Andrew Lloyd Beaver PA realized that to look at marketing you needed to focus on looking at the customer. When deciding on how to change things to make the company successful you always need to look towards the consumer to know in what direction you need to take things.
Andrew Lloyd Beaver did some research and learned a lot about customers and their awareness from a book called “Breakthrough Advertising”, written by a famous copywriter named Schwartz. It was published 50 years ago, and it’s still used today to help companies change things to the ever-changing consumer.
Andrew Lloyd started by first identifying all five stages of the customer’s awareness of a product and how each one can change the framework of how products and services are advertised. Like everything else in the world, new people start out completely unaware of it.
This is the state that Andrew Lloyd was most familiar with because it is generically the most common setup for practicing advertising for fake products. The customer has never heard of the product and your job as an advertiser is to not only explain what it is but also explain to them why they need it so badly. A problem or gap in their life is identified and the product or service will help fill it.
The next step of their awareness is that they are problem aware. Andrew Lloyd sees that now when people are presented with something being a problem they can recognize or start to accept that maybe it really is something they need to be fixed in their lives. At this point, though they still can’t really connect what you are trying to sell them as being a solution to their problem. It is still too new, or they haven’t really seen it in action yet.
Andrew Lloyd of Beaver finds the third step to actually be the most difficult where the people are aware of what the solution to their problem would be but are still not connecting you to being that solution. They might see something else as being the thing that will make the solution happen. Andrew Lloyd feels that this is the key moment where people will decide if your product is worth their time, energy, and of course money.
Once that is done and people are product aware Andrew Lloyd knows that he can reel them in at this point and if a large number of customers get to this stage then there is a high chance of success in the product or service being offered. In this stage of awareness, the potential customers know all about your product and what it does. They can now fully connect it to being something that can solve the problem.
Finally, when the customers are the most aware, Andrew Lloyd knows that his work is basically done. Not only do the potential customers know everything they need to know about your product, but they are interested in buying it. When this step hits a majority of people you end up with something that is a household name or even the new generic term for the product.
Now all of this can be confusing when you try to think of generic products that don’t actually exist in the real world. So, Andrew Lloyd wants to give you an example of how in the real world companies use this model and adjust their different advertising to it in the five different stages. Take for example the car service company Uber that in only a decade went from an unknown thing to a household name that is slowly replacing the word taxi in people’s vocabulary.
In 2011 Uber first came to the market with people completely unaware of it. They used a catchy headline that said, “Everyone’s private driver.” This worked for the unaware that didn’t know not having a driver at the push of a button was even a problem or a possibility. It started to then make people think if taxis needed this update into the modern world of technology or not.
Then 2 years after launch they gained popularity and they entered the second stage where now people were aware that there was a problem. Some were still on the fence though, thinking that the then-current system was working fine and didn’t need to be changed. Uber focused its page on the problems of ease, safety, affordability, and convenience.
It seemed to work because five years after launch they were finally targeting their solution to the problem more heavily by telling people that Uber could solve all of those problems. It stopped talking about those problems and instead started talking about how Uber solved problems. They knew that this is where they needed to push people into the next step or forever be lost as a failed company.
They must have done something right though because seven years after they first launched they knew that they were in the clear to start attracting buyers. Most people had heard of Uber before and even knew someone that has tried it. They didn’t need to talk about problems or solutions because the word was already out loud and clear. So now they needed to talk about the details of registering as drivers or riders and that would be the only reason they were checking out the landing page.
Finally in modern-day, a full decade after the launch the buyers are in the most aware stage by far. Everyone knows what Uber is and even other companies that now offer the same thing are just seen to be trying to copy Uber because of how perfect its campaign was in changing based on customer awareness.
Now all that is left is for Uber to capitalize on what they have built with the new riding services. Andrew Lloyd knows that if a company will watch consumers and adjust the advertising at the right time to match the awareness then the product has a good chance of standing the test of time.
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