First published in January 2013
Relevance in advertising was first mapped Anecdotally based on sales and then by a mix of market share and research (brand recall). Public Relations (PR) was the first to measure the value of the channel by placing a value on media exposure/real estate and equate this to paid advertising placements. It then expanded this to valuing word of mouth. To do this PR used media monitoring services to identify mentions and conduct analysis on the quality of the mention. Like any channel it sort to include metrics on frequencies, volumes and reach.
It is no surprise that the first form of social monitoring came via Search Leveraged PR – essentially a tactic to distribute content through out the web. Search engines made it easier to tract the effectiveness of these releases by identifying indexed content using keywords (across multiple search engines). The tactic also had the advantage of improving your websites Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) through backlinks.
The development of social media saw the introduction of social media marketing and social media optimization (SMO). Key to this was the development of Press Release Distribution that pushed content to blogs, news channels and general online sites through automated feeds or releases that can be downloaded from the distribution site. A key aim is to aggregate content by search engine news channels; Google News, Yahoo! News, Bing etc to improve your relevance in search engines.
This reminds us that search is still the hero for users navigating the web and keywords are the method for this. Therefore relevance is not only about your brand keyword (individual or organisation’s name) but the generic keywords. In the age of digital words have taken on greater value; cheap flights, home loans etc are words that organisations seek to own. The value of relevance is therefore strengthened through association. Brand strategy has always sort to bind words through values and attributes, however, digital seeks to directly attribute words to a brand to drive relevance and as a result direct consumers to a brand through search/search engines.
Relevance and Memory
Cognitive science teaches us that working memory, and the ability to remain relevant, occurs as we select the right sensors (sight, sound, touch and smell) to capture stimuli and build a representation of an object. In the world of brand advertising this is extend so that the object and the brand are one in the same.
In copy/content, stimuli are presented in the form of brand/generic keywords, while in visual formats stimuli may take the form of colour; linking a colour to a brand and therefore increasing brand recognition.
To create and maintain relevance we seek to increase recognition through memory. To do this we create focuses on stimuli, across the sensors and optimize these to the marketing channel.
Conclusion
Like Google and its search algorithm, relevance and being relevant is always changing, however, the basics in digital are still the same.
- Align the product to its brand (values/attributes)
- Be viable to be sustainable
- Identify stimuli and align this to the sensor and then channel
- Identify word of mouth opportunity