Understanding the three awareness stages in your online audience

Traffic is not all created equal. Site visits and success metrics can be viewed as numbers, but businesses often forget that they are not just numbers. They are people who are motivated by behavior. Understanding and designing content that fits the various awareness stages of this traffic will help you not only get more clicks, but also convert those clicks efficiently. Businesses are not built solely on visits.

This article will explain the three stages of awareness that online traffic goes through, how content fits into these stages, and how to audit your content. Every customer is on a journey. It’s about getting to the end when your customer is ready to convert.

It is important to understand the awareness stages

We are going to ask you this question: Would you sell roller skates for a baby or its parents? This is a little extreme, but these are sometimes the best examples. It’s possible for a baby to grow up and want to use roller skates but they aren’t yet at that stage.

Knowing the stages of your potential customers and how they search for your products/services, both directly and indirectly, will help you target them more accurately. These are the stages of awareness, consideration, decision. These are not enough. You need to find balance.

Websites that only focus on the first stage of awareness are less likely to convert. Sites that only concentrate on conversions will not convert.

Roleplaying and research will be a huge help. You can get inside the mind of your audience to understand their journey and ask them “What would you do if …” was at every corner?”

We‘ll use one example to illustrate each stage and their relationship to content in the following sections. Let’s move on from the little girl with the roller skates. Instead, we will focus on a Manchester-based SME selling hearing aids that is trying to expand its customer base.

Stage 1: Awareness

This awareness stage is when the customer realizes they have a problem. They may not have realized their problem could be solved or that it was an issue before this stage. This stage is where good content plants seeds that will convince them to stop going down this path.

Keep this in mind. You don’t want the reader to feel overwhelmed. Although they might now recognize that they need a solution, it is extremely rare for a piece to be able to address all three of these boxes. These are – helping them to understand the problem and helping them to consider their options before they decide on the best option. We have content that is appropriate for each stage.

The content of a small Manchester business that sells hearing aids may look something like this:

• 
  “Five common signs and symptoms of hearing loss”
  
• 
  “Data shows that hearing loss has been on the rise”
  
• 
  “When to seek assistance with your hearing”
  

We wouldn’t have opened these articles with the words “Now you’re there, check out our huge sale on hearing aids!” if we were writing content for this fictional business. Instead, we would relate to the readers’ problems. Your language should be as relatable as possible to the reader at all stages.

Imagine a woman in her 40s who has been playing the guitar in a band since childhood. It would be almost like her oxygen supply was cut off if she couldn’t hear the music. Although she might have hearing problems, her search may not end with finding “hearing aids nearby me”. She would like to find out about her problems, what they are and how they can be treated. We’d discuss hearing problems in these pages and, without being too salesy, suggest that hearing aids have saved millions of lives by the end.

This stage is where you can reach the consumer at the beginning of their journey by writing content. They will convert more at the end of this journey. However, good content strategies are all about balance. We are now at the next stage.

Stage 2 – Consideration

The first stage is about telling them that they have a problem. This is the second stage. It is about showing them how to fix it. The reader would be actively looking for a solution, and considering all options.

Although our business might be an expert in hearing loss treatment, there are many other options. It is not enough to assume that hearing aids will be the best option for everyone. It is important to balance knowledge and empathy while providing content that is objectively useful and useful to your customer. While you inform your target audience about the options available, smart CTAs can be used to direct them to a landing page that will generate revenue for your company. This makes it more personal and allows your consumer to make their own decision.

Using the Manchester SME that sells hearing aids as an example, this stage of content might look something like this:

• 
  Six ways to treat your hearing loss
  
• 
  “The five best hearing aids in Britain”
  
• 
  “Why teenagers should consider hearing aids”
  

This is the middle stage. You should avoid leaning too heavily towards ‘awareness’ or too heavily towards ‘decision’. It is not a good idea to talk down to the listener and go into detail about hearing loss. It is also not a good idea to go on and on about the great hearing aids you just sold.

Imagine a scale with ‘inform’ on the left and “sell” on the right. This should be fairly evenly balanced. However, it should lean slightly to the left and lean to the side of inform span>

Let the reader know their options and inform them about the available solutions. If they decide that the solution you offer is right for them, then they are already on the right site! They only need a page that allows them to convert and make their final decision. This leads us nicely to…

Stage 3 – Decision

As we mentioned, awareness content puts you in front the customer at the beginning of their journey. Although there is a lot to be gained from being at the beginning line, it’s content that is suited for this stage that converts clicks into customers.

Pages here will not be in the blog/article format suggested for other stages. You want pages that are designed to sell your product or service and include the possibility of conversion.

The pages that are designed for our hypothetical hearing aid company may look something like this:

• 
  Category pages displaying the best brands
  
• 
  Products pages where you can buy hearing aids
  
• 
  This service page allows you to arrange a hearing test (with contact form)
  

These pages will be laser-focused to sell, but still inform the reader why your business is better than all your competitors. This requires a strong focus on your USPs.

These may include free delivery, the lowest Manchester prices, or five years of insurance. These pages should be used to highlight your USPs. You don’t have to explain everything about your products and services to them. Your business is what they want. These pages should have positive reviews.

This content should be simple to read and scannable. If you believe that your audience is interested, images can be added to the content.

Ecommerce websites should have clear copy and large buttons that clearly show where they can purchase these products. CTAs (calls-to-action) should be plentiful if you are a lead generation company. They should point users to email addresses, phone numbers, and contact forms.

Key Takeaways

There are many variations of this model. We believe that three steps is sufficient for most businesses. It is important to remember that a user may not complete the entire journey on your site in one go. Balanced content strategies will allow you to attract potential customers at all stages of their buying journey.

A content strategy imbalance can lead to too many blog posts about the first awareness stage. Users may not realize you can solve their problem. You could also have all your content focused on this final stage but not be able to attract customers who don’t know they need you.

To find out how balanced your website output is, we recommend that you conduct a content audit. Make a table similar to the one shown below, and then add your content.

We’ll use the same ideas that we used to build our Manchester business in the following example:

You should be able identify gaps and plan your content strategy to fill them in. Because all successful journeys require a map, ‘Mapping’ is a wonderful term.

You’re not doing anything but publishing random content without a purpose. Quality content strategy starts with understanding the customer and being there for them at every step.

Jack Bird, the Content Operations Lead at Manchester-based SEO agency and digital marketing agency Add Person , is responsible for content operations.

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Search Engine Watch’s first article, Understanding the three stages of awareness for your online audience, appeared first on Search Engine Watch.