The Difference Between Being Known and Being Considered
For B2B leaders, particularly in industrial and project-based sectors, there is a dangerous confusion between being "known" and being "considered." Being known means a buyer has heard your company name. Being considered means your company is on the secret, informal shortlist of trusted suppliers they consult before a project even goes public. This article explains why one is a vanity metric and the other is the only thing that matters.
Awareness is Easy to Buy. Consideration is Hard to Earn.
You can buy awareness. Sponsorships, advertisements, and trade show booths make your logo visible. They ensure people have heard of you. But in high-stakes B2B decisions, buyers don’t choose the logo they recognize; they choose the supplier they trust. While many suppliers are known, only a select few are ever truly considered for a project.
The consideration set is the small, internal list of 2-3 suppliers a project manager or procurement head trusts implicitly. These are the people they call for advice before the specifications are even written. If you are not in this group, you are, by definition, a second-tier option. This is a point we touch on in our article about the hidden cost of waiting for RFQs.
Being known gets you on the long list. Being considered gets you the first call.
How “Consideration” is Built in the Quiet
Consideration is not built during the formal procurement process. It is built in the months and years beforehand, through quiet, consistent, and valuable interactions. It is built by the supplier who shares a relevant technical article, who offers an insight on a new market trend, or who proactively points out a potential issue in a project plan.
These actions position the supplier not as a vendor, but as a strategic partner. They are deposits into a trust account that pays dividends when a new project arises. The supplier who has built this trust is not asked to bid on an RFQ; they are asked to help write it.
Why Most Suppliers Over-Invest in Noise
Most suppliers invest heavily in being loud—in creating brand awareness. They shout their message to a broad audience, hoping some of it sticks. But they fail to invest in the quiet, systematic, one-to-one outreach that builds the trust required for consideration.
The goal is not for everyone to know your name. The goal is for the right 100 people in your market to know that you are the smartest person to call when they have a problem. This requires a shift in mindset from broad marketing to surgical market access.
The Takeaway
Stop asking how you can make your brand more "known" and start asking how you can make it more "considered" by your ideal buyers. The former is about volume and noise. The latter is about precision, value, and trust. One gets you brand recognition. The other gets you on the shortlist. Only one of them leads to profitable, defensible growth.