Steal our messaging framework 🥷

Hey 👋

Welcome to Neighbourhood Post issue #26 - easy to implement digital marketing ideas straight through your metaphorical letterbox.

I hope you’ve had a good week. It’s nearly May! How did that happen? 🤯 It’s my birthday on Wednesday so feel free to send any presents my way…

Anyway, on with today’s newsletter - we’ll be offering up our messaging framework for you to use however you’d like.

👉 By the way, if you’ve missed previous newsletters you’ll find them here.

📩 And if you’ve been forwarded this email you can subscribe here.

How are your awareness levels? 🤔

We all have problems.

There are the ones we know about.

Like the fact my dishwasher has an error code and I have no idea what it means, whether it’ll sort itself out, or whether I should pay someone to fix it.

And there are ones we don’t know about.

Without getting too down about the whole thing, life is full of problems.

(It’s also full of laughter, joy and adventure!)

Which is why it’s a good idea to try and solve your audiences’ problems.

I’ve written about the importance of pain points before, and we build a messaging framework on top of them, to help us speak more effectively to target audiences.

We use it primarily for Paid Social strategy, but it’s applicable anywhere.

It’s called the stages of awareness, and they are as follows:

• Unaware

• Problem Aware

• Solution Aware

• Product Aware

When it comes to segmenting there are many ways to cut the pie.

Levels of awareness is one of the most effective.

Let’s look at the differences between each one:

Starting with product aware. These are people who know you and love you - as soon as they hit the pain point they’ll be knocking your door down. You don’t have to explain yourselves to them - you just need to be showing up regularly in their field of view so they don’t forget you.

Next up, solution aware. I know I need a break, and I know I want to go away with my family. The solution: book a holiday. But where do I go and who do I book with? That’s up for grabs. I’m product unaware, but solution aware. So targeted messaging around USPs, and why your product is better than others is important.

Next up, problem aware. I have no idea what to do with my dishwasher, but I’m very aware of the problem. Create messaging that helps people solve the problem. Its an approach you see a lot in organic and paid search. People with problems and no solutions head to Google, so meeting them there with solution focused messaging is highly effective.

Finally, unaware. As strange as it sounds, there’s a good chunk of your audience who face the problem, but subconsciously. As soon as it’s pointed out to them - they’ll resonate.

Fairly simple, but incredibly effective.

Let’s take a working example and see how the messaging changes.

Holidays:

Product Aware: “Book before we fill up! Get your first choice dates.”

Solution Aware: “You’ll love our five-star resort, for just £890pp”

Problem Aware: “Sun, sea and sand will make you feel like a new person!”

Unaware: “Feeling burnt out, stressed and missing family time?”

Take some time to think through what it means for your audience to be at each of these stages.

It will look differently depending on your industry, size, focus, audience etc.

Note: for charities, the framework needs some transposing but still works - donors still range from unaware, problem aware, solution aware and product (charity) aware.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

See you next week ✌️

What we’re looking at 👀 and listening to 👂

This section’s a little different this week, as it sparked a fierce debate in Slack about how many Top Guns there have been. I thought there were just two. Answers on a postcard.

Before you go - we’ll never use these newsletters to directly sell you our services, but we’re always here if you need any expertise or support 👍