Nov. 20, 2008 at 4:41pm

The relevancy test

Posted by Kathleen Deakins in Advertising, Planning and Strategy
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My husband is constantly pointing out car models he likes when we drive together. I only act interested. You see, where I see five lanes of clogged freeway, my husband sees a vast used car lot.Car styling and performance are relevant to him. Transportation reliability and efficiency are relevant to me.

Relevance before awareness?
For marketers, being relevant to the buyer is fundamental. I’ve come to realize the concept of relevance is missing from my decades-old thought that we must shepherd buyers through a series of steps to sell my product, service or idea. You, too, may have relied on some variation of the model I’m talking about:

Awareness → Knowledge → Preference → Trial → Purchase.

(Jack Myers is among the old hands bringing new thinking to this subject.)

This model suggests that if you make your claim loud enough and long enough, your prospect will give you a try. It just isn’t so. I know this because I just dumped 15 e-mails into trash because they didn’t pass the relevancy test in the three seconds of attention I gave each of them.

Ad dollars wasted on the irrelevant
A recent hospital ad comes to mind. It is dominated by a gowned surgical team surrounding complicated equipment and features a headline about an obscure procedure. I’m not sure it is relevant to most people, with the possible exception of surgeons and surgical nurses. Good reminder to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of our ad creative and the strategy behind it.

The best way to learn about what is relevant to your customers, of course, is from them – from what they say and how they act. Customers have shown me that another of my decades-old ideas still holds true: It’s the benefits you offer that are relevant, not the mere features. Makes sense. That’s why my husband was sold on a vehicle with a rack for hauling a kayak. It’s not that he kayaks often, but it’s a mental health benefit to know he could.

For more on research, see the insight Shari gained from her husband.

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