A Case Study For Every Stage of Awareness, Part 1: Most Aware

There’s a book many copywriters covet. It’s written by a direct response legend, it costs over $100 (and is easily worth many times that)… and it’s hard to get because copywriter and marketer Brian Kurtz has exclusive rights to sell it.

I’m talking about Breakthrough Advertising by the legendary Eugene M. Schwartz, of course.

And yes, I have a copy myself.

The first 5 chapters alone are a fantastic copywriting education. Tons of gold in there. But perhaps the most foundational thing Gene teaches inside is the 5 stages of market awareness.

Basically, your target customer can be at 1 of 5 stages:

• Unaware: The prospect doesn’t know they have a problem or desire, nor do they know about your brand/product/service.
• Problem Aware: The prospect knows they have a problem or desire, but they aren’t aware that a solution is out there.
• Solution Aware: The prospect knows that solutions exist, but they don’t know about yours (your product or service).
• Product Aware: The prospect knows of your brand and product/service but doesn’t know everything about it… or isn’t sure it can solve their problem/achieve their desire.
• Most Aware: The prospect knows your brand and product/service, knows what it does, and wants it.

(Are they proper nouns? I’m not sure. But they’re so fundamental to good copy that they may as well be.)

According to Gene, your copy — or, mostly, your headline — changes based on the stage of market awareness. What works for one stage (aka catches the prospect’s attention) won’t work for another (aka they ignore it).

The stages of awareness apply to any piece of copy, including case studies. And so, I’m going to write a 5-part series where I explain how you can use case studies at every stage of awareness.

Now, Gene covers in the reverse order as above. He starts his book by discussing Most Aware, then works backward.

So I’m going to do the same, starting with Most Aware.

(NOTE: You can repurpose and alter your standardized case studies, like those you’d have on a case studies page, into smaller versions to use in other locations. That way, you can change up headlines and alter body copy to fit the stage of awareness without losing the original case study sitting on your site.)

Most Aware: It’s Actually Pretty Easy!

Customers in the Most Aware phase are well-informed on your products or service and the benefits it offers. They’ve seen all your marketing materials and been through the funnel. However, one thing stands in the way:

Price.

Now, “price” isn’t the real objection here. Value is.

Your customer isn’t sure that the value your product/service can allegedly offer them will justify the price they pay.

Think about it: if you could spend $10,000 on something that you know with 100% confidence would make you $100,000, that fat price tag doesn’t matter one bit, now does it?

And so, back to my point: the prospect isn’t fully persuaded of the value of your product/service. They aren’t sure their investment in your product/service will yield a sufficient ROI to justify the cost.

So here’s what you do:

Give ’em a discount!

No, just kidding. Don’t do that.

You send them a case study or two that matches their customer persona. Make sure the title explicitly states the value your product/service would provide. Also, make sure the body of the case study focuses more on the results than other areas.

That doesn’t mean ignore the other key parts of the case study. Include just enough so the prospect identifies with the subject of the case study and their hesitations, then hammer home the ROI of your product/service by layering on the results.

Say you sell accounting software. Your prospect’s main problem is that bookkeeping takes too much time, of course. Your headline could be “How ABC Company saves 20 hours per month using XYZ software”.

In the body, you’d go through all the regular parts of a case study — background on the customer, problem, other things they tried, solution, and so on — but only briefly. Just enough so the prospect feels a connection to the case study’s subject.

But when you mention results, you pour it on. You talk about the time and money saved (using hard numbers), then dimensionalize those results by making them more tangible:

• More time for the business owner to spend time with their family
• Increased employee satisfaction
• Better (and faster) data for better decision-making
• Less headache at tax time

And so on. Enough of this “value building” can overcome that price objection some prospects may stick you with.

My Experience With a “Most Aware” Case Study Use

I’ve been through this one myself.

I was on the verge of signing up for Real Free Life, a coaching program created by Kevin Rogers (copychief.com) for freelancers who have made progress in their careers but want to specialize and systemize their business.

I had heard about the program numerous times inside the aforementioned Copy Chief group. I read the sales letter. I saw other people talk about it in the forums. I received the emails selling the program.

I knew all the details. But the price tag felt steep to me.

The people over at Copy Chief know marketing, though (duh). So you know what they sent me?

Two case studies, each one detailing the journey of a successful Real Free Life graduate. Each case study highlighted its subject’s doubts about the program, but then showed how the program helped propel their careers forward and achieve exactly what I’m looking for.

Both these people were like me. They were getting somewhere in their freelance careers but needed some guidance in making that next step towards becoming an authority in their specialties and raising their rates.

Those case studies, along with my “it’s a tax write-off” justification (and I’m not a CPA so don’t take that as tax advice) pushed me over the edge and got me to buy.

In short: I saw the value the program could provide me much more clearly.

Most Aware: Prove Your Value With a Case Study

Price tends to be the last objection standing between Most Aware prospect and happy customer. But it’s not about price — it’s about value. Structuring a case study the right way and giving it a good Most Aware headline that gets clear and specific about your product/service’s benefits with hard numbers helps position the value of your product or service as greater than the price.

Next up in this series, I’ll be showing how you can use case studies to move Product Aware prospects to buy!