There’s a faster & easier way to convert your leads into buyers…

And It comes down to asking the most important question in all of copywriting…

“Where is my reader now?”

The answer to this question is what we call your audience’s Awareness Stage.

There’s 5 stages of Awareness your reader can be at, depending on HOW they join your email list…

Here’s a quick image from growthmarketer.com to illustrate:

Many businesses segment their email list from customers, non-customers, and VIPs…

But the reality is:

Your Non-Customers are still different.

And your Non-Customers can fall under the 5 different awareness stages above.

For email marketing, we use the last ⅘ of these awareness levels.

And the reason for that is because if someone joins your list, chances are, they already know they have a problem.

(Otherwise, why would they sign up to begin with—unless it’s mom or dad lol.)

Now, here’s how to use these 4 Stages of Awareness in Email Marketing to convert your leads faster.

Again, the 4 stages are:

• Problem Aware
• Solution Aware
• Offer Aware
• Most Aware

We’ll start with problem aware.

Stage 2: Problem Aware

Problem aware prospects only know they have a problem, but they aren’t sure which solution is best for them and they’re not ready to buy.

They first need to believe in the solution before they take action.

For example in Bizop, this might be someone who is fed up with their 9-5 job… but doesn’t know what to do about it.

You wouldn’t encourage someone like that to book a call. But you would encourage them to watch a “new training on how to replace your 9-5 with day trading”.

At this stage, you’re suggesting solutions to their problems…

And you’re making those solutions sound both exciting and interesting.

Problem aware emails are quite similar to the type of copy you’d see in a YouTube ad or a Facebook ad.

Not Google AdWords, and also not TikTok IMO.

Stage 3: Solution Aware

Solution-aware prospects know they have a problem and are aware of the solutions that exist.

These are higher-quality leads because they’re more likely to buy if your offer aligns with the solution they believe in.

They need less convincing since they already know the solution.

In other words, if they know Day Trading is the solution for them, you don’t need to convince them “why day trading?”

Or if they know they need a funnel to convert more of their audience into leads & buyers…

You don’t need to tell them:

“Here’s why you need a funnel.”

Make sense?

Now, you could also have someone searching “how to start day trading”… but they don’t know which day trading strategy is right for them.

For these leads, you would show them success stories.

And you would use more “solution-aware” marketing messages.

These messages are a lot more assumptive that your prospect is already sold on day trading.

Stage 4: Offer Aware

Offer aware prospects know they have a problem, are familiar with the solution, and they’re also pretty aware of what you offer.

These are very high-quality leads who just need the right opportunity to take you up on your offer.

For example in day trading, this might be someone who hates their job, and is CERTAIN that day trading is the way they’ll make the money needed to leave their job.

Plus, they also understand HOW you help people like them day trade successfully.

Here, you basically bombard these leads with success stories and reference your core promise/unique value prop.

Lastly, these leads have done their homework on you. They’re just waiting for the right push to commit.

All you need to do is test various versions of your value prop to find the best way to engage them – be it booking a call, directing them to an application page, or asking them to reply with, “KEYWORD”.

Different leads have different methods of consumption and doing business with you.

So you wanna see what they prefer, then keep hitting them with that.

Stage 5: Most Aware

Most aware prospects are familiar with the offer and usually the price too.

These are the leads who have had a sales discussion or are about to have one.

They may have had a couple with your competitors.

This is good because you won’t be pitching someone a $10k program who thinks it’ll cost only $2k to get the help they need.

While these leads might not be ready to jump in immediately – they could in a few months when their budget aligns.

Most businesses send the same emails as they would to the “problem-aware group”…

This is really common in direct response with curiosity-heavy emails.

A smaller subset might send emails that would be appropriate for “most aware” people—also common in direct response, where it’s just pounding people with offer after offer.

Not all businesses need to hit stages 1-4.

I’ve worked with education businesses with hyper aware audiences. Solution-aware/offer-aware emails were what worked best for them.

It’s best to look at your market, and what your entire sales process looks like.

Once you know the market and the sales process, you can structure your funnel and emails around that.

With super complex b2b sales cycles, it’s much more effective to do this.

But even broader niches like biz opp, this is equally important.

Here’s how to apply this method:

To recap: when someone joins your list, you must ask:

“Where is my reader at now?”

Look at the messaging of what bait got them on your list. If it was a lead magnet, webinar, low-ticket offer, paid ads to an appointment (direct offer), etc.

Factor in the topic/messaging of how they joined.

For more clarity, there’s a list of questions you can ask yourself…

I curated those questions in a Twitter post of mine:

​Click here to see the questions and to get more clarity on your readers’ awareness level.​

Use these steps we covered today to start converting more of your leads. And if you need more clarity, click the link above for the list of questions that determine your readers’ awareness level!

See you next week,
Matt Hommel