The legendary Gene Schwartz laid out 5 stages of awareness:
- Unaware: The customer has no clue they have a problem.
- Problem-aware: The customer has a problem and knows it… but doesn’t know a solution exists. Or a solution truly doesn’t exist.
- Solution-aware: Customers know solutions exist, but not yours in particular.
- Product-aware: Customers know of you and your product, but aren’t sure if it’s the right choice for them.
- Most aware: Customers are almost ready to buy — they just want to make sure they’re getting tons of value out of their purchase.
The goal of a campaign is moving people up the stages of awareness. Sometimes, this is accomplished with a funnel…
But the United States Concealed Carry Association offers us a good example of a single email that travels through multiple stages.
Keep reading to learn more.
About The USCCA
The United States Concealed Carry Association — USCCA — is an organization most known for providing insurance and legal protection to law-abiding gun owners who use their firearms in self-defense.
You see, you may use your firearm lawfully in self-defense yet still face a potential criminal trial and civil suits. This can cost zillions of dollars and weeks to months of your life (although I bet the stress ages you more than a few weeks.)
Organizations like the USCCA provide insurance for this. You pay a monthly premium for coverage. If you ever (God forbid) have to use your firearm to defend life, family, and property, your USCCA insurance is designed to cover all those costs and provide you with legal counsel.
This is USCCA’s main offer, but it sells and provides a ton of other stuff, like:
- In-person and online firearms training (with new trainings added regularly)
- Educational articles, guides, eBooks, and checklists
- The Concealed Carry magazine
- Discounts at partners
- An Annual USCCA Concealed Carry & Home Defense Expo
- And merch, of course
The Email: Moving Up the Stages of Awareness
The email we’re looking at isn’t selling USCCA’s insurance — it’s selling the Protector Academy, a collection of courses teaching firearms use and maintenance, home defense, first-aid, emergency preparedness, and more.
That said: From what I gather, you must be a full USCCA member to access the Protector Academy.
That said, the thing I want to highlight here is how USCCA moves the reader from the problem-aware stage all the way to most aware.
This email’s a bit long, partly thanks to some images, so I didn’t paste it here and force you to scroll through the whole thing.
You’ll see each section as we go.
The Subject Line: Answering a Common Question
Ammo’s expensive. Add range fees/memberships, classes, and private lessons…
And live-fire training more than 1-2 times monthly becomes prohibitively expensive for anyone without their own land to shoot on.
(Even then, again, ammo’s expensive. Did I mention how ammo’s expensive?)
Not to mention carving out time to pack all your gear in the car and drive out to the range, then drive pack and safely store your guns and gear.
These are common problems for many gun owners — especially those who can’t or won’t make firearms a top hobby.
We can say these gun owners are either unaware or problem-aware. The unaware appreciate free tips (who doesn’t), and the problem-aware know it can be hard to train adequately at home.
So instantly, this subject line gets the reader’s attention.
They want a definitive answer on how to train at home from an authoritative source because it solves a pressing problem.
Note the lack of caps here. Changing things up by not capitalizing the first letter of the subject line can help grab a few more eyeballs.
“We Both Agree on This”… Plus, Setting the Tone and Awakening a Problem
USCCA starts with something we can all agree on — training with your firearm is important. Even unaware people on their list may know that.
But then it adds some drama with the next several lines and reiterates the point in a much more stirring fashion:
“You will FALL to your current level of consistent training.”
That’ll make the reader anxious (in a good way). They’ll wonder if they’re prepared to (God forbid) use lethal force in defense of innocent life. Not morally prepared, but in terms of skill.
Thus, these few lines bring up a problem for the unaware. They have now moved from unaware to problem-aware.
Now, they feel compelled to keep reading.
Once again, this works on both unaware and problem-aware people.
Subtly Establishing Social Proof… And “Twisting the Knife”
I like how USCCA works in mentions of how it trains instructors and how it offers at-home training.
USCCA’s seeding expertise and authoritativeness in the reader’s mind.
However, the core of this section is the “knife-twisting” in the 2nd half.
The reader knows they need to train a lot if they want to be ready for a bad situation…
They’re already anxious about how they don’t train enough and want to train at home to solve that…
So now, USCCA twists the knife by reiterating that the reader won’t be ready if they don’t train consistently…
While introducing a new fear: is the training of sufficient quality to actually prepare them?
The reader will feel even more compelled to keep reading in a quest to alleviate their anxiety around the issue.
They’re taking their sweet time in the problem-aware stage, but it’s all for a good cause because they’re building tension in the reader’s mind…
So when the USCCA presents their offer, it’s irresistible.
Personally, I think including the quote earlier could make this even better by shortening it without sacrificing the message.
For example, the writer could’ve said:
“Both are important — range training and at-home training….
But as my dad used to say, ‘Tim, training is like bathing. Best when done on a regular basis.’”
Then they could have gone into “The BIG MISTAKE…” with some slight adjustments to the language used for flow.
This would let the writer cut the two lines beginning with “But there’s a big problem” and “The issue is…”.
With all that out of the way, though, the reader needs a solution.
Let’s give that to them.
Introduce A Common Solution… “Disqualify” Most Forms of That Solution… and Make Your Customer “Product-Aware”
At this point, the customer has moved from problem-aware to solution-aware (if they weren’t solution aware already.)
They know something exists that can solve their problem — online training is available, allowing them to hone their skills in their own home.
But USCCA skillfully presents the next problem with other solutions:
You’ll learn bad or dangerous information if you go to the wrong sources.
So in one line, they’ve already “disqualified” any other solution that’s out there…
Setting the USCCA up perfectly to pitch their solution — The Protector Academy.
Now, the customer begins moving towards product-aware
Great Use of Analogy As They Become Product-Aware
I like the analogy here. It’s more concise… but it helps the customer grasp the main benefit and experience better than flat-out explaining.
If they just started with “The Protector Academy has courses, videos, blah blah blah” it doesn’t offer as clear a picture to the customer.
It’s not as relatable.
It’s harder for them to imagine themselves using it.
Accompanying the copy is a small but effective visual to give a sneak peek at what’s inside.
That leads us into the next section…
Making the Customer “Most Aware” and Ready to Buy
At the most aware stage, your customer is persuaded of the offer’s benefits. However, they may have some buyer’s inertia. They have some brief hesitations — one of the main ones being price.
But a price objection is really a value objection.
All you have to do is increase the perceived value (ethically and legally) of the offer until the customer has to buy.
There are a ton of ways to do that, and the USCCA offers a few examples.
They start with the main benefits of the offer — a wealth of video courses that let you tailor your learning to your wants and needs. Plus, well-placed images of some of the most compelling videos’ thumbnails.
Speaking of thumbnails, another thing they do to amp up the value is offering a “behind-the-scenes preview,” which I assume lets you see part or even all of one video training.
Either way, this does a few things:
- Builds value — The customer gets to see the actual premium content inside, so they can see how valuable the offer is.
- Builds trust — You show you’re not trying to hide anything. You display that you’re aiming to be transparent. Customers appreciate that. This feeds back into building value because customers will pay more to work with businesses they can trust.
- Weeds out unsuitable customers — The ones who aren’t suitable get a chance to see the content and decide they don’t like it. This saves hassle around refunds and whatnot.
A great last section overall.
Postscript: Selling Something Else? Not Really
As mentioned, the USCCA sells one main offer — the membership.
However, even though this also sells the membership, it uses the membership as the angle instead of the Protector Academy.
This is risky as it may distract the reader with two different “hooks.”
It could work since it’s just “tacked on” and sells the same product, but it may be distracting.
Takeaways
The USCCA did a pretty good job of moving customers up from unaware and problem-aware to most aware.
I really liked how they spent extra time in the problem-aware stage — especially in a niche like this.
If you can ratchet up a customer’s pains and fears (in a benevolent fashion) to a fever pitch, you have them in the palm of your hand.
That’s why the pitch only had to describe the product briefly. The customer would be begging to click through and see the full sales/product page.
Especially since the USCCA promised them a “sneak preview.”
Overall, knowing the customer’s stage of awareness is critical. Not only can you meet them where they are in their customer journey…
But you can arrange elements of your sales piece in a logical fashion that moves them up the awareness chain.
What to Do Next
- Get on my email list.
- Reach out to me if you want help writing emails like this one.
- Check out the USCCA Protector Academy if you think it could help you improve with your firearm.