Second in a Series: Change What They Think
In the first article in this series, we laid out a framework for thinking about marketing outcomes in three categories:
- Changing what your prospects think
- Changing what they feel
- Changing what they do.
We also introduced a simple three-question Clarity Test to apply before publishing anything.
Now we go deeper, starting with the first and, in my experience, the most underestimated category: getting your prospects to think something new.
Why Awareness Is Harder Than It Looks
Most marketers will tell you they understand the importance of awareness. And yet awareness-stage marketing is chronically underfunded, underdeveloped, and when it does get done, is often executed in a way that doesn’t actually create awareness of anything useful.
There’s a reason for this. Awareness marketing is hard to measure in ways that feel satisfying, and the payoff is rarely immediate. Lead generation has a clear feedback loop. Awareness work often doesn’t.
So awareness building gets treated as a nice-to-have rather than the foundation it actually is and that has a practical consequence: when your prospects don’t know you exist, or if they have the wrong idea about what you do, nothing else in your marketing will work as it should.
You can have the most compelling offer in your market and build a conversion page that makes your copywriter weep with joy. It won’t matter if the right people aren’t engaging with it, or if their first impression of your company is confused or inaccurate.
Being Unknown vs. Being Misunderstood
It’s worth making a distinction here, because being unknown and being misunderstood are two different problems. They call for different solutions.
If you’re unknown, the job is straightforward, even if it’s not easy: get in front of the right people, consistently, with a message that’s relevant to their actual situation. You’re building from zero, which means persistence and consistency are as important as creativity.
If you’re misunderstood, the job is actually harder in some ways. You’re not starting from zero. You’re starting from the wrong place. Prospects whose understanding of you is incorrect or incomplete are much harder to reach than prospects who know they don’t know you. Their decision is already made and convincing them to revisit it is a tall mountain to climb.
The fix for being misunderstood isn’t simply more marketing. It is marketing that actively challenges the existing assumption. That means being willing to say, plainly, what you are not, or what you have become. It means creating content that re-opens the conversation they’ve already decided is over.
What Thought Leadership Actually Looks Like When It’s Working
The phrase “thought leadership” has been used so loosely that it’s nearly meaningless. But the underlying idea is still sound, and awareness-stage marketing done well looks a lot like genuine thought leadership: you’re giving prospects a new or better way to think about a problem.
Notice what that is not: it is not a case study about a client you helped. It is not a blog post about your recent award or your new hire. It is not a listicle of tips that anyone in your space could have written.
Good awareness content makes your prospect smarter about something that matters to them. It should also demonstrate that you are uniquely positioned to help them, but only if that demonstration is a product of genuine usefulness and not the point of the piece.
Your awareness content must pass a simple gut-check: if you removed your company name and logo from a piece of content, would it still be valuable to your target audience? If yes, you’re on the right track. If it falls apart without the branding, it’s probably not doing the awareness job you need it to do. (This isn’t the only test you’ll want your content to pass, of course, but it’s an excellent way to eliminate sub-par content in early-draft stages.)
How to Know If a Perception Problem Is Your Real Obstacle
If your marketing is generating activity but not results—plenty of traffic, some engagement, but few qualified conversations—it’s worth asking whether a perception problem is at the root of it. Some signals to look for:
- Prospects who consistently mischaracterize what you do during early conversations
- Inbound leads that are almost never the right fit.
- A sales process that spends too much time on education before it can get to evaluation.
Any of these can point to awareness or perception gaps that conversion-focused marketing won’t solve. If prospects are arriving at your content or your sales conversations with the wrong perception, the first job is to fix their view of you.
Applying the Clarity Test to Awareness Marketing
Remember the three questions from our first article:
- Have I defined what I want a prospect to think or do as a result of this?
- Does the content or campaign lead them there?
- Will they know what to do next?
For awareness-stage content, the third question is often where you might get tripped up. “What to do next” at the awareness stage is rarely a purchase decision. It might be to read another article, subscribe to your newsletter, or simply walk away with a sharper understanding of a problem they’re facing. That’s a legitimate and valuable next step—as long as you’ve thought it through and designed for it.
Awareness is the beginning of the relationship between your marketing and your prospect. It deserves the same intentionality you bring to the parts of marketing that are easier to measure.
Next time, we’ll look at what happens after awareness — when your prospects know who you are, but haven’t yet decided they trust you.
This is the second article in my “Marketing With Intent” series. Future installments will cover marketing for trust and emotional resonance, action and conversion, aligning your business goals with your marketing strategy, and a practical framework for putting it all together. You can find earlier articles in the series here.
Photo by Kanhaiya Sharma on Unsplash
