How do you sell to an audience that doesn’t yet know they need your product? Time saving software when your typical consumer isn’t aware of the time they’re wasting? Job roles suited to candidates who aren’t necessarily thinking of changing jobs?
Your Audience Is Out There… They Just Don’t Know It… Yet.
The easy route to market for most products, or services, is through advertising. That advertising strategy usually consists, sometimes in entirety, of Google Adwords. We want to capture the attention of individuals who are actively seeking products that fit a specific brief. But what if your advertising audience is limited?
Limited by the fact they’re unaware of the need for your product? That’s the issue faced by both B2B and some B2C providers. As consumers, we’re not always aware of what it is that we need. What it is that may help us in our daily lives.
How Do You Attract Their Attention?
Gents, take a look at that wallet that’s in your pocket, or your drawer. As a marketer, what could I be doing to inspire you to purchase a brand new wallet? I don’t know the stats, but I imagine a large proportion of wallets are given as gifts. Either that, or we build a new home for our credit cards,receipts and money when our current home is in a state of disrepair. Let’s face it, it’s not the most exciting purchase we’ll ever make. So, the wallet manufacturer. How can they attract attention and differentiate their product in a crowded market? What can they do to stand out?
Target the Pain Point.
That’s a problem, I’m sure, that faced the folks at marketing folks at Bellroy. Mid-priced wallets in a market dominated by cross-over fashion brands. What did they do? They targeted the singular pain-point that most of us weren’t necessarily aware we suffered.
What else do we generally store in our pockets? The mobile phone. A market where brands compete to pack the most features into the smallest amount of space. Why? Because we crave sleek design and minimal size. Bellroy took this ‘space saving’ requirement and translated it to their own marketplace.
They exist to slim your wallet. How many of us search for ‘space saving wallets’ or ‘slim wallets’? How many of us could even isolate that particular pain-point? It’s only when you take a moment and think about the chunky pocket-filler that the lightbulb moment arrives – yes, I really like the sound of a slimline wallet! Bellroy don’t simply sell this benefit as a concept. It’s their mission.
Again, let’s take a desk within the marketing department of a wallet manufacturer. Do we send out literature to all of our retailers telling them the benefits of a slimmer wallet? As you scroll the product pages of a fashion retailer, do the words ‘slim’ leap out at you when you’re looking to buy a wallet? I doubt it.
Be Your Consumer
You’re not aware of the struggles your audience face when you’ve never walked in their shoes. Product specialists, such as Bellroy, are just one example of the brands that understand those struggles and build their product, their ‘mission’, around them. Just look at Moleskine in the stationery market. Premium priced classic-styled notebooks in a market filled with budget-end wirebound cheaper variations.
The Moleskine story is based upon the legendary figures that utilised black notebooks to record their ideas and their visions. It strikes right at the heart of aspiring writers and business people alike. Our notebooks are valued. They are the home of our vision. Moleskine tells the story of that value-based relationship.
Helpfulness Outweighs Benefit
Bellroy utilise a single-page that provides their audience with friendly tips to help them ‘slim their wallet’. As they rightly point out, ‘it’s something you’ve probably never thought much about’: 
The Bellroy landing page:
1.) Offers me advice – a practical solution of my own making It provides practical tips to help you reduce the size of your current wallet.
2.) Offers me their own alternative No sales pitch, just a simple visual demonstration of how your wallet, with it’s current contents, could be less bulky if it’s a Bellroy wallet.
3.) Gets me thinking about the choice I’ll now be making…. Now, Bellroy really get me thinking about my own wallet preferences. Something, personally, I’ve never considered, but would I prefer the smallest wallet, or easy access? Decision made, I’m led into a nice visual of their range of 10 wallet variations. I’m sold.
How Can You Grab Attention & Get Your Audience Thinking?
I wasn’t seeking out information about wallets. My wallet must be 10+ years old, but I wasn’t in the market for a new one. Or was I? 
I came across Bellroy through display advertising on the New York Times website. The ad created intrigue as they invited me to ‘slim my wallet’.
What message this triggered in my brain at the time, I can’t tell you, but it created an impact. The message stood out. It resonated. …and that’s through Display Advertising.
How strong will the message stand out with those that are actually searching for a new wallet? A product in a crowded market that differentiates itself by targeting a pain-point I wasn’t consciously aware of.
That’s a common struggle many marketers face. What pain points can your product find solutions for? How do you utilise those pain points and deliver a message that prompts awareness, enough awareness to make me re-think my needs?
Think again about the wallet-market. How else could a wallet manufacturer differentiate itself? Leather grain? compartments? brand association? price? All features or benefits that focus on plus-points rather than pain-points. How can you provide your audience with awareness of a problem they never knew they needed solving?
SUMMARY: One of the biggest dilemmas marketers face is attracting an audience to a product that they may not know they need… yet. Did we ever know that we needed to keep our music catalog on our phone? This isn’t about creating a product that’s better – it’s about creating a story that sells our products better. Context is everything.
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