FiveMinuteFounder - [FMF #76] actionable awareness levels

Hi friend,

Long time no speak!

Here's a quick reminder of who I am and why I'm in your inbox:

I'm Louis from FiveMinuteFounder, and you signed up because you wanted...

... a piece of actionable advice to grow your profits by > 1%
... readable in 5min, implementable in 5 hours
... in your inbox every Monday morning

Not something you need anymore? Click here to unsubscribe (but let's stay in touch via Twitter).

Still here?

Awesome 😁

Today I'm going to show you how to quickly use awareness levels to make sure your homepage isn't accidentally alienating 80% of your potential customers.

First though, my top three interesting links of the week:

⭐ I'm running a live workshop (w/ coaching) on my Social Proof Framework for the first time ever! Only 6 spots and it's first come, first served. Grab your spot now

⭐ Arvid Kahl released his new book detailing how he bootstrapped, grew and sold his SaaS business (and how you can do the same).

⭐ Val Sopi invited me onto the Bootstrapping SaaS podcast to talk early stage sales, and why customer value > customer problems.

Right. Now it's time to talk about awareness levels, why they've tricked you into focussing on features not benefits on your homepage, and how to fix it...

Let's start with a quick oversimplification.

There are lots of different audience awareness levels. But today, we only need to care about three of them...

Let's think about this in the context of your homepage...

A very small percentage of visitors are purchase ready (already ready to buy). They're just looking for that signup button
A pretty small percentage of visitors are high awareness. They already know why they need your product (or a similar one). They understand the benefits. They just need to check for specific features and pricing
Most of your visitors are low awareness. They don't yet fully understand why they'd need your product and how it could improve their lives. So they need nurturing (ie to have that explained to them) before they'll care about the features or be ready to buy

So far, so obvious, right?

Here's the thing though...

Purchase ready and high awareness visitors have something in common: High motivation.

Which means they're the most likely to buy, and the most likely to ask questions and give feedback like "do you have this feature?"

And this leads to you optimising your homepage for these visitors.

Why is that a problem?

Because the bulk of your potential customers - the low awareness visitors - normally have low motivation.

And that means - if you don't "hook" them with the benefits - they aren't going to stick around and ask questions until they get what they need. They'll just leave.

See the dilemma?

Your high-awareness visitors have high motivation. So - if your homepage is all about the benefits - they'd just click through to the features/pricing page and buy anyway.

But - because they're more vocal - you've likely over-optimised your homepage based on their feedback. To focus on features not benefits.

So you're losing out on a massive potential group of customers - the low awareness visitors - who just need to understand the benefits and be nurtured. For example, with an email sequence.

Luckily, it's an easy fix...

Rework your landing page copy to prioritise benefits over features. At every step, ask yourself "is it obvious *in what way* this improves my life?"
Make it easy for purchase ready and high awareness visitors to find the actions they want to take. For example by adding a prominent "buy" and "features" link in your header menu.
Make sure you have some nurturing funnel set up that provides value to low awareness visitors who are just starting to understand why they need your product, but aren't ready to buy quite yet. I use RightMessage for this on my own sites.
Test and be proactive in talking to potential customers. Especially low awareness ones. Make sure you understand their mindset and overcompensate for it!

That's all!

Need some inspiration?

Check out what a great job the Basecamp team does at focussing on benefits as the default, but making it easy to find features and pricing if that's what you're looking for...

That's all for this week.

Stay safe and healthy out there 🤗

Louis

PS: I'd love to hear what's new in your world too! Shoot me a reply and let me know what you're working on.

FiveMinuteFounder

Solibodenstrasse 12

Bulach 8180

Switzerland

Add us to your address book

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can or .

FiveMinuteFounder - [FMF #76] actionable awareness levels

Why is that a problem?

Luckily, it's an easy fix...

Older messages

[Article 1] and a personal challenge inside...

You Might Also Like

🚀 Virgin To Face Delisting

10words: Top picks from this week

[Replay] Building a million dollar beauty brand

Put it on paper

7 prompts for your B2B company’s next LinkedIn post

Challenges of Offering an API — The Bootstrapped Founder 313

12 hours to go! 🐣

Why I Switched My Blog to Ghost (and Why You Might Love It Too)

Latvia's startup financing gets creative

How Meta is paving the way for synthetic social networks