Understanding the three awareness stages of your online audience

Not all traffic is equal. Businesses often forget that their site visits and success metrics aren’t just numbers – they are living, zoetic people who are driven by behavior. By understanding and creating content to fit the variegated sensation stages of that “traffic”, you can not only yank increasingly – but efficiently turn those clicks into conversions. After all, businesses aren’t built on visits alone.

This vendible will show you the three main sensation stages of online traffic, what type of content fits in these, and a method for auditing your existing content. Remember, every consumer goes on a journey. This is well-nigh making sure you’re at the finish line when they’re ready to convert.

The importance of knowing the sensation stages

Now, withstand with us, but wordplay this: would you try and sell roller skates to a newborn victual or its parents? A little extreme, yes, but sometimes these make the weightier examples. The point is that the victual may grow into someone that needs or wants a pair of roller skates, but they’re not at that stage yet.

Understanding the variegated stages your potential customers are at and how they’re searching for your products/services (both directly and indirectly) will requite you the verism to target them better. These stages are awareness, consideration, and decision. Just knowing these won’t be enough, you need a balance.

A website that features content only suited to the first stage of sensation will struggle to convert, whereas a site only focused on conversions may struggle to get any traffic to convert in the first place.

Research and roleplay will help you massively here. To get in the throne of your regulars and understand what their journey looks like, you should be asking yourself “What would I do if…” at scrutinizingly every corner.

To largest explore these stages and how they wield to content, we’ll stick to one example for the next three sections. We’ll move on from the victual with the roller skates, and instead, focus on a hypothetical Manchester-based SME that sells hearing aids and is looking to grow its consumer base.

Stage 1: Awareness

This sensation stage is when the consumer is just starting to realize they have a problem and that they need a solution. Surpassing this stage, they may not have plane realized that their issue could be fixed, or that it was an issue, to uncork with. Good content at this stage plants seeds in their throne that they don’t need to go on this way any longer.

With that in mind, you don’t want to overwhelm the reader here. Yes, they may now realize that they want a solution, but it’s exceedingly rare that a piece of content can tick all three boxes in one go. Those stuff – making them aware of the problem, helping them consider the options, and then decide to go with your option. That’s why we have variegated content for variegated stages. 

In our example of the small merchantry in Manchester that sells hearing aids, the content at this stage may squint like this:

• ‘Five worldwide signs of hearing loss’
• ‘Data shows that hearing loss is on the rise’
• ‘When to seek help with your hearing’

If we were writing content for this fictional company, we wouldn’t unshut these wares with “Now you’re here, view our huge sale on hearing aids!”. Instead, we’d relate to the problems the reader may be having. In fact, throughout all of these stages, your language should be empathetic, solution-focused, and relatable to the reader as much as possible. 

Picture a woman in her 40s that has been playing guitar in a waddle wreath since her youth. For her, not stuff worldly-wise to hear the nuances of music would scrutinizingly finger like having an oxygen supply cut off. She might be having some hearing issues, but her search might not start straight yonder with “hearing aids near me”. She’d try to learn well-nigh her issues, if they’re worldwide and how they can 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 millions of people by the end. 

By writing content targeting this stage, you can be there right at the start of the consumer’s journey. While they will be increasingly likely to convert at the end of that journey, a good content strategy is all well-nigh balance. This brings us to the next stage. 

Stage 2: Consideration

If the first stage is all well-nigh letting them know they have a problem, this is all well-nigh showing them how they can fix it. Here, the reader would urgently be looking for a solution and considering their options.

While our hypothetical merchantry may be experts at helping hearing loss, there are other ways to do so than just providing hearing aids. We can’t just seem that hearing aids are instantly the preferred option for every visitor. The rencontre here is well-nigh balancing knowledge, empathy, and delivering content that is objective and genuinely useful to your consumer. However, while you educate your target regulars well-nigh their options, you can add in smart CTAs that prompt the person towards a landing page that will momentum revenue for your merchantry – making this increasingly a nomination that your consumer made vs what you wanted to gravity lanugo their throat.

Sticking to our example of that Manchester SME selling hearing aids, content at this stage may squint like this:

• ‘Six ways to help your hearing loss’
• ‘The five weightier hearing aids in the UK’
• ‘Why plane teenagers should consider hearing aids’

As this is the middle stage, you’ll want to stave leaning too much towards ‘awareness’ and too much towards ‘decision’. You won’t want to speak lanugo to the reader and spend paragraphs explaining the very nuts of hearing loss. You moreover won’t want to unshut up and ramble on well-nigh your unconfined new sale on hearing aids.

Picture a scale, with ‘inform’ on the left and ‘sell’ on the right. You want 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 once on the right website! They just need a page where they can convert and make that final decision. That leads us on nicely to…

Stage 3: Decision

We mentioned surpassing how sensation content gets you in front of the consumer at the start of their journey. While there’s a lot of value to stuff there at the starting line, it is content suited to this stage that turns clicks into customers.

That’s why pages here will move yonder from the blog/article format of the content suggested for the other stages. Instead, you want pages designed specifically for selling the reader on your product or service, with the option to convert right there.

For our hypothetical hearing aid business, the pages designed for this stage may squint like:

• Category pages showing off their weightier brands
• Product pages where you can purchase hearing aids
• A service page to organize a hearing test (with a contact form)

These pages will be laser-focused on selling, while still informing the readers why your merchantry is a largest nomination for them over all of your competitors. This ways a huge focus on USPs.

In the specimen of our hypothetical hearing aid company, these may include self-ruling delivery, the lowest prices in Manchester, or plane five years of self-ruling insurance. Your USPs should all be sung well-nigh on these decision-focused pages. Remember, at this point, they know they want whatever it is you’re selling, so you don’t need to go to unconfined lengths to explain the very nuts of your offerings. Just why your merchantry is the weightier for them. Ensure to have some positive reviews scattered wideness these pages.

The content here should be easy to read, scannable, and supported by images if you think that’s something your regulars is interested in (always squint to see what competitors are doing).

Outside of the copy, for ecommerce businesses, the path to purchasing these products should be clear, with large buttons to show the user that this is where you can buy them. If you’re a lead generation business, then there should be plenty of CTAs (calls to action) to point the user to contact forms, phone numbers, or email addresses.

Key takeaways

Like with any marketing or psychology model, there are variants of this with plane increasingly steps. However, if you swash it down, we believe that only three steps are necessary for most businesses. The important thing to remember is that the same user might not go through this unshortened journey on your website in one session. A balanced content strategy ways that you can vamp any potential consumer at any stage, no matter where they are in their purchasing journey. 

The danger of having an imbalance in your content strategy is that there might be plenty of blog posts virtually the first sensation stage, but users don’t realize that you can solve the problem they now realize they have. On the flip side, you could have most of your content focused on the final stage, but you may struggle to yank in the customers that don’t plane realize they need you.

That’s why we recommend you run a content inspect on your website to see how well-turned your current output is. Create a table like the one unelevated and add your existing content to it. 

In the example here, we’ll use the ideas we used for our Manchester business: 

While mapping your pages to this, you should be worldly-wise to hands identify where gaps are and then plan your content strategy virtually filling those in. ‘Mapping’ is a unconfined term considering all successful journeys involve a map.

If you’re just publishing random content with no overall purpose, you’re stumbling virtually in the visionless and hoping you’ll land up where you want to go. A quality content strategy is all well-nigh understanding journies and stuff there for whatever step of it your consumer is on.

Jack Bird is the Content Operations Lead at the Manchester-based SEO and digital marketing agency, Add People.

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