A Case Study For Every Stage of Awareness, Part 2: Product Aware

(NOTE: This is part 2 of a 5-part series of posts. If you missed part 1, click here.)

If you read part 1 of my A Case Study For Every Stage of Awareness series, you’d know that Most Aware customers are nearly always concerned with price.

But not really. It’s value they care about. Read the post to learn what I mean by that.

Now, we’re taking a step backwards through the stages of awareness — like good ol’ Gene does — to Product Awareness.

What is Product Awareness?

A prospect in the Product Awareness stage knows who you are and what product/service you offer. Just not the specifics of that offer. Alternatively, they may know its basic function but aren’t completely persuaded that it’ll solve their problem.

At this stage, you’re competing against other products of the same type… not substitutes to your product.

(This is where most products sit, and thus, most advertising targets this stage.)

Let’s use an accounting example because that’s my background.

Say you sell accounting software. If a small business needs to save time on accounting (their problem), they can:

• Hire a bookkeeper in-house
• Outsource to a bookkeeping firm
• Invest in bookkeeping software

The in-house bookkeeper and outsourced bookkeeping firm are substitutes to your software, not competitors because they provide the same function — handling bookkeeping — in different forms. That’s for the Solution Awareness stage, which comes right before Product Awareness (if you aren’t going backward like this series is).

Your competitors, on the other hand, might be companies like Quickbooks (good luck taking them down), Freshbooks, Wave, and other popular bookkeeping software. These all sell, well, bookkeeping software like you do.

Which brings me back to my point: your goal in the Product Awareness stage is to inform the customer of your product’s features and benefits (fEaTuReS aNd BeNeFiTs!), and show why you’re better than competitors. In the accounting software case above, that means showing how you’re better than Quickbooks or Freshbooks (good luck with that).

Now that you’re Product Aware-aware, let’s look at how to use case studies to maximum effect in this stage.

Product Aware Case Study Use Case

Pardon that subheader. It’s a tongue-twister, I know.

Anyways, your prospect knows you and your offer. They aren’t fully aware of your offer’s features and/or persuaded of its benefits over competitors.

And that’s the goal — to show them your offer’s superiority over those competitors.

Keep in mind that the headline is the core component to get right when it comes to stages of awareness. Your headline should contain your offer’s main feature and squeeze in the biggest benefit.

Let’s say you sell a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to real estate brokers. Your most standout feature is your deep suite of reporting and analytics. Maybe the primary benefit of that is brokers can gain an in-depth understanding of each client they work with, helping them to personalize their marketing and cultivate strong and trusting relationships with their clients.

Here’s a headline: “{your CRM}’s reporting and analytics helps ABC broker close XYZ% more deals.”

Or another: “ABC broker switches from old CRM to {your CRM} and closes XYZ% more deals.”

The body of the case study will follow the same case study structure but elaborate on the benefit. Of course, this case study won’t focus solely on the reporting and analytics. You’ll probably cover other helpful aspects of the CRM.

But if reporting and analytics is something your CRM is known particularly well for, and it truly does lead to more deals, clients will naturally bring this up in your case study interview.

Thus, it’ll feature prominently in the final case study — even before you repurpose and adjust copies of the case study for other marketing channels.

Where Do You Use Product Aware Case Studies?

Email autoresponders (such as your welcome sequence) are a great place to use Product Aware case studies. Think about it: someone on your email list had to find you and download your lead magnet, so they might know of your product without knowing all the details.

I’d use them later on in the sequence after you’ve built a bit of rapport with the first few emails. The prospect will know more about your brand and product by then, making a case study-style email that emphasizes your offer’s features and benefits the perfect thing to send.

Product Aware: Sell Them Your Features and Benefits With a Case Study

Customers that are Product Aware just need more information about your offer’s features and benefits… and why they make you better than the next guy or gal.

And so, you want to pick out the top 1-2 features (and their corresponding benefits) to showcase in your case study. Depending on format (such as email or blog post), you might also sprinkle in the other features/benefits, but you should really hammer home the main ones that set you apart and that your customer cares abot.

Next up in this series, I’ll show you how to use case studies to gently nudge Solution Aware prospects to buy!