Getting someone’s attention with your content means answering their questions and offering something of value. Relevant content answers the pressing questions and is as targeted, timely and tailored as possible.
To be relevant, you have to know your audience intimately. There is no point guessing what your audience cares about, or – even worse – projecting your worldview on to them in the hope that your message lands. Instead, you need to find out what matters to them and ensure that you match the right message with the right audience.
This means striking a careful balance between reach and relevance. Many content producers want as many people as possible to consume their content, but that is not always wise. In aiming for reach, you can end up sacrificing relevance because your content’s appeal is too broad.
Relevant content will also satisfy the audience’s curiosity. Defined by behavioural economist George Loewenstein as “the gap between what we know and what we want to know”, curiosity propels the audience forward until they find the information they want.
SURE in action
In EY’s Better Questions approach to content, each piece list of chile cell phone numbers starts with a question rather than a statement. It is a great example of relevance based on stimulating curiosity. For example, its recent CEO Imperative report starts with the question “How can today’s leaders realize tomorrow’s opportunities?” This draws in the reader, creates curiosity and positions EY as helping to address business leaders’ most pressing problems.
Eye-opening
Unexpected messages secure the audience’s attention because they distort our models of reality. This is known in psychology as the Von Restorff effect, which describes the tendency to remember more easily anything that stands out or is unusual. Consider the famous Cadbury’s ad from 2007, which shows a gorilla drumming along to Phil Collins’s In the Air Tonight.
Cadbury’s marketing director Phil Rumbol had a difficult job persuading management that this would help to sell chocolate. After all, the ad was 90 seconds long, had no pictures of chocolate or anyone eating it, and only mentioned the brand at the very end. This ran counter to all established views about how advertising works. Yet when the ad was finally approved and aired, it led to a 10% increase in sales for Cadbury’s and was later voted the UK’s favourite ad. Why? Because it was surprising and memorable.