If you’re blogging to promote your services, physical products or digital offerings, you understand that getting a return on investment for the time and effort you put into blogging is important. On the other hand, if you spend all your time relentlessly pitching your wares, you’ll find that you alienate a good portion of your prospective audience.
The problem bloggers face from a selling standpoint is that various readers are at different awareness levels, depending on how long they’ve been reading and how much exposure you’ve provided to your offer. I was reminded by the great John Forde of Copywriter’s Roundtable that this is not a new problem.
Jack recently pointed out that Eugene Schwartz tackled the issue in Breakthrough Advertising back in 1966. Schwartz broke down prospect awareness into five distinct phases:
1. The Most Aware: Your prospect knows your product, and only needs to know “the deal.”
2. Product-Aware: Your prospect knows what you sell, but isn’t sure it’s right for him.
3. Solution-Aware: Your prospect knows the result he wants, but not that your product provides it.
4. Problem-Aware: Your prospect senses he has a problem, but doesn’t know there’s a solution.
5. Completely Unaware: No knowledge of anything except, perhaps, his own identity or opinion.
As usual, we often find that the challenges we face in modern marketing have already been thought through decades before by very bright people like Schwartz and David Ogilvy. Let’s take a look at how the 5 stages of awareness contained in a 40-year-old book can help you craft content that works for your blogging goals.
The Five Stages of Reader Awareness
1. The Most Aware
These are long-time readers who may have been specifically attracted to your offer as well, but have held off on becoming a customer for one or more reasons, even though they’re interested. These are the people you can speak most directly with, but you’ll need to make sure your direct messages are not hurting your chances with those at different awareness levels.
Strategies: Take these readers “off road” for periodic offer specific messages delivered via another channel, such as an email autoresponder. You can also do occasional offer announcement posts in between regular content, or tack on a P.S. to a relevant article.
2. Product-Aware
These people are still not sure if what you offer is right for them, even though you’ve educated them about it with a white paper or other tutorial. They don’t want to be pummeled with offer information, because they’re hung up at an earlier stage of the process.
Strategies: Often, a white paper or tutorial series of posts is not enough to convert these people. This is why there is value in establishing a second content channel, either by autoresponder or a separate blog (or both). The key is to deliver real content with independent value, but that also demonstrates a benefit of your offer and a link to your sales page at the end.
3. Solution-Aware
This person has a need, perhaps subscribes to your blog, and yet doesn’t know you offer a solution. This the perfect person to offer a white paper, free report, multi-post tutorial delivered by email or simply from a dedicated part of the blog.
Strategies: Keep in mind that without a specific way to follow-up with this person related to the educational content you’ve provided (see above), you’ll have more fence sitters than is desirable.
4. Problem-Aware
This is the classic example of the person who needs to be convinced to subscribe to your blog and begin a relationship with you. They might have arrived via search engine but they don’t know or trust you. While strong content with independent value is critical to all readers of your blog, these people most need to see the value up front to get on board as a subscriber.
Strategies: We’ve covered this topic quite a bit, so if you’re a new reader, check out these posts:
- 10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers
- Four Simple Steps to More Blog Subscribers
- How to Get 6,312 Subscribers to Your Business Blog in One Day
5. Completely Unaware
This is your typical social media news traffic. They aren’t necessarily looking for anything about you or your offer, but they’re responding to a piece of content you put out. This is the reason why I don’t favor link baiting with off-topic content. Sure, you get backlinks, and that’s good. But wouldn’t it be better if you got links and boosted your subscriptions too?
Strategies: When you’re creating content that is specifically designed to attract attention and links, keep it related to your ultimate goals. Traffic just for the sake of traffic is a waste of time when you’re selling something other than ads.
Value First
The blogs that attract audiences in the first place offer valuable content—it’s as simple as that. While pitching relentlessly from your blog may work for a limited group of Internet marketing types, it likely will ruin your blogging effectiveness for most businesses.
Again, you’re blogging in the first place to promote your business, and there’s no reason to be shy about that fact. But if the vast majority of your posts don’t offer independent value (telling more than selling), you won’t have as much trust with your audience, and you likely won’t have much of an audience at all.
P.S. If you’re not selling something with your blog (or even if you are), you might check out how to add a substantial revenue stream with a membership site.
29 comments... add one
#1 Latarsha Lytle → 10.31.07 at 1:17 pm
Thanks for your insight. Indirect selling requires that you stand armed and ready to meet the individual needs of each of the five stages.
The key is to know how to handle each stage in such a way that your web visitor feel enticed to come back for more.
#2 Tim → 10.31.07 at 1:27 pm
Great information. Until now…I never realized or understood how to break down potential clients/customers and then how to deal with each. Speaking from limited experience, I’ve only attempted to target types 1 and 2; it looks like I should think a bit further as to who I try to reach and how I attempt to reach them. Thanks for the great post.
#3 Codrut Turcanu → 10.31.07 at 1:30 pm
Hello Brian…
This article is top-notch and arrived at the right time for me…
Sincerely, you could apply this information on both on your web site and blog. Hey, you could even apply it to any type of product (free, or paid), service, and even to a free newsletter, ezine or opt-in list…
What do you think?
Regards,
Codrut Turcanu.
“Succeeding Against All Odds!”
#4 Matt Jones → 10.31.07 at 2:36 pm
I will keep these tactics in mind now that I’m selling Blogging Fingers, they may come in useful.
#5 Social Media Explorer : Why Networking Socially Beats Social Networking Every Time → 10.31.07 at 2:52 pm
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#6 luvtosurf → 10.31.07 at 4:34 pm
Great advice. I have subscribed to your blog in my Google Reader. I’m learning a lot and your copywriting tips really helps.
#7 luvtosurf → 10.31.07 at 4:36 pm
I meant to say your copywriting tips help (not ‘helps). Please correct if you accept my comments. Thanks.
#8 Bootstrapper » How to be an Authority in Your Niche/ Market in 10 Easy Steps → 10.31.07 at 6:45 pm
[…] Add your voice. Gradually add your own commentary to your reportage. Base what you say on your knowledg of the niche. However, be careful not to be insulting or nitpicking. The average blogger can get away with this, but you cannot - not if you’re representing your business. The other thing you can’t do talk at readers. If you’re going to sell, be indirect. […]
#9 Hilary Shantz → 10.31.07 at 6:55 pm
I agree entirely that the kind of selling we may do on a blog should be indirect, people are not subscribing to be sold to, they want to learn something, or at least be entertained. Direct selling is a turn off to me when I go to other people’s blogs.
#10 rickey gold → 11.01.07 at 12:29 am
Thanks, Brian. I was just talking to a client this morning about making sure you’re giving visitors to your blog (or site) something of value. This is great reinforcement for what I was selling earlier today!
#11 Sean DSouza → 11.01.07 at 12:59 am
I don’t completely agree.
At Psychotactics.com, we give away loads of information absolutely free. And yet, clients don’t always make the leap between editorial and sales. And while some people may consider website sales and blogs to be different, in essence they’re the same (just different technology).
So yes, you can take a customer to water, but you have to let them know where to drink. Most bloggers believe otherwise. And there’s a flaw in their sales thinking. You can tell. And you can sell. In the same post. In the same email newsletter. On the same page.
#12 Brian Clark → 11.01.07 at 6:44 am Copyblogger
Yes Sean, of course. All good content of this sort will be selling as well as telling. That’s the point of the exercise.
But as you well know, it’s about perceived value. Does the reader feel you’re selling more than telling? And are they at a stage of awareness where that’s ok?
So, I guess I’m not clear which part you’re not agreeing with. Is it something I actually said, or just your feelings about bloggers in general? :)
#13 Want To Get $300 For Christmas? → 11.01.07 at 8:51 am
Matt, are you really selling Blogging Fingers, why and for how much?
If you have any other suggestions
or comments, let me know :)
Cheers,
Codrut Turcanu.
“How To Succeed Against All Odds!” Break The Ice!
#14 Dan Schawbel → 11.01.07 at 12:10 pm
This is consumer behavior at it’s best.
#15 Christine Kane → 11.01.07 at 2:59 pm
This is an interesting post.
I facilitated a retreat recently. And one woman told me that she found my blog first. She liked what I wrote, decided that maybe my music didn’t suck, got my music, and then eventually decided to come to a retreat. I’ve witnessed this evolution of my “customers” quite often. But I do very little to push it. I make it available - free song download, autoresponder, mailing list.
The challenge of being the product AND the blogger is a huge one for me. And walking the line between being the creator and the salesperson is weird too! So, thanks for this.
#16 Sean D'Souza → 11.01.07 at 6:08 pm
Oh, no two ways about it. Value needs to be prominent, especially if you’re going the route of education first, and then sales next. What I can’t understand however, is the fact that most bloggers are afraid to sell off their blog.
They see a post as purely educational. And yes, there’s nothing wrong with that post being purely educational. But right under that post, there’s no harm with putting a link to resources that may be products or services.
It’s not something you said… :)
It’s just bloggers in general.
When the Internet first rolled out websites, there was this quaint concept of ‘websites that didn’t sell’ too. And that’s changed so much. Now of course, we run into bloggers who won’t sell either (mostly because they’re afraid to). And that’s what I think is crazy.
#17 Sean D'Souza → 11.01.07 at 6:11 pm
What I’m saying is that the sales don’t need to be indirect. They need to be direct and overt. Sitting side by side with your content. As you have done with your post, where you’ve sold the ‘membership site secrets’.
Most bloggers don’t and won’t do that.
And that’s just plain silly.
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[…] matter the market, people are at different levels of knowledge about problems and products. The Blogger’s Guide to Indirect Selling is aimed at bloggers, but the principles of reader awareness apply to any sort of copywriting or […]
#22 Shane Kane -TitleSuccess.com → 11.07.07 at 12:21 pm
Providing useful and thought provoking information has been my most successful marketing tactic. There’s an increasing amount of web users that don’t respond well to hard sell marketing tactics, especially on blogs.
#23 Stephan Miller → 11.14.07 at 4:20 pm
Thanks for the tips. I know banner ads just don’t cut it. My blogs get as much traffic as my affiliate sites and I haven’t yet found a way to get 10% of what I get from other sites out of them.
This may be the way.
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#25 Opt-In List Building → 12.14.07 at 3:41 am
I never really thought of like this before. This some great info I will start to implement some of this in to my business plan and I will post back to let you know how it worked out for me.
Thanks
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#29 John C. A. Manley → 02.15.08 at 1:31 pm
Relentless pitching rarely works, unless your pitches and your content are so integrated that it’s impossible to be offended or annoyed. That’s a delicate art.
I think one solution to mutliple levels of awareness is to immediately start breaking your lists up into at least smaller autoresponder lists.
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