Blockchain Marketing enters the era of Relevance: Only relevance has impact!

It used to be much easier. Back in the days, it was enough to put money on the table, have a creative advertising campaign developed by a renowned agency and off you go to spread the good news into the world with huge fireworks. And the rule was simple: The more money you had, the louder you could scream and the bigger your brand became.

Those days are long gone. The attention is now divided and distributed among new channels. Mainly digital channels. Companies and brands are desperately seeking for attention and are trying to buy it. But even on YouTube most users click on “Skip ad” (probably the minority that does not simply know what “skip ad” meanss). Welcome to the new reality, where even when paid media needs to be earned!

Relevance… Yes, it’s a thing

Relevance is the only thing that sells. Relevance is a condition for the success of products, services, projects, initiatives, messages, campaigns… you name it. What is relevant varies, depending on whom you are trying to reach with your message. But what never changes is, how relevance works. For something to be relevant, you need basically three things: visibility, value and credibility.

Visibility: I cannot buy what I don’t see

It is quite simple and basic, we know. Awareness and familiarity are a pre-condition for anybody you are targeting to even consider your offer. It is essential to be present and visible where your target group is.

The tricky part is, that we have experienced an explosion of channels over the past decade. In 1960, the average household had access to a staggering total of 5 TV channels. There were good chances that nothing good was on, so people actually talked to each other… The number grew to 27 channels on average in 1990 and 72 by the entry of the new millennium. Ten years later, in 2010 the average household had access to over 500 different TV channels. And this is just TV… There is a blog, a forum, a network and an app for literally everything.

You need to learn what channels your target group is paying attention to. What stories and messages they are looking for.

Value: What’s in it for me?

Not everybody owns a cat. You might have nothing against cats, but it is simply not for you. Here is the thing: statistically speaking, you have seen quite a fair share of advertising for cat food in your life. Visibility was not their problem. The problem is, that every single marketing dollar spent on you seeing advertising for cat food was wasted. Completely wasted…

We are bombarded with advertising messages. Literally… According to Forbes, we are exposed to up to 10,000 advertising and brand messages per day. That is nearly 7 messages per minute. No wonder we are developing a strict scrutiny for what we listen to and what not. No wonder we have the attention span of a goldfish… Every message needs to pass the filter: What is the value for me?

In order to stand out, you need to communicate clearly, concisely and attractively: How are you generating value? Why does the world need you or your product?

Credibility: Why should I trust you?

Have you ever received an email from someone in Zimbabwe offering you $50 million for some shady transaction? We all have. What we do with such emails is mark them as spam and delete them. We ignore them. It is not that we are not interested in $50 million. We certainly are. The value is obvious. It is quite simple: We don’t trust it. We don’t buy it.

When you target your message to someone, if you want it to work, you need to build credibility and trust. The challenge is that trust is something that needs to be earned. No matter how much money you spend on screaming out your message. If “I don’t buy it”, I won’t buy it…

The challenge: You need all three to be relevant. And you need to be relevant

Your turn: Go back to all your marketing stories and positioning efforts, your advertising, your website… All. Think critically and carefully. How are you building visibility? Is your offer adding value to your target? Can it be trusted? Then, and only then you will be able to do relevant marketing. And only relevance has impact!

‍

Photo credits:

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels