There may be a reason why you’re the retail tech industry’s best kept secret

The concept of brand awareness often sounds a bit flaky to tech companies who think that just because their tech is cool, they are somehow magically going to get noticed. But the truth is, if the company you want to sell to hasn’t heard of you, the minute you make contact, their brain is going to do a dance which goes a bit like this.

First of all, they wonder why they’ve never heard of you and they are then negatively disposed towards a business they probably should have heard of. They have no experiences about you to fall back on, so they are likely to think only bad things – you are new and small and therefore probably not trustworthy. And, if your introduction contained rational information such as how much money you can save them, their brain is operating on an emotional level so you will simply not be believed. Lastly, you have probably annoyed them because you have introduced new information that they are now wondering whether they need or not.

All in all, you’ve just caused someone you regard as a prospect to do the dance of death, and all because they have never head of you. They don’t like it, even though most of this mental processing is going on subconsciously, which is where 70% or more of our thinking goes on.

Brand awareness to the rescue. Interruption marketing, which is what you have just been practising, comes from believing that your future customers are just waiting for you to call, and will put everything down, just to listen to you.

Ideally, companies need to have discovered you for themselves, ideally through a trusted third party source, chiefly media, analysts, consultants, and other companies. This then enables them to start their own journey, in their own way. Your job then is to throw out sign posts along the way, until they decide to make contact.

But without brand awareness, which many now describe as made up of name, logo, value and mission, they are unlikely to go on this journey. And along with 100s of other vendors, you are not only the tech industry’s best kept secret, you are never going to grow.