TSS #017: How to Leverage Market Awareness in L&D Consulting

Read time: 3 minutes

In consulting, success requires more than expertise—it demands a keen grasp of market awareness.

Yet in the daily hustle, this critical aspect often gets overlooked, leaving a gap in your strategy.

Let's get real: are you leveraging market awareness for your consulting business?

If not, you may be missing a fundamental piece.

Join us as we unpack market awareness—an underappreciated game-changer for consulting success.

To start, let's focus on the basics.

Begin with a thorough brainstorming session, creating an extensive list of the desires prevalent in your target market.

Consider what they truly want—whether it's engagement, immersion, retention, motivation, recognition, interactivity, efficiency, or microlearning.

Compile a comprehensive list.

However, your emphasis should be on identifying high-level desires such as adaptive, engagement, mobile, and just-in-time.

From this list of desires, pinpoint the broadest one with the most potency and urgency.

Identify the desire that holds the largest market segment and is most pressing.

Next, list the features of your service that satisfy that specific desire.

Engage in a brainstorming session to generate as many features as possible.

Ultimately, you’ll boil this down to find the one killer feature that powerfully fulfills that top desire.

This will become the core concept of your marketing.

Although adjustments can be made later, this initial exercise is invaluable.

Now, armed with a prioritized list of your market's desires, you now need to gain an understanding of their awareness landscape.

This will allow us to craft targeted strategies based on where your audience stands.

Consider the following categories and select the one most applicable to your situation:

1. Most Aware:
   • They know the product name and its price (e.g., Colgate toothpaste).
   • Not many of you will find yourselves in this situation.
2. Product Aware:
   • They know the product but are unaware of the price.
   • They may be aware or unaware of your existence, but they know that products exist to solve their problems.
   • Not many of you will find yourselves in this situation.
3. Solution Aware:
   • They are aware that a solution exists for their problem.
   • They may not believe in the solution yet but are open to it.
   • This is often the sweet spot for many markets.
4. Problem Aware:
   • They recognize they have a problem but may not know the solution.
   • Your marketing approach may vary depending on whether they are aware of the problem or not.
5. Unaware:
   • You're either entering a completely new market or dealing with a largely unaware audience.

Understanding where your market falls in this spectrum is crucial.

Most markets tend to be either 'Solution Aware' or 'Problem Aware'.

Going deeper into 'Unaware' territory requires careful consideration and tailored strategies.

For instance, our scenario-based elearning consultancy primarily catered to a 'Solution Aware' market.

Most potential clients knew they wanted scenario-based learning but may not be familiar with the specifics of our elearning design services.

To illustrate further, let's say we wanted to expand into the corporate leadership training market.

While some prospects are 'Solution Aware' and actively seeking scenario-based leadership training, many are simply 'Problem Aware' - they want to improve their leadership skills but don't know that immersive scenarios are a potential solution.

Crafting marketing copy that addresses their broader desire for better leadership development becomes crucial.

We'd need to educate them on how scenario-based elearning can fulfill this need in a unique and powerful way.

Entering a 100% unaware market would need a whole new level of finesse.

We'd have to start by making managers aware of gaps in their leadership skills, then slowly guide them through the belief chain until they realize scenario-based elearning is the ideal training method.

Understanding where you stand is gold.

In conclusion, this isn't just about market awareness; it's about crafting a strategy that aligns with your market's predominant segment.

Focus on a message that resonates, and success is inevitable.

So, are you ready to take the plunge into the uncharted territories of consulting success?

The dance floor is yours.