How To Grow Your Business When No One Knows You

Brands can be placed into different categories, or sets, each which hold specific characteristics. These include:

• Evoked Set: brands that consumers consider as acceptable to purchase from.
• Inept Set: brands that a consumer excludes from purchase consideration, for whatever reason.
• Inert Set: brands that a consumer is indifferent toward because they are perceived as having no particular advantage.

Obviously, brands in the evoked set will be generating more sales. So the question is, how can you move from the inert or inept set to the evoked set?

There are three specific strategies that can be used depending on what part of the customer journey the consumer is in. If the consumer is in the awareness stage and is not currently searching (known as habitual decision making), then we can use a disrupt strategy. If the consumer is problem aware and starting to search for a solution (known as limited decision making), we can use an intercept strategy. If consumers are ready to buy and are looking for their best options (known as extended decision making), we can use an acceptance strategy.

Brand credibility will have a dramatic impact on what set the brand will be placed in by consumers. Three factors that impact brand credibility are:

• Perceived quality of the brand
• Perceived risk associated with the brand
• Information costs saved with that brand (due to time saved by not shopping around)

Playing around with these three factors can help improve brand credibility and thus move your brand closer toward the evoked set.