Relevancy Vs Personalisation: What’s the Difference?

The key point is that a message can be highly relevant without being personalised. For instance, a local newspaper is not personalised to the individual reader at all, yet the content is likely to be highly relevant because it relates to their local area. 

Business examples of this might include service updates, product updates and industry newsletters. Messages like these can certainly be made more engaging, and in some cases more relevant by personalising them (adding names, tailoring content to locations and many more permutations), but the majority of their engagement is achieved because the core content is applicable and pertinent in its base form.

The Underpinnings of Relevance

So what makes a marketing message relevant? The answer appears to be quite simple; it needs to serve the recipient’s needs and interests - but how can sales and marketing professionals actually ascertain customers’ and prospects’ needs and interests? Fortunately, the answers to that question are many and varied: 

Leverage Personal Relationships

Whether it’s telemarketing or inside sales agents, field sales reps, or business account managers, the most comprehensive way to find out what a prospect or customer needs is to ask them. B2B sellers are adept at conducting probing conversations with customers, eliciting needs and pain points, being aware of industry news, and identifying buyer interests, opportunities, and more. 

Mine 1st Party Data

From CRM systems to data management platforms (DMPs), modern organisations make use of technology to gather and store information about clients and prospects (1st party data) - but many fail to maximise these assets, particularly when it comes to mining them for insights. Successful businesses analyse the data they already have - everything from demographic data, to buying patterns and product or service usage data, conversation notes, and more - using these insights to infer needs, segment their audiences, and enable highly relevant messaging.

Acquire Premium 3rd Party Data

Working with trusted, compliant data providers not only provides access to new prospects, but often to enhanced datasets with additional demographic and profile information. Such data often contains attributes which can explicitly highlight needs (such as responsibility for business areas like IT or transport) or can be analysed for trends which can be used to infer relevance.

Data partners routinely provide augmentation services, to add additional data to your existing records, with some even offering premium monitoring services which can expose real-time relevancy opportunities, such as investment news, staff changes, and more.

Market Knowledge and Research

Lastly, if you’re struggling to work out what’s important to your audience, there are two formidable tools at your disposal;

1. 1. Your organisation’s own knowledge

   The market knowledge of staff who come into contact with customers and prospects is a vastly underutilised business asset. A disciplined approach to employee listening (particularly sales people and tactical marketers) can surface customer needs and interests quickly and cost-effectively.

2. 2. Market research

   For product development and message optimisation, market research is an essential component of any sales and marketing leader’s toolkit. Whether it’s simple surveys, or detailed customer interviews, focus groups, or online panels, research can yield surprising insights, which can give your messaging an edge over competitors.

Prioritise Relevance in Your Strategic Go-to-Market Plan

Using the insights and data you’ve gathered so far, you can design a B2B go-to-market (GTM) plan that engages customers and prospects effectively by addressing their needs and interests. 

Such a plan might include content creation, sales sequences and sales training, call scripts or guidance, advertising, and outbound messaging - particularly email marketing or direct mail. It might even involve changing your products and services to better suit your customers.

Sales and marketing leaders should be prepared to allocate ongoing time, budget and resources to keeping the insights and the data that support relevance up-to-date.

Don’t Forget the Basics

Finally, a high degree of relevancy is not a substitute for good quality content, or knowledgable and adaptive sales people - effective campaigns need both. 

B2B buyers are bombarded with marketing messages every day. They're constantly being pitched new products and services, and it's becoming increasingly difficult for them to identify relevant messages. 

With that in mind, content must demonstrate relevance from the first word - so, it’s more important than ever to move well beyond surface-level personalisation. Content that relies on regurgitating prospects’ name, job title, and more as its core component is inadequate.

Instead, by demonstrating relevance at every opportunity, content creators can show customers and prospects that they understand their pain points and have solutions that can help. In turn, they're much more likely to see your business as one which understands the market and stands out from competitors.