Long-time Bredemarket fans may recall when Bredemarket established and publicized annual goals. I haven’t publicized my overall goals since 2022, but I am publicizing these two tactical goals for 2026 to (1) hold myself accountable, and to (2) enlist your help. Both are awareness goals, designed to bring Bredemarket to the attention of the identity, biometric, and technology marketing leaders who are my hungry people.
Tactical Goal 1
In calendar year 2026, achieve 100 WordPress views (as measured by “Most Viewed,” not “Most Downloaded”) for each of the three “essentials” videos:
You can help me realize my goals by doing one or both of the following (I ask, then YOU act):
If you have not seen all three of these videos yourself, visit either the Bredemarket blog post or the YouTube playlist and view the ones you haven’t seen. No need to view the ones you’ve already seen; I’m interested in meaningful views, not statistical inflation.
Share the videos with identity, biometric, and technology marketing leaders who can use Bredemarket’s services.
For me, 100 or 1,000 annual views of a video is a stretch goal. Even looking at lifetime statistics, my most popular WordPress video, my discovery of the Amazon Fresh Upland opening, has less than 100 views, and my most popular YouTube short, the metal strips that protect palm trees from squirrels, has less than 3,100 views. (I believe my most popular video ever was my Instagram reel of the San Antonio Avenue bridge: over 6,800 views.)
Another SoCal Tech Forum presentation on Saturday, this one on banking technology from Carey Ransom of BankTech Ventures.
FoundrSpace.
Only a small reference to financial identity, but excellent nonetheless. While I live-posted the event here on my personal LinkedIn account, I wanted to summarize my three main takeaways from Bredemarket’s perspective.
One: Differentiate
Yes, community banks need to differentiate. Perhaps back in the 1980s before the advent of national banks, community banks could offer a standard suite of services for their communities. But now they’re competing against national banks that do business in their prospects’ communities, and in their prospects’ phones. (We will get to phones in a minute.)
One example Ransom gave: why do community banks offer credit cards? Are their credit cards better than the credit cards from the Really Big (Banking) Bunch? Probably not.
But unlike the Capital Ones and Chimes of the world, community banks know their communities. And they know what local businesses need, and are ideally suited to deliver this. (We will get to services in two minutes.)
Yes, I know that Bank of America may have someone attending and sponsoring your local events, but that person is not Brian Moynihan. And if you don’t know who Moynihan is, your prospects don’t know him either.
But John, you may be saying to yourself, you can’t bank on a phone. How do you deposit checks? And how do you get cash?
Well, let’s look at this:
Bredemarket hasn’t received a check in over three years, but when one of my clients was paying me by check, I would use my phone to take a picture of it and deposit it.
And as for cash, this is needed less and less, especially since many merchants take Apple Pay and Google Pay.
In fact, bank branches are so irrelevant to today’s—and tomorrow’s—bank prospects and customers that Ransom referred to a $3 million dollar bank branch as a really expensive billboard. Probably none of the people who are reading this post WANT to go into a bank branch.
And those that do? Here’s a little secret: if the average age of the people who bank at your bank is in their 70s, they will…um…not be long-term bank customers. The 18 year olds that will bank for decades? They’re opening accounts on their phones. Can they use a phone to open an account at your bank? And why would they do so? (See the differentiation discussion above.)
Three: Supplement
One way a bank can differentiate is via the services they offer.
At the most basic level, a bank can make money by loaning the funds they receive from deposits.
But they can offer many more services to 21st century clients, thanks to legislation such as the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act that allow financial holding companies to own financial or complementary firms.
And not just investments and wealth management.
Ransom provided an illustrative example: cybersecurity.
Banks need to have expertise in cybersecurity to stay alive, and to comply with Know Your Customer and other financial regulations.
So why not offer cybersecurity services to their customers?
This not only gives the banks another revenue stream, but also reduces the risk that their own customers will experience fraud from hacks.
Four: Market
I know I said there were three takeaways. I lied.
Ransom also noted that CapitalOne spends 20% on marketing, including everything from TV ads to cafes. Your typical community bank spends much less, maybe 1%.
How are your prospects going to know what differentiates your bank if they don’t have awareness of those differentiators?
Or perhaps you need proposal or analysis services.
Bredemarket, a provider of content, proposal, and analysis services to technology (and identity) firms, can work with you to create the words you need. Learn about my offerings and book a free meeting here.
Marketers are driven to accentuate the positive about their companies. Perhaps the company has a charismatic founder who repeatedly emphasizes how “insanely great” his company is and who talked about “bozos.” (Yeah, there was a guy who did both of those.)
And since marketers are often mandated to create both external and internal sales enablement content, their view of their own company and their own product is colored.
But if you ONLY pay attention to your positive story, you’re half blind.
You miss what your competitors are telling their prospects about you.
You miss what your departed customers are saying about you.
So ideally you should intentionally (and privately) seek the negative things that are said about your company.
One quick way to do this is to take advantage of answer engine optimization and ask a generative AI search engine what it thinks are the negatives about your company.
(I did this several years ago, when generative AI was in its infancy, and encountered some false statements about a company. So what did I do? Create corrective content that negated these negative statements. But I digress.)
I should demonstrate this with an example. But I shouldn’t ask about any of my former employers or former consulting clients. What’s a safe company that I can research and minimize the trouble I’d get into?
Google Gemini prompt: “What factors contribute to Bredemarket’s negative reputation?”
OK, this may get me in a little trouble, but it could be a lot worse if I targeted a larger company.
Anyway, I fed this prompt to Google Gemini, which identified two factors.
The first factor was “Indirect Backlash from Controversial Blog Content.” Google cited this post as an example, warning that I could get in trouble for expressing a “minority opinion.” That opinion? That changing the name of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) to the Association of Winning Business Professionals (AWBP) was a GOOD thing. As it turn out, the APMP reversed the rebrand, so my opinion was definitely not popular in the long run.
But I’d rather focus on Google’s second factor, which I will reproduce in full.
2. General Reputation Factors (Lack of Public Reviews)
As a small-scale, expert-driven consulting/content service, Bredemarket’s reputation is likely not governed by major public review platforms like Yelp or Google Reviews in the same way a consumer business is. The absence of traditional positive or negative reviews means its reputation is less solidified publicly.
In general, factors that could negatively affect the reputation of any small consulting firm, which may apply to Bredemarket if not explicitly disproven, include:
Limited Public Visibility: If the brand is not widely known outside of a niche (proposal writing, identity/biometrics), a lack of positive brand presence can make it appear less credible than larger competitors.
Visual or Digital Identity: For a business-to-business (B2B) content provider, a website with a “neglected and too generic visual identity” could potentially undermine professionalism, although no evidence suggests this is the case for Bredemarket specifically.
Reliance on a Single Voice: As the service is heavily identified with the founder, John E. Bredehoft, any professional disagreement with his published opinions could be mistakenly interpreted as dissatisfaction with the entire “Bredemarket” service.
As you can see from reading the answer, Google didn’t really know a lot about Bredemarket…because of my LIMITED PUBLIC VISIBILITY.
AI from Google Gemini.
It didn’t really know Bredemarket’s VISUAL OR DIGITAL IDENTITY, and therefore couldn’t evaluate whether my wildebeest-infused graphics made up for the rather generic nature of my website. (Or whether the wildebeests and iguanas and the like are actually a detriment.)
AI from Google Gemini.
As for the last part, RELIANCE ON A SINGLE VOICE (Bredebot doesn’t count), that is pretty much unavoidable.
So in my analysis of what creates a negative reputation for my own company Bredemarket, the primary issue is my limited public visibility, or as marketers say limited awareness. Or, taking a word I’ve used in other contexts, the market’s indifference toward Bredemarket.
Sure I’m visible in some very specific niches (try an AEO search for “biometric product marketing expert” some time), but it’s not like the entire biometric industry or the entire city of Ontario, California is constantly talking about Bredmarket.
I need to step that awareness up by several orders of magnitude.
AI from Google Gemini.
Preferably not though public nudity. That would not be a positive. (Google Gemini wouldn’t even generate a picture of this, even with strategic placement of the “Bredemarket” sign. Good for them.)
Are you a technology marketing leader, struggling to market your products to your prospects for maximum awareness, consideration, and conversion?
I’m John E. Bredehoft. For over 30 years, I’ve created strategy and tactics to market technical products for over 20 B2B/B2G companies and consulting clients.
How can blog posts increase the awareness of your identity/biometric or technology company’s products and services? I’m going to explain how in this blog post.
Imagine there’s a funnel. It’s easy if you try. But this funnel doesn’t stream water, but people. (Or wombats.)
The funnel. Imagen 4.
In this funnel, the people (or wombats) who are potentially interested in your offering—your prospects—start at the very top. The few who actually buy your offering emerge from the bottom.
But how do you get people to enter the funnel and become aware of your offering?
How can blog posts help you?
One great way to let people know about your offering is by blog posts such as this one.
Blogs are a fast way to tell your prospects how your offering can help them. And you can create blog posts very quickly, within days or even hours.
If you want to make prospects aware of your company’s service, write a blog post.
What can Bredemarket offer to you?
One of Bredemarket’s offerings is…writing blog posts for other companies. I can help your identity/biometric or technology company write blog posts so you can get more people to learn about your services.
If you want to learn how I can help your company write blog posts, visit bredemarket.com/mark.
Do your technology company’s prospects know about you?
How can your technology company increase product benefit awareness right now?
(“Right Now” is a song. Keep tuned for another song reference.)
Before showing you how to do this, let’s take a closer look at three words in the title: product, benefit, and awareness.
Then we’ll get into the how: have, know, write, and publish.
And one more “how” if blogging is hard.
Three words break the code of indifference
No apologies for the section heading, but since her dad died, Kelly Osbourne’s best song (albeit with a curious history) has been on my mind.
While Osbourne’s one word breaks the code of silence, the three words that I chose for my post title break the code of indifference. And I chose each of them—product, benefit, and awareness—carefully.
Word One: Product
Companies talk about a lot of things. Their “why” story. Their great place to work award. Their social/moral/ethical conscience.
Right now I don’t care about any of that. I care about the company’s products or services: the way they make money.
Product firms need products. Imagen 4.
Because if prospects don’t buy these products and become customers, then their why story and awards and conscience count for zilch. There’s a time to share those stories, but for now let’s focus on the product story.
Word Two: Benefit
Now once you look at those products, they have a bunch of features. The ability to capture fingerprints at 1,000 pixels per inch. The ability to complete a third-party risk management analysis in hours, not months. The ability to deliver a completely vetted blog post in days, not weeks.
Right now I don’t care about any of that. I care about the benefits the product brings to the prospect: the things that will make them become a customer.
Revenue is definitely beneficial. Imagen 4.
Because prospects don’t care about you; they only care about themselves. And if your product doesn’t provide tangible benefits to them, they’ll ignore it.
Word Three: Awareness
The third word differs from the other two, because there are multiple answers that are equally valid. I’ve just chosen to focus on one. If you subscribe to the notion of an ordered funnel (some marketers instead believe in a messy middle), then all prospects enter at the beginning of the funnel, and a subset of those prospects exit as buying customers at the end of the funnel. Using a simple three-stage funnel model, you can define those three stages as awareness, consideration, and conversion.
Right now I don’t care about consideration or conversion, although they’re obviously important. (If you have no conversions, you have no revenue, and you have no company.) For my purposes I’m focusing on awareness, or the stage in which a prospect discovers that your company has a product or service that benefits them.
Awareness. Imagen 4.
So how can you raise awareness of the benefits of your product to your prospects? There are multiple methods: text, images, videos, quizzes, contests, webinars, and podcasts. Bredemarket uses many of these methods via its social media channels. But today I’m going to focus on one particular method: blog posts. But we’ll cover some of the other ones also.
One blog breaks the lack of knowledge
The reason that I’m so gung-ho about blog posts is that they can be created and distributed very quickly. Press releases can take a long time. Videos, even longer. Webinars, even longer still.
Compare that to a blog post. A sole proprietor can generate a blog post in an hour. A company can get an emergency blog post out in the same time, provided the right people are in the room.
But before you can wow the world with your product’s benefits to your prospects, you have to go through several steps. The four steps listed here (have, know, write, and publish) are somewhat, but they paint the broad brush strokes.
Step One: Have a blog site (or equivalent)
This sounds obvious, but if you don’t have a blog site, you can’t post a blog.
Using myself as an example, my Bredemarket website is hosted by WordPress. And the website has an area where I’ve filed over a thousand blog posts, including this one.
Step Two: Know what you’re going to say, and why you’re saying it (I ask…)
I could spend ten blog posts talking about this step alone. It’s a loaded step encompassing both strategic and tactical elements. Vision. Mission. Positioning and messaging. And finally, the topic that you want to address in this single blog post.
For now I’ll just say that you should take a deep breath before putting pen to paper (or keyboard to file).
Step Three: Write and rewrite what you want to say (…then I act)
I ask, then I act.
But I act iteratively.
In most cases, I don’t just write and post.
I often create what I call a “draft 0.5,” where I get my ideas down, sleep on them, and then take a fresh second look. Often during that second look I cut out half the text.
When working on a project for a Bredemarket client, the text bounces between me and the client. I’ll write the first draft, then the client will review it and offer suggestions, and then I’ll rewrite it. For shorter text I’ll usually have two review cycles, with three review cycles for longer text.
The important thing is to get the piece written, reviewed, and approved. While I’ve drafted pieces and sat on them for months, the true benefits of blogging occur when you publish the piece as soon as possible.
Step four: Publish and publicize
When you’re ready, publish the blog post.
Perhaps you want to schedule the post to appear at an optimum time. For example, I am typing these words (or draft 0.5 of them anyway) on Sunday afternoon, knowing full well I won’t post this on Sunday afternoon. I’m thinking Tuesday morning.
And maybe there’s a reason why you want to publish a post at a particular time. If a trade show begins on Monday September 15, you may want to publish the promotional blog post on Friday September 12.
Once you’ve posted, publicize it.
If your company has an array of social media channels, you have two choices. Either you can post a link to the blog post on the social channel, or you can encapsulate the message from the blog post and repurpose it for the social channel without linking externally. Whatever gets the message out.
Taking an example from myself, I created a video entitled “Landscape (Biometric Product Marketing Expert)” on Sunday morning. I shared this video in a blog post. I also shared it in social media posts on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Substack, Threads, TikTok, WhatsApp, and YouTube. The only current social channels where I didn’t share it were Flip (because it’s…landscape). If I wanted to, I could have assembled a video or created a podcast or hosted a webinar. Oh, and I’m sharing it again. (Right now.)
Landscape (Biometric Product Marketing Expert).
Depending upon your thinking time, your drafting time, and your review cycles, you can get your message out to your prospects within a week…or even within a day.
Not too bad.
But I can’t do all that!
For some people, the idea of writing a blog post can be overwhelming.
That’s why Bredemarket is here to help you increase your tech company’s product benefit awareness. (Right now.)
If you have a blog site (or a LinkedIn, Facebook, or other equivalent) and are ready to get your message out, let’s talk about next steps.
Imagine a Chief Marketing Officer sitting at her desk, wondering how she can overcome her latest challenge within three weeks.
She is a CMO at a biometric software company, and she needs someone to write the first two entries in a projected series of blog posts about the company’s chief software product. The posts need to build awareness, and need to appeal to prospects with some biometric knowledge.
So she contacts the biometric product marketing expert, John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket, via his meeting request form, and schedules a Google Meet for the following meeting.
At the scheduled time she joins the meeting from her laptop on her office desk and sees John on the screen. John is a middle-aged Caucasian man with graying hair. He is wearing wire-rimmed glasses with a double bridge. He has a broad smile, with visible lines around his eyes and mouth. His eyes are brown and appear to be looking directly at the camera. He is wearing a dark blue collared shirt. While his background is blurred, he appears to be in a room inside his home, with a bookcase and craft materials in the background.
After some pleasantries and some identity industry chit chat, John started asking some questions. Why? How? What? Goal? Benefits? Target audience (which he called hungry people)? Emotions? Plus some other questions.
They discussed some ideas for the first two blog posts, each of which would be about 500 words long and each of which would cost $500 each. John pledged to provide the first draft of the first post within three calendar days.
After the call, the CMO had a good feeling. John knew biometrics, knew blogging, and had some good ideas about how to raise the company’s awareness. She couldn’t wait to read Bredemarket’s first draft.
If you are in the same situation as the CMO is this story, schedule your own meeting with Bredemarket by visiting the https://bredemarket.com/mark/ URL and filling out the Calendly form.
Remember how I warned you that this post was going to read odd? In case you’re wondering about the unusual phrasing—including a detailed description of what I look like—it’s because I fed the entire text of this blog post to Google Gemini. Preceded by the words “Draw a realistic picture of.” And here’s what I got.
Imagen 4. I’m not on the screen, but I like the content ideas.
Imagen 4. With the bookcases. And I’ve never had a beard.Imagen 4. But that’s not blurred.
The reason that I redirected the purpose of my Substack posts is because much of my audience there isn’t familiar with the…um…minutiae of biometrics and identity. (For example, my reference to minutiae would probably go right past all but two of my Substack subscribers.)
My Substack audience is best served with awareness content.
But awareness content is not only informative and educational.
Awareness of you
It also makes prospects aware of your company…which is critically important.
“Technology marketers, do your prospects know who you are?
“If they don’t, then your competitors are taking your rightful revenue.
“Don’t let your competitors steal your money.”
Perhaps steal is a harsh word, but it’s accurate.
Or perhaps a better word is indifference: your actions indicate that you don’t care whether customers buy from you or not. If you cared, you’d actually market your products.
Who needs marketing?
“Nonsense, John! We have a sales staff. Who needs marketers?”
But your sales staff cannot be everywhere. If your prospects don’t know about you and aren’t reaching out to you, then you have to reach out to them.
And the calls? “Hi, I’m Tom with WidgetCorp.” “With who?”
So how is that current quarter looking now?
You need marketing, now
Your current quarter and future quarters would look better if your secret salesperson were working for you. As Rhonda Salvestrini said:
“Content for your business is one of the best ways to drive organic traffic. It’s your secret salesperson because it’s out there working for you 24/7.”
But the secret salesperson won’t engage your prospects until you act to create that content.
It’s not enough for your company’s prospects to know who you are, but it helps. But you can do more than that…with Bredemarket’s help.
Who are you?
Who are you?
I just searched for the leading software providers in a particular category. This isn’t unusual. If someone wants to purchase software, they will often conduct their own research before letting themselves be pestered by salespeople.
My category search turned up several software packages.
It DIDN’T turn up numerous others in that category.
So a whole bunch of companies are already at a disadvantage, and there’s a good chance that their competitors are going to take their money because the software buyer won’t even think of purchasing from them.
The software buyer has no AWARENESS of these other software packages.
“Two discussions of this three-step sales funnel are provided by Venn Marketing and Walker Sands (the latter of whom throws in things that happen AFTER the purchase, engagement and advocacy).
“Both sources define awareness as the first step in the funnel, and its purpose is to (drumroll) simply make prospects, um, aware that you and your product/service exist.”
Obviously there are other things you need to do to end up with a happy customer, but you’ll never get a happy customer if it doesn’t even know about you during the prospect stage.
Awareness of what?
We’re a unicorn!
Now there are all sorts of ways to raise awareness, but some are better than others.
I previously linked to the story of Beatrice’s rise and fall, in which the fall was illustrated by the infamous “We’re Beatrice” campaign. The tagline? “We’re Beatrice.” What did the tagline mean to prospects? Absolutely nothing.
I knew of another company that was slightly more successful, but not much. Instead of saying “We’re (COMPANY NAME),” they loudly proclaimed “We’re a Unicorn.” This was back during one of the periods of heated market acquisitions. But what difference did the company’s unicorn status mean for its prospects? Not much. If you’ve raised a billion dollars, I only care if you promise to give me a couple of million of it.
Here in Southern California, Honda car dealers have banded together to produce ads about the “helpful Honda people.” Unfortunately, the ads have nothing to do with cars, the products these commercials are supposed to be selling. What difference does a Honda dealer’s helpfulness make? Unless your cat is stuck in a tree, not much.
It’s not enough for your company’s prospects to have awareness about you. They need to have awareness about how you can solve their problems.
Perhaps your company needs to raise awareness of your solutions to your prospects’ problems.
Bredemarket can work with you on this, asking questions and even engaging in…um…WOMBAT to produce impactful content for your company and its products and services.
So that your prospects know about you.
Then we can work on the next steps, consideration and conversation.
Bredemarket 