States Of Awareness Content

UNDERSTANDING STATES OF AWARENESS - PART 1 The book, Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, is one of the best sources for understanding marketing at its core. There’s a concept in there that I’d like to cover today which Eugene calls THE STATE OF AWARENESS… When you can really wrap your head around this concept you’re able to frame your messaging in the best way possible for the prospect to fully grasp your message. Let me introduce these states of awareness to you and then I’ll go into detail to show you a real world example of how this works… STATES OF AWARENESS Level 1 - Prospects Know The Product And Want It Level 2 - Prospect Knows About The Product, Doesn’t Want It Yet Level 3 - Prospect Knows The Solution, Doesn’t Know About The Product Level 4 - Prospect Has A Problem, Doesn’t Know About Solution Level 5 - Prospect Doesn’t Know About Problem Or Solution Here’s a story to help better explain this for you… When I was 15 years old I started weightlifting during the summer for highschool football, I was excited to get started as I had never really done anything in the gym before. (LEVEL 5 AWARENESS - I do not know about any problems and I do not know about any solutions, I’m kind of just dipping my toes into this) After a few weeks of training inside the gym that protected us from the blistering hot Arizona summer mornings, I saw a lot of my teammates getting stronger while I lagged behind. I realized that I was struggling to put on weight and didn’t really see my strength improving all that much in the gym. (LEVEL 4 AWARENESS - I now realized the problem at hand, but I didn’t know about the solution) This problem stuck with me for a few years until my Junior year when we got a new weightlifting coach who was an absolute brute of a man. I had a heart-to-heart one day and explained to him everything I was struggling with and how I was super consistent for all the workouts, and I couldn’t lift any heavier because I wouldn’t be able to hit any of the rep ranges for our workout program… He then asked me, “What’s your nutrition looking like?” To which I replied, “I just eat whatever my mom feeds me.” “That’s your problem dude, you’re not hitting your macros, we need to get you on a meal plan!” (LEVEL 3 AWARENESS - I now learned the solution is for me to follow a meal plan and that if I want to put on weight, I have to eat more. However, I wasn’t being sold a product at all, more so I was being sold on the solution) Now here’s the thing, I stayed at this awareness level for a while. It’s very common for some prospects to stay stuck in an awareness level for YEARS before they realize there’s a product which serves as a solution for their problems. Tomorrow, I’m going to expand on the “staying stuck concept” and you’ll see how this whole journey brought me to eventually buying a product. I really want you guys to understand this escalator effect of how my story started to raise my awareness levels. What this should illuminate for you is this… NOT EVERYBODY IS READY TO BUY YOUR PRODUCTS. BUT, EVENTUALLY, THEY COULD BE. So you have two strategies… 1. Only focus on the people who are at the awareness level you’re looking for 2. Handle the awareness level ascension yourself and play the long game More to be continued TOMORROW! P.S. Some of you may be thinking, does this apply to physical products? In most cases, especially with mass market goods (food, electronics, etc.) the market just stays at Level 1. They’re aware of their problems, their desires, and they know about the product, so they buy it…a perfect example of this could be protein powder. In some cases with more unique products, the prospect wants the solution but isn’t aware of the product…something like Shilajit as a testosterone booster could be a good example. But very rarely will you need to ascend the prospect from Level 5 to Level 1 with physical goods and products, this mainly will apply to information and services. UNDERSTANDING STATES OF AWARENESS - PART 2 Welcome back to another post on understanding awareness levels with your prospects… If you haven’t already, go give part 1 a read, but if you’re already up to speed, let’s pick up where we left off in my gym bro awareness journey. As I got older and started living on my own, I kept starting and stopping workout programs, and I always had this desire to put on more weight and see a significant increase in muscle tissue… This is what led me to a ton of articles and youtube videos talking about bulking. (LEVEL 3 AWARENESS AGAIN - I now learned ANOTHER solution to my problems: the concept of bulking. I discovered that it was about eating above your maintenance calories, not JUST following a meal plan) My first bulk had me put on a ton of weight and I looked awful, so then I went back to cutting (eating less) because I didn’t like walking around with a belly… From there, I basically went back and forth between bulking, looking like shit, cutting to make myself feel better about myself, seeing a huge dude on IG, realizing I wanted a big dawg physique more than a lean Brad Pitt look, and then I went back to bulking. After a while of this cyclical process, I ended up making some decent progress in the gym, I was stronger, I looked decent, but I still was pretty insecure about my body and I had a hunch that maybe it wasn’t the nutrition, and that it was actually my training. That’s when I stumbled across the concept of Heavy Duty Training, which was a style of lifting that emphasizes training till failure rather than specific rep ranges. It made sense to me, I just wasn’t lifting properly, and that’s why I wasn’t seeing the gains that I wanted. (LEVEL 3 AWARENESS AGAIN AGAIN - I discovered another solution to my problems, however I had not bought any products because I wasn’t aware of anyone that could sell me heavy duty training programs since the guy who invented it died in the early 2000s) Let’s pause for a moment. See how I kept bouncing around from solution to solution? I was TRYING TO FIGURE IT OUT MYSELF, which was a lot of your prospects are going to do ESPECIALLY in the info space. When you can speak to the struggle of figuring out yourself, it’s much easier to move our prospect from Level 3 to Level 2. I’ll go into more depth on how to do that in another post. Back to our story…Heavy Duty Training was fantastic, I followed it for a few months and was seeing significant gains but after a few months, I started to feel like I was plateauing. I couldn’t really go heavier without risking myself to injury, and while it felt good to hit the gym consistently and get a solid workout in, I had a hunch that there was a point of diminishing returns. And that hunch was proven to be true when I went to Toronto a few weeks ago. I met a guy named Ben Pakulski at a dinner I was at and one of my friends told me about how he was a legend in the bodybuilding/training world, however, I had never heard of him. It was pretty obvious the guy knew what he was doing, because he was massive. We ended up at some club/restaurant later that night and after I introduced myself in more depth and asked him, “Hey, have you heard of Heavy Duty Training from Mike Mentzer?” and we went on to have a conversation that helped me see the problem with this type of lifting program. He explained to me that If you’re not blasting steroids, and you’re not already strong as shit, it is probably the slowest way for you to put on muscle because A) very few guys can train at that intensity level and B) it runs a massive risk of injury. I asked him, “So what’s the best style of training?” “There’s no one size fits all solution, it has to be custom to you otherwise you won’t see the results you’re looking for, cookie cutter programs will always have you struggling to see the results you’re looking for. (LEVEL 3 AWARENESS AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN - I started to see that the problem wasn’t just nutrition or the training style, IT WAS BOTH! I had never really considered the idea that the best way to get the best results was to have something custom tailored to me, although it did make perfect sense!) That led me to following up with, “Is that what you guys do?” “Yeah man, that’s our entire business, we help guys train intelligently.” (LEVEL 4 AWARENESS - Finally, after years of running around trying to figure out what the specific problem was and how to solve it, I finally found a product that did just that. However, I wasn’t at the point of buying the product yet since we were at a club lol.) Do you see how all it really took for me to create some interest around the product was for Ben to confirm my suspicions on why the heavy duty training program wasn’t working for me? This is the KEY! Our job as marketers is to confirm people’s doubts, suspicions, fears, and anxiety and to help them understand that our solution solves the problems they’ve been experiencing. This is how you get someone from Level 3 to Level 2, and from Level 2 to Level 1. If they don’t fully understand the problems or the solutions available to them at the moment, and we want to play the long game (the best game imo) it’s a good idea for us to help illuminate these various aspects of their awareness journey to help speed things up, like Ben did for me. But it’s not enough to do just that, we have to get them TO BUY! How do we do that? I’ll cover it in the next post which will go out tomorrow ;) UNDERSTANDING STATES OF AWARENESS - PART 3 If you haven’t already, go check out part 1 and part 2 in order for you to get the most value from this post, as each one builds on one another. Thus far, I’ve shown you a real world example of how awareness levels can go from… Lvl 5 - Not being aware of a problem or solution ⬇️ Lvl 4 - Being aware of a problem, but not the solution ⬇️ Lvl 3 - Being aware of the solution, but not of any products ⬇️ Lvl 2 - Being aware of the product, but not wanting to buy it just yet So today what we are discussing is the last and most important part of the process which is… Lvl 1 - The prospect WANTS to buy the product. Continuing our story… After meeting Ben and listening to his thoughts on why Heavy Duty Training wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be, I ended up having a heart to heart conversation the next day with my friend and client Rohit, who had paid for me to come out to this VSL shoot in Toronto. We’re in a penthouse with 10 dudes, all of us are smoking cigars and chatting about life, and Rohit and I walked over to the couch so we could hear each other since the room was a bit noisy. The conversation went on for about 2 hours, and eventually we started talking about what I really wanted from life. I sat there and paused for a minute to collect my thoughts…I had thought a bunch about this, and maybe it was a little bit of the alcohol and nicotine running through my body, but I got down to the root of what I really wanted. “If I could be anywhere in life 10 years from now, it’d be that I’m jacked, financially successful, have a beautiful wife and kids, and an amazing home. Pair that with having a career that’s entirely based on helping people realize their full potential, and I think that’d be ideal for me.” The conversation went on, but my answer stuck with me. Walking home to the Airbnb I thought about how the first thing I said was “I want to be jacked” almost like I knew that would take care of everything else, which to a degree is true, there’s obviously more to it, but having an amazing physique does make everything easier. I didn’t think much of it, but I did acknowledge the fact that I was serious about making that happen. The next day on set shooting the VSL flew by super quick, and then we were sitting down for another dinner at some underground speakeasy thing, and who’s sitting right next to me? Big Ben, again. (Lol that rhymed pretty well.) I just went straight to it, “Hey man I’ve got a question for you based on our conversation from the club the other night” I went on to explain to him how I totally understood what he was saying about Heavy Duty Training and how it doesn’t make sense for natural guys all that much… And then I went on to explain the issue I had with diet and nutrition, I would bulk up, look fat, and then would start cutting to feel better about myself. “How would you solve that problem?” Ben then went on to explain to me that a lot of it revolves around variables I hadn’t considered such as insulin sensitivity, and that the concept of “lean bulking” was a much better route than just overloading the body with calories because it gradually increases the caloric intake over time based on training intensity and frequency. “How long would it take for me to transform my body from where I’m at to this?” I showed him a picture of a guy who’s physique I admired, and Ben then took a look up and down at me after telling me to face him directly. “Probably about 2 to 3 years if everything is dialed in and you stay consistent.” “Cool man, can you throw me in a group chat with one of your sales guys, I’d love to get started when I get back to Arizona on Sunday.” (LEVEL 5 AWARENESS - I was aware of Ben’s product, and after having a discussion with him about my final problem (nutrition) I was able to see that this ws the solution I was looking for and his level of authority and credibility made it an easy decision) And just like that we had arrived at THE FINAL AWARENESS level which then led to me investing in Ben’s personal training program the next day. So let’s zoom out and see what got me to buy? 1. A burning desire to achieve a vision for what I wanted from life 2. Seeing how Ben’s program solved the training problem I had 3. Seeing how Ben’s program solved the nutrition problem I had #2 and #3 are entirely within YOUR CONTROL as a marketer, offer owner, business owner, etc. It’s our job to show how our products, services, and information helps solve the problems our prospect’s are experiencing in a way that is UNIQUE AND DIFFERENT. However, #1 is only PARTIALLY with your control… Sure, we can say things that help ignite passion and desire for the core benefit our product offers… But at the end of the day, sometimes the prospect is just not there yet! Had I met Ben when I was smoking weed and not focused on the gym all that much, I wouldn’t have had the level of DESIRE that would make his solution an easy decision… But even further than that, if I didn’t have that conversation with Rohit the night before about what I really wanted from life, I wouldn’t have made the decision to double down on my fitness goals. So my awareness journey to get to buying this program was in total… 9 YEARS LONG! However, Ben was able to get me at the point where I was already at awareness level 3… I knew the problem, I somewhat knew the solution, but I wasn’t aware of anyone I knew or trusted that could help me with THAT SPECIFIC PROBLEM. I know plenty of fitness coaches… But nobody had taken the time to explain to me in that level of detail how and why I was struggling along with helping me see why everyone else’s solution (cookie cutter programs) were just a bunch of shit. Again take an in-depth look at that, if you REALLY want to understand why Ben won my business over all the 101 different options out there… 1. He communicated my problems to me better than I could myself 2. He explained to me WHY other solutions didn’t work the way I wanted 3. He explained to me WHY I was experiencing the problems I was experiencing 4. He showed me HOW his solution was different than everyone else’s And on top of that, it didn’t take 1 conversation to get me to buy… It took THREE CONVERSATIONS, one of which didn’t even involve him, for me to make a buying decision. If you want people to capture people at Level 3, 2, and 1… All you need to do is follow the 4 points I just listed above, and watch how easily they’re drawn to your work like a magnet. Hope you found all of this useful, more value to come!