Use the 5 Stages of Awareness to Develop Your Content Strategy

Ariel Lim
7 min readJan 2, 2020

Never guess what to write about again

Photo by Felipe Furtado on Unsplash

Content should be at the heart of every digital marketing campaign. That is, if you want to achieve results.

If it isn’t on Google, it doesn’t exist.

—Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Cofounder

Copywriter Eugene Schwartz wrote about the 5 stages of awareness in his book, Breakthrough Advertising, in 1966. Today, it’s still one of the most effective frameworks for creating content. If you’re not already familiar, here are the different stages of awareness buyers go through:

  1. Unaware — those who aren’t aware they have a problem, and therefore, don’t need anything
  2. Pain Aware — people who are experiencing problems or issues but not any solutions
  3. Solution Aware — those who know they have a problem and potential solutions available
  4. Product Aware — people who know you offer the solutions they may need but have yet to choose your offer
  5. Most Aware — those who know you and trust you

I wrote more about it here. But the main idea behind the different stages is this: at any point in time, your prospects are in any one of those stages. It is your job as a marketer (or sales or business owner) to move them to the next stage. This is where content comes in.

The problem, however, is that a lot of content produced by businesses focus on their own products. Promos and discounts. Why you should use our product vs other competitors.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It only becomes a problem if it’s the only type of content you are creating. You are alienating a bigger pool of audiences who haven’t heard about you.

So, if you’re looking for more information on how to use the different levels of awareness to grow your business and attack more people, you’re in the right place. I’ll show you how you can develop your content strategy using the 5 stages of awareness below.

How to Use the 5 Stages of Awareness to Create Your Content Strategy

Ariel Lim

Marketer, freelancer, husband | The Startup, Better Marketing, The Ascent, PGSG | Find out how I grew my organic traffic by 110% in 5 mo: https://bit.ly/3fpilkW