Most startups don’t fail because their product is bad, they fail because generating demand (even for a great product) is f**king difficult. Demand generation isn’t about flashy campaigns or doing everything at once. It’s about systematically building awareness, need, and trust to move prospects closer to becoming customers. These three drivers are the foundation of survival.

Awareness, Need, and Trust evolve with every touchpoint in the customer journey, and when you master them you’ll create unstoppable momentum. By understanding how these drivers work and compound over time, you can craft content that systematically builds demand, one piece at a time.

Awareness: The Foundation of Demand

If your audience doesn’t know you exist, they can’t buy from you. BUT, awareness isn’t just about visibility. It’s a layered concept that deepens as prospects move through their journey.

The Layers of Awareness

1. Existence Awareness: Your audience knows your brand exists and has a vague understanding of what you do.
2. Problem Awareness: Prospects realize they have a challenge or opportunity that needs addressing, even if they aren’t ready to act on it.
3. Solution Awareness: They start to recognize that solutions, including yours, exist to solve their problem.
4. Brand Awareness: At this stage, your brand is not just known but associated with solving a specific type of problem.

Content’s Job:

Each piece of content should focus on deepening awareness in one of these layers. Trying to jump straight to brand awareness without first establishing problem and solution awareness risks losing your audience.

Need: From Identification to Desire

Awareness alone isn’t enough. Prospects must feel a need, a gap between their current state and a better future they could achieve. BUT, there’s a critical difference between identifying a need and creating a want.

The Evolution of Need

1. Problem Identification: Prospects recognize they have a problem. This is often logical and unemotional.
2. Want Creation: Turning recognition into desire involves emotion. A “need” becomes a “want” when prospects feel motivated to act.
3. Urgency to Act: A want becomes an immediate priority when there’s a clear cost to inaction.

Content’s Job:

Shift your prospects from passive recognition of their needs to active desire. The more specific and relatable the content, the more effectively it can transform “I could use this” into “I need this now.”

Trust: The Bridge to Action

Trust is the most nuanced driver of demand. It’s not a single milestone but a continuum, starting with small commitments and building to significant investments. Trust must be earned incrementally, with each interaction adding another layer.

The Levels of Trust

1. Trusting With Time: Prospects give you 30 seconds to click a link in an outreach message, scan a social media post or watch a video.
2. Trusting With Information: They share their email address or engage with interactive content.
3. Trusting With Low-Stakes Actions: Prospects test your solution with minimal risk, such as signing up for a free trial.
4. Trusting With Financial Investment: They make a purchase, trusting that your product will deliver the promised value.

Content’s Job:

Build trust progressively, matching the level of commitment you ask for to the level of trust you’ve earned. Start with low-stakes engagements, like free resources or insightful content, and build toward higher-stakes actions, like product demos and purchases.

How These Drivers Work Together

The magic happens when Awareness, Need, and Trust are woven together into a cohesive strategy:

• Awareness brings you onto the radar.
• Need motivates your audience to act.
• Trust removes barriers to taking that action.

Each piece of content should focus on one primary job while contributing to all three drivers. For example, a LinkedIn post might primarily build awareness, but it can also plant a seed of need and begin to establish trust by delivering value.

Building Demand Systematically

Demand isn’t built overnight, it’s constructed systematically, piece by piece, with content that’s purposeful and focused. By understanding the layered nature of awareness, the progression from need to want, and the incremental building of trust, you can create content that does its job exceptionally well.

Remember: the simpler the job for your content, the better it can perform. A single blog post, video, or case study doesn’t have to do everything, it just has to do one thing brilliantly. Over time, these pieces stack to create an effective demand-generation strategy that turns prospects into loyal customers.

To dive deeper into creating high-impact content that supports each layer of demand generation, explore The 5 Pieces of Content Essential for Every SaaS Founder. It’s a practical guide to help you craft content that drives awareness, need, and trust at every stage of the customer journey.

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