Understanding Your Fans

Unlike B2B sales or high-ticket (i.e.research-heavy) consumer categories like cars, everyday consumer brands do not have a real ‘consideration’ phase in the marketing funnel. At least one you can intervene in separately from awareness building. 

It’s not that there is no thought process or filtering of inbound messages. There is. But it happens in milliseconds in consumer products that get used multiple times a week. 

If the first ‘impression’ doesn’t persuade, it’s often just thrown in the ‘reject’ box immediately. There is simply too much consumer product signaling going on to hold it all in consideration limbo. There’s not enough at stake in getting a purchase right to keep considering it deeply for an extended period. Even a tasteless purchase is easily tossed and replaced by something else in the pantry.

More importantly, it takes multiple impressions to get basic memorability of your existence because the brain filters out noise without any thought whatsoever (online or in-store).

Not true with the wrong car purchased on an auto loan. That’s a pain to replace. So, we consider it a lot more deeply.

The wrong awareness creates tons of initial, unconscious rejection that your communications must overcome. You have no extended period of deep thought for kids’ school snacks. Sorry. You are not selling a mattress or a $10,000 custom piece of furniture.

So, to get your awareness marketing to generate trial, you need a ton of persuasive impact and memorability. It needs to be concise and loaded into everything you possibly can. 

This will avoid having your communications get thrown in the reject box in front of otherwise predisposed consumers. 

What you need is awareness that persuades an audience. It’s not nearly as easy as it sounds. And, unless YOU are that audience, you will need to get inside your fans’ heads a bit. You will need to understand the highest value outcome they attach to your brand’s products and what signals it (i.e., the key attributes).