specialization in USPs.
In the case of our hypothetical hearing aid company, these may include free delivery, rock bottom prices in Manchester, or maybe five years of free insurance.
Your USPs should all be sung about on these decision-focused pages.
Remember, now, they know they need whatever it’s you’re selling, so you don’t get to go to great lengths to elucidate the very basics of your offerings.
Just why your business is the best for them. Ensure to possess some positive reviews scattered across these pages.
The content here should be easy to read, scannable, and supported by images if you think that that’s something your audience is curious about (always look to ascertain what competitors are doing).
Outside of the copy, for eCommerce businesses, the trail to buying these products should be clear,
with large buttons to point out to the user that this is often where you’ll buy them. If you’re a lead generation business,
then there should be many CTAs (calls to action) to point the user to contact forms, phone numbers, or email addresses.
Conclusion
Like with any marketing or psychology model, there are variants of this with even more steps.
However, if you boil it down, we believe that only three steps are necessary for many businesses.
The important thing to recollect is that an equivalent user won’t undergo
this complete journey on your website in one session.
A balanced content strategy means you’ll attract any potential customer at any stage,
regardless of where they’re in their purchasing journey.
The danger of getting an imbalance in your content strategy is that
there could be many blog posts around the first awareness stage,
but users don’t realize that you simply can solve the matter they now realize they need. On the flip side,
you’ll have most of your content focused on the ultimate stage,
but you’ll struggle to attract the purchasers that don’t even realize they have you.
That’s why we recommend you run a content audit on your website to ascertain how balanced your current output is.
Create a table just like the one below and add your existing content thereto.
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