What Is Buyer Awareness? The Four Stages and How to Use Them

When I first wrote this guide in 2018, one positioning mistake I saw over and over again was a failure to understand the buyer's awareness. A strong niche and value proposition are the foundation. Even with both, marketing struggles if it speaks to buyers as if they know more, or less, than they do.

Buyer awareness describes how much a buyer already knows when they meet you: whether they see the problem, whether they know solutions exist, and whether they know you are one of them. This guide explains the four stages, shows two markets I worked through in 2018 that sat at very different stages, and sets out how to match your copy, your targeting and your choice of channels to where your buyers are.

DisclosureJake Jorgovan is a partner in Fieldtrip, a group of marketing agencies, which is mentioned in this article.

What is buyer awareness?

Buyer awareness is your customer's position in their buying journey. The idea is not mine. The copywriter Eugene Schwartz introduced "states of awareness" in his 1966 book Breakthrough Advertising, and the book's publisher (opens in a new tab) calls them and market sophistication "probably the two most quoted concepts" in it. At each state, the prospect is asking different questions that the marketing has to answer.

The publisher's own explanation of the five states (opens in a new tab) runs from completely unaware through problem aware, solution aware and product aware to most aware. In my 2018 guide I described four stages, with one "aware of you" stage where Schwartz has two (product aware and most aware):

• Unaware. They are not thinking about your product or the problem it solves.
• Problem aware. They know they have a problem, but they don't know that solutions exist.
• Solution aware. They know the problem, and they know there are solutions on the market.
• Aware of you. They know the problem, they know the solutions, and they know you are one of them.

In my experience, the further along a buyer is, the easier the sale, though you still have to show fit and give a reason to act. There is no right or wrong stage to sell to, only the reality of where your buyers are.

Lead Cookie's buyers in 2018

In October 2018, I was running Lead Cookie, a done-for-you LinkedIn lead generation service. I have since sold it to the team that runs it, so treat what follows as dated history. Here is how the stages looked for us then:

• Unaware: companies that had built their whole business on referrals and word of mouth. Hiring someone for lead generation did not cross their minds.
• Problem aware: companies that knew they needed more leads and more business, but not how to get them.
• Solution aware: companies researching marketing and lead generation services that had found LinkedIn as one possible source among many.
• Aware of Lead Cookie: companies that had found and read our content, believed in our approach and knew what we did.

I also gave a share for each stage:

• 0% unaware. None came from this stage, although in outreach we often met people with no need for more leads. If someone doesn't need more leads, it is hard to convince them that they do.
• 15% problem aware. They knew they had a lead generation problem, but on the phone it turned out they had tried and researched nothing else. Occasionally they closed, but often they needed more time.
• 60% solution aware. They already saw LinkedIn outreach as a possible answer and knew they needed help doing it.
• 25% aware of Lead Cookie. We had invested in content: our guide to LinkedIn lead generation, our YouTube channel, my podcast and my other writing. Many of these leads had read the guide, tried the tactics themselves and were ready to hire us to run them.

In 2018 I gave these shares without saying how they were measured, and I described them both as our customers and as the leads we spoke to, so read them as a snapshot of one business, not a benchmark.

Image

Zoom

Jake’s reported 2018 Lead Cookie awareness mix. The percentages describe his own leads, not a general distribution for B2B markets.

The conclusion was clear. My time was best spent on prospects who already knew LinkedIn could solve their lead generation problem. I could have gone further upstream and educated earlier buyers, but that typically meant a lower close rate and a much longer sales cycle. The right focus was solution-aware buyers, plus content that would make more of them aware of us. A few months later, in February 2019, I wrote that 68.56% of Lead Cookie's revenue was "a direct result of my personal brand": 40.22% from referral partners, every one of whom had been a guest on my podcast, and 28.34% from content.

A market at a different stage

One of our Lead Cookie customers in 2018 sold AR/VR products that help real estate developers market and sell their properties. When we worked through the awareness of their buyers, the picture looked very different:

• Unaware: a small group of developers who had done things the same way for 20 years or more and had no intention of changing.
• Problem aware: the majority. They knew technology was changing how their industry worked, and that printed brochures, open houses, billboards and relying on agents were the old way. They did not know what the answer was.
• Solution aware: a small but growing group who understood that buyers wanted to experience more from their phone or computer before visiting a property. They knew what AR/VR was, but may not have used it yet.
• Aware of the client: developers who had seen the products used on another property, or read about them in press releases and trade magazines, and reached out interested specifically in the client's products.

Selling to the solution-aware group would have been easier, but that group was still small. This client's real job was to educate problem-aware developers and bring them to see AR/VR as the answer.

If you sell to several segments or product lines, look at each one separately. Two businesses in the same year had very different mixes, and one company's segments can differ in the same way.

How to find where your buyers are

Start with the buyers you already have. Think through your best past clients and ask what each one knew when they first came to you:

In 2018 I expected that most businesses that had not invested heavily in content marketing would find their buyers mostly problem aware or solution aware. Businesses that had invested in thought leadership and content would see more buyers arrive already aware of them, because the content had done that work before the first call. Most businesses would also have spoken with some unaware buyers, and found them slow and hard to convert.

Two other sources help. Your own sales calls show how buyers describe the problem: notice whether they talk about symptoms, about a kind of solution, or about you. And if your site gets traffic from Google search, Google Search Console's Performance report (opens in a new tab) groups your traffic by the queries people typed, which shows the words they use when they find you.

How to meet buyers where they are

Once you know the stage, set your marketing up to meet buyers there. Three things change: your copy, your targeting and your tactics. My article on how to nail your value proposition covers testing the value proposition itself with cold outreach.

Copy: use your buyers' words

When I worked on outreach scripts for the real estate client, their drafts used complex language specific to AR/VR and emerging technology. I had to ask them: do your clients actually use these terms? Would they understand them? In this case, the answer was no.

Many businesses fall into this trap: they write in their own language instead of their customers'. Use their language. The simplest way to write copy is to use the words prospects say to you. With the prospect's permission, record your next sales call, then write down how they describe the challenge. Do they say "we need emerging technologies to create immersive experiences for prospective tenants"? Or "we need to figure out how to use new technology to sell more units"?

If you can't record, take notes on your calls: the phrases prospects use for their problems and the outcomes they want.

Targeting: reach people who already know the solution

Awareness also decides who you target, whether through outreach, advertising or any other channel. One Lead Cookie client in 2018 ran a development shop specializing in React, the library for building user interfaces. When we built the targeting for his outreach, we looked for people who listed React or related development skills on their profiles. A buyer who did not know what React was would have been very hard to sell, because his positioning did not speak to them. A buyer who knew React and was struggling to staff a project using it was a strong fit.

You can also test skills-based audiences in LinkedIn ads. Its ad targeting options (opens in a new tab) include member skills, alongside job title, function and seniority. Skills can be entered by members or derived by LinkedIn from their profiles, so treat them as a starting point for finding people who know the technology, then check that you are reaching the roles and needs your offer serves. If you reach these people one to one on LinkedIn instead, note that its User Agreement (opens in a new tab) (effective November 3, 2025) prohibits using bots or other unauthorized automated methods to add contacts or send messages.

Tactics: choose channels that fit the stage

Awareness is also a guide to which tactics to pick. In 2018 many web design agencies asked Lead Cookie for lead generation, and in most cases we were not a good fit for agencies offering only web design. My reasoning then was that companies bought websites every few years, which made the timing difficult for outreach. I estimated that 99% of the buyers contacted would be unaware of any need for a new website, and I recommended content, thought leadership and inbound channels that would catch buyers when they searched for a provider.

In 2018 I contrasted that with lead generation, marketing services, consulting, process automation and software, which in most cases could be bought at any time and so suited outbound better. For your own offer, check what gives a buyer a reason to buy now before you choose outbound.

The other test is whether a tactic puts you in front of buyers at the right stage. The React shop would benefit from taking part in React communities online and offline, where it would meet developers and decision makers already using React. The AR/VR company could go to conferences on real estate technology or marketing, where it would find more solution-aware buyers than at a general real estate event. At Lead Cookie, I won a large number of customers by taking part in communities focused on growth and lead generation, whose members were always testing new tactics and looking for a good solution.

Image

Zoom

The approach described in this article, shown as a visual guide.

What still holds, and what to check before you use it

The stages and the advice to use your buyers' language hold. Where possible, get in front of buyers who already recognize the problem and know that solutions exist; in 2018 I found solution-aware buyers the quickest to sell. If you sell into an emerging category, as the AR/VR client did, you often have no choice but to speak to problem-aware buyers. Then take an education-based approach, in their language and not yours.

Use the 2018 examples for the reasoning, then choose tactics from your own call notes, search data and each channel's current rules. Your own buyers will tell you more than my 2018 figures can.

Look at your last ten clients. How many of them knew what kind of solution they wanted before they called you?