Greek mythology talks about Elysium, the paradise where everyone is happy and indulges in what they enjoy.

For businesses and brands, this Elysium is an environment where revenue and profits flow freely, growth is predictable, and peace of mind is the norm.

The path to this promised land, businesses believe, is awareness. And they’re right. Awareness enables them to build their reputation as authorities in their fields, develop stronger relations with customers and influencers, and generate revenue in the long term.

They engage in various content marketing to create brand awareness — blogging, social media, PRs… They correctly apply paid-campaign and SEO practices to promote their product, company, and capabilities. They hope to impress customers and grow their funnel of prospective leads.

This conventional strategy fails to address two grave challenges.

First, customers are not impressed. In fact, they don’t even care. Here’s why.

A brand wants to make its offering the customer’s goal. But a customer’s goal is to find a solution for her most pressing problem. This is why customers refuse to engage with self-obsessed content that businesses and brands create. And businesses end up thinking that content marketing doesn’t work.

People are not interested in you. They are not interested in me. They are interested in themselves — morning, noon, and after dinner. — Dale Carnegie.

Second, product/brand awareness is useful for people who already know what they need.

But it fails to impact people who don’t know the solution to their problems. Nor does it enable brands to differentiate themselves in a market flooded with identical players.

Such an awareness strategy merely informs people about a new entrant in an already crowded market. Regardless of how much they spend, businesses and brands cannot change this. You just cannot buy customers anymore. (Yes, you can run paid advertising but even that’s futile if all you talk about is yourself.)