Sample frameDay 268·Marketing · Awareness

Morning. Two people can read the same sentence and only one of them is ready for it.

Marketing.

The Five Stages of Awareness

5 min read·Apply by lunch

The question

Take the last thing you published — the ad, the landing page, the cold email — and ask what you assumed the reader already knew when they hit the opening line: were they weighing you against a rival, or had they not yet put a name to the problem? Guess one stage too high and the copy isn't weak — it's simply addressed to somebody else.

The idea

Eugene Schwartz was a New York copywriter who spent his career in mail order, where a claim was settled by counting the coupons that came back rather than by arguing in a meeting. Breakthrough Advertising, published in 1966, argues from its opening pages that copy can't create desire. The desire already exists in the market, in enormous quantity, and the writer's job is to channel it onto a particular product. What decides how you channel it is where the reader is standing when they arrive. Schwartz set out five states of awareness. The most aware know the product and the terms, and they're waiting on the deal. The product aware know what you sell but aren't convinced it's for them. The solution aware know a solution of your kind exists, without knowing that you do. The problem aware feel the problem and have no name for what fixes it. The unaware haven't put the problem into words at all. Each state takes a different opening sentence, and there's only one right one: the most aware want the offer in the first line, and the unaware can't be sold anything until the problem has been described to them. The trap is writing every page for the most-aware reader — because that's the reader you can already picture, the one who already knows you.

The framework

01
Every reader arrives already standing somewhere.
You don't get to choose the state; you diagnose it, and the evidence is usually sitting in your own analytics. Where did they come from — a search for your brand name, a search for the problem, or a feed they weren't shopping in at all? What did they type? What had the last five buyers already tried? A reader who searched your company name is product aware at least; a reader who arrived from a cold feed is rarely past problem aware. Diagnose before you draft, and the first sentence stops being a matter of taste.
02
What is the opening line supposed to do here?
The job changes with the state, and only one job is right at a time. For the most aware, the opening carries the offer and the reason to move now. For the product aware, it carries the one difference and the proof behind it. For the solution aware, it names the mechanism — how your version works — because they are comparing approaches rather than brands. For the problem aware, it describes the problem more precisely than they could describe it themselves. For the unaware, it can't mention the product at all; it starts inside a situation they recognise.
03
One page, one state.
A page written to satisfy all five satisfies none of them: the most-aware reader wades through education they don't need, and the unaware reader hits a price before they have accepted the problem. The practical fix is to split by source rather than to write longer. Cold paid traffic gets its own page, opening at the problem. Branded search gets a page that opens at the offer. Same product, two entry points, two first sentences — and the second-best version of each will beat one page trying to be both.
04
The market gets more sophisticated even when the reader doesn't.
Schwartz set a second ladder alongside the first: how many times your market has already heard a claim like yours. In a new category the plain claim still lands. Once rivals copy it you enlarge the claim; once everyone is enlarging, nobody believes any of it and you have to show a mechanism — why your version does what it says. Then the mechanisms crowd in too, and the ground left is identification with the reader's own situation. Awareness tells you where to start the sentence. Sophistication tells you how hard the claim has to work once you've started it.

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