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Episode 002 – The Awareness Stage of the Buying Stage: Getting in on the ground floor

Introduction: In the world of marketing, striking a balance between capturing the attention of an ideal prospect and avoiding annoyance or interruption is crucial. The best way to achieve this is by aligning your marketing efforts with the natural buying process of the customer. By understanding the stages of the buyer’s journey, you can become a welcome part of their decision-making process and contribute to the realization of their business goals. In this blog post, we will delve deep into the first step of the buyer’s process: awareness.

Getting in on the Ground Floor: Understanding the awareness stage of your prospect’s buying process allows you to position yourself at the very beginning of their decision-making journey. By comprehending the buyer’s process, you can capture the attention of your ideal prospect without being disruptive or annoying. Instead, your messaging becomes relevant and valuable to them, addressing the very issues they are concerned about. When you discuss something that keeps them awake at night or dominates their thoughts throughout the day, you become a trusted resource rather than an interruption.

Identifying Problems and Opportunities: To truly understand what occupies your prospect’s mind during the awareness stage, it is crucial to create a well-defined customer profile. Research online or watch videos on how to build an effective customer profile. Start reaching out to prospects in your local area, not with a sales pitch, but with an invitation for a lunch, coffee, or a Zoom meeting. During these conversations, focus on getting to know their business better and understanding the problems they face. This approach allows you to identify problems you can solve and uncover new opportunities to serve them better.

Exploratory Research Meetings: When engaging in exploratory research meetings, your goal should be to delve deeply into their situation. Learn from skilled interviewers by watching interviews with experts like Charlie Rose, Larry King, or listening to podcasts hosted by exceptional interviewers like Alec Baldwin. Pay attention to the questions they ask to make the interviewees open up and discuss the implications of their experiences and situations. By understanding the implications of their problems on various aspects of their lives, including their personal life and business, you gain valuable insights that can shape your marketing strategies.

Creating a Question Playbook: To facilitate meaningful conversations, create a playbook of questions that you can refer to during engaging discussions. Great questions to ask include: Can you expand on that for me? Can you tell me more about that? How does this affect your profits or bottom line? What improvements do you think could be made in this situation? By having regular deep conversations, you can gain a stakeholder’s understanding of their business, which will help you develop relevant and compelling marketing content.

Additional Research Tactics: In addition to offline interviews, complement your research with online tactics. Identify the questions your ideal prospects ask, the content they read, and the keywords they use during searches. This information will guide you in creating targeted marketing materials that align with their needs. You can also listen to industry-specific podcasts that interview stakeholders and problem-solvers to stay up-to-date with industry trends and concerns. Utilize idle time during activities like running, going to the gym, or driving to gather valuable insights through podcast research.

Conclusion: Understanding the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey provides you with a unique opportunity to engage with prospects from the very beginning. By conducting exploratory research meetings, asking the right questions, and utilizing online research tactics, you can uncover valuable insights into your prospect’s needs and concerns. Armed with this knowledge, you can create targeted marketing materials and become a trusted resource during their decision-making process. In the next video, we will explore online research tactics further and discover how to align your content with the questions and keywords used by your ideal prospects. Stay tuned for more valuable insights to enhance your marketing efforts.

To access our archive of videos and stay updated on new ideas, visit zero noisemarketing.com/videos. We appreciate your time and dedication to improving your marketing strategies. Thank you for watching, and have a fantastic week.

“The Bride”.  A an example of an experimental, or concept album project from 2022.  Painted in acrylic. (Private collection)

Building Confidence Through Language: A Guide for the Collector

One of the biggest barriers for aspiring art collectors is not a lack of taste, but a lack of confident language. People know what they are drawn to, but they often struggle to articulate the ‘why’ behind their emotional connection. Providing them with a basic vocabulary can be transformative.

By explaining core artistic concepts, we can bridge this gap. An artist’s newsletter or a gallery brochure could break down:

  • The Architecture of Composition: How lines and shapes lead the eye and create a focal point.
  • The Emotional Weight of a Color Palette: Why a limited, muted palette feels different from a vibrant, high-contrast one.
  • The Role of Value in Creating Depth: How the interplay of light and shadow builds a believable world.

It’s like being given a phrasebook in a foreign country; suddenly, you can navigate and connect with more assurance. Consider Edward Hopper, whose stylized realism simplifies scenes to their emotional core. Understanding this allows a collector to explain why the work feels so dreamlike and memorable. This knowledge doesn’t replace the emotional response; it validates it.

The Dialogue Between Feeling and Form

Great art speaks to us on two levels: the immediate, gut-level emotional reaction and the deeper intellectual appreciation. You might feel the perpetual warmth and light in a Monet, which immerses the viewer in the sensory experience of a moment. Conversely, you might sense the rugged, stoic soul of the landscape in a piece by Canada’s Group of Seven, which evokes a feeling of profound solitude.

These feelings are universal, but the ability to discuss why we feel them builds a stronger connection. From a marketing perspective, this education slots perfectly into the buyer’s journey. During the “comparison” phase, an artist who also educates their audience is building a relationship of trust and authority, making the final “decision” more likely.

Conclusion: A Bridge of Shared Understanding

Art, in its purest form, is an act of communication. Whether through the calculated narrative of a storyteller or the freeform expression of a poet, the artist extends an invitation to the viewer. By providing the language to understand this invitation, we empower collectors to move beyond simple preference and into the realm of true appreciation. It transforms a simple transaction into a meaningful connection, where the viewer doesn’t just own a piece of art—they become part of its ongoing story.

About the Author

Jaeson Tanner is a Marketing Thinker at Zero Noise Marketing and a narrative artist once in a blue moon. You can see his work on Instagram at @jaeson_tanner.