Why Relevance is Vital in Marketing

From a customer's perspective, we know that relevance is everything. We've all seen that effective marketing is highly personalized, seemingly served up to us in perfect timing. On the other hand, we've also had our inboxes overwhelmed with irrelevant ads, for instance, which typically end up in the trash as many of us wonder why they were sent to us in the first place. So instead of these irrelevant marketing efforts sparking interest, the companies sending them are perceived negatively by the customer--someone who may have otherwise responded at the right time and place had relevance been prioritized.

Inviting relevance into the marketing equation instantly puts our customers first, which is as it should be. If our focus is on marketing product alone, we're missing the mark. How can we prioritize our customer's evolving needs? Instead of starting with product, start with [Mary]. What is [Mary] going to find most relevant?

Listening to our customers, getting to know them, what they are interested in and what their needs are should be the driving force in all our marketing efforts. Relevance relies on adapting to these needs and--if done right--doing so in 'real time', personalizing engagement to meet those needs and helping eliminate the guesswork in marketing. More importantly, relevance is the critical ingredient to establishing genuine long-term relationships with our customers and essential to earning their lifelong loyalty.