The UPSYD Method is the Secret to Winning Campaigns
The likely cause for failure was not because your company, product, or service is lacking. Previous paid campaigns likely failed because you didn’t have the right messaging in front of the right audience. UPSYD solves this.
Where Did UPSYD Come From?
UPSYD, an acronym for how to best reach your target audience, is not a new concept. In fact, it dates back to Eugene Schwartz’s 1966 book Breakthrough Advertising. You might be wondering, how could a marketing approach from the 1960s apply to digital marketing today?
Because, put simply, human nature doesn’t change. How marketing is delivered (the format) is what changes.
From the first radio ads to today’s social media ads, what’s remained the same is humans’ mindset when it comes to trying something new. That’s why Schwartz’s fifty-year-old idea still works today.
What Does UPSYD Stand For?
Imagine your target audience as a pie chart comprised of various awareness stages. These stages are what make up the acronym, UPSYD. Here’s how it breaks down:
- UNAWARE: a percentage of people that are completely unaware – meaning they have no knowledge of anything except perhaps their own identity or opinion.
- PROBLEM: percentage of people that are problem- or desire-aware; they sense that they have a problem, but they don’t know there’s a solution.
- SOLUTION: percentage of people that know the result they want, but not that your product or service provides it.
- YOUR-SOLUTION AWARE: percentage of people that know what you sell but are not quite sure it’s right for them.
- DEAL: percentage of people that know about your product or service, and now, they just need to know the deal. This group is the most aware of all. Perhaps they have seen your product, watched your sales video, or been to your shopping cart, but they just need a coupon to close the deal.
Now, picture UPSYD as stair steps. If you think about walking up a set of stairs, it’s very easy to go one step at a time. But to go from the bottom step to say, the fourth step, is fairly difficult. The same can be said for your audience.
It’s very challenging for someone in your audience to skip a few steps. Your audience goes through a journey, and your goal with paid advertising is to move them from being unaware or having a general awareness of a problem (U) to being aware and having intent (Y).
Why Did My Past Paid Marketing Efforts Fail?
Essentially, we all go through these steps, which is exactly what Eugene Schwartz identified way back in the 1960s. If you miss any of these steps in your advertising, you won’t get the solution that you want: conversions to your product or service.
Remember that everyone is starting on a different step and taking their own journey. People could be entering really late in the stair steps while others are only on Step 1.
This is why it’s so important to have campaigns that guide people from Step 1 to Step 2, Step 2 to Step 3, and so on. There should also be something in place that’s automating the movement from step to step.
It doesn’t mean that people in your audience aren’t going to jump into the middle of your stair steps. However, if you have these campaigns setup, you’ll ensure you’re capturing the attention of everyone you want to target, no matter where they are in their journey. This is the perpetual traffic system, and it is what leads to the most success in digital marketing.
How Do You Execute UPSYD in Paid Advertising?
To begin with, we start by determining the following about our clients:
- What are you selling or offering?
- What is the appropriate hook for your audience?
- What is the right messaging?
- What is the best lead magnet (piece of content) that will give us the most success?
- What lead magnet appeals to the largest possible audiences?
To use UPSYD correctly, we must take a step back and say, “Who are the different groups of people that we’re speaking to? How far along are they in the customer journey? What campaigns do we need to put in place that work with one another to really automate this journey?”
Although this is time consuming, the initial work is worth it. Once you can establish these fundamentals, your UPSYD campaigns can run (and be successful!) for years.
Reaching and Succeeding with “U” and “P” Audiences
The two most difficult campaigns to run are reaching audiences in the “U” stage (completely unaware of a problem), and sometimes “P” (aware of a problem or a specific desire).
To win over these audiences, avoid using industry jargon in your messaging. A winning campaign hooks them with messaging that simply states how your business solves a fundamental issue. For example, asking “Do you want to double the sales of your business?” is something that resonates with every business owner.
Targeting “P” and “S” Audiences
For Facebook marketing specifically, audiences that fall in the “P” and “S” stage are in the sweet spot for lowest cost per conversion. These are people that are aware of a problem but not of a solution; or they’re aware of a solution, but they’re not aware of your solution.
For this audience, the challenge is convincing them that your solution is the best. We have found that videos tend to transport audiences the quickest from “U” to “Y”. These powerful videos don’t ask them to skip any steps; they just move them quicker up the “stairs”.
How UPSYD Leads to Winning Campaigns
If your ads provide an “Ah-Ha” moment, not only is your audience going to like you, but they’re going to let their virtual guard down. People who are inspired, excited, motivated, or intrigued by your messaging will come into your funnel and can more easily become customers down the road.
By giving the right messaging to the right audience, you get them to put their “virtual fists” down. Then, they’ll want to read your messages, watch your videos, opt-in, open your emails, and so on. Most importantly, they will want to buy your product or service.
In short, UPSYD lets you engineer a process to transform people from unaware of a problem to buying your product. It shows you the stair-step journey that a customer takes and what to do with the right messaging. The best part is that once you understand it to its core, it works on any platform.
