Creating Awareness: The Best Way to Reach Untapped Market Potential

Samuel Thimothy is VP at OneIMS.com, an inbound marketing agency, and co-founder of Clickx.io, the digital marketing intelligence platform.

If you want to grow your business, it can be challenging to know what to prioritize in order to achieve your goals. What’s more important: building awareness or generating demand? Which method contributes more to long-term success? How should you invest your resources to achieve a better ROI?

Answering these questions requires taking a closer look at today’s buyers and the best ways to reach them.

The Buyer’s Journey Is Still Relevant, But Buying Behavior Has Changed

The buyer’s journey remains relevant to today’s buyers. However, their purchasing habits have changed.

Now more than ever, buyers are doing their own research and gathering their own information in the awareness stage before contacting a company directly. And according to Gartner, 75% of B2B buyers would rather not talk to a sales representative at all. 

As modern buyers conduct their own research, it’s more important than ever for businesses to grab their attention during the very first stage of the buyer’s journey.

Creating Awareness vs. Generating Demand: What’s the Difference?

Building awareness targets those in the first stage of the buyer’s journey. When creating awareness, you focus on defining the customer’s problem while simultaneously establishing the identity and reputation of your brand.

Demand generation, on the other hand, is a response to active interest in the products or services your company offers. Demand generation campaigns specifically target those prospects who are already looking for solutions to their problem—in other words, those in the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey.

Of course, both of these marketing activities are valuable and essential to getting more sales. But time and time again, I see marketers focusing solely on demand generation and leaving brand awareness in the dust. I think this is a mistake. In fact, I’d argue that building awareness contributes significantly more to sustainable, long-term business growth.

Why Creating Awareness Is Essential for Long-Term Growth

Consider your market segment. Only a small portion of that market is ready to make a purchase—around 5 percent, according to the 95:5 rule. It’s these prospects who are aware of their problem and considering a solution. Demand generation results will rely on capturing this small percentage of buyers.

That leaves about 95 percent of your total addressable market who may not be aware of their problem or know how to describe it, which is a vast amount of untapped potential. By connecting with these buyers at the awareness stage—as they are just starting down the path of the buyer’s journey—you can connect with them on the ground floor and establish your brand as a trustworthy source of expertise from the very beginning.

While demand generation targeted to the consideration stage is valuable for producing short-term leads, awareness creates a continuous flow of leads—helping support sustainable, predictable growth.

How to Create Awareness & Capitalize on Untapped Markets

The first step a potential customer takes in their path to purchasing your product or service is simply becoming aware of the problem they want to solve (ideally, with your offering). Why not capitalize on this untapped market by creating brand awareness and staying top of mind throughout the buyer’s journey?

Here are three proven strategies you can use to help you start building awareness of your business.

1. Research Your Target Audience

If you don’t know the audience you are trying to target, it will be extremely difficult to effectively capture their attention and create brand awareness. Do your research, create buyer personas, and dive into the purchasing habits of your ideal customers in order to guide your awareness strategy.

2. Show Up Where They Spend Time Online

Where do the untapped buyers in your total addressable market spend time online? Email? LinkedIn? Instagram? How do they begin their research? On Google Search? Through YouTube? Make sure your brand is active wherever your target audience spends time online so it’s easier to reach them at the right moment.

3. Get Your Name Out There with Tailored Content

To reach buyers in the awareness stage, create content that helps them understand and name their problem—and simultaneously introduces your brand. Think explainer videos, blogs, guides, checklists, infographics, and other educational content that covers the broad scope of the problem. With content that provides value, you can start building awareness, generating trust, and nurturing leads at scale.

Improving awareness of your brand—especially to buyers in the beginning stages of their research—can have a significant impact on your ability to reach untapped audiences, get new business, and achieve sustainable growth.