Relevance, the Throne of Content

This issue is brought to you by ‘Relevance’

If Content is King, then Relevance is the throne from which Content rules.

The foundational steps of the Pitching Pyramid are to first know your desired outcome and then to understand your audience, what they want, and where they are currently. All of that audience work can be summed up in the word Relevance.

The ultimate goal of any communication is to change the actions or behaviour of the audience.

You may disagree and argue that you just want to teach them something new, but if you dig enough, you will find that the point of that new knowledge is that they think differently and take different actions.

To maximise the results of your communication, you need to ensure that your message is relevant. There are several levels at which to address the relevance of your message to your audience.

Audience Selection

Audience selection is the first level of addressing relevance, but it is only sometimes applicable. A good example of when this is applicable is when it is a marketing message, and you want to bring the relevant audience to the message.

For example, if you sell eyeglasses, the message is irrelevant to blind people. So you want to ensure that the message is being delivered to people who would find the message relevant.

This is audience selection and is often managed by putting a simple message out and having the interested put their hand up to be in your audience.

Audience selection, however, is not an option for most speakers who take the stage in front of an audience.

Audience Research

Often you will be presented with the opportunity to speak from the stage without having any input in the make-up of the audience. When this is the case, it is up to you as the speaker to research that audience. You want to find out who is in that audience, what they know about your topic and what their attitude to your topic is.

But don’t panic! You are not in this alone.

The event organisers have a vested interest in your success, and they usually know their audience better than you do. They can often give insight into how your audience will react to your talk, what interests them, and any no-go zones to steer clear of.

When we were coaching speakers for TEDxRuakura, we knew our audience really well. We knew our audience was smart and open-minded, and they wanted fact-based information with a positive slant.

We knew they were smart enough to take on new concepts, but often, they were unaware of the details or background of the different topics and disciplines being presented on the day.

With that information, we were able to help our speakers pitch their talk to the right level for our audience. Not all organisers will know their audience that well, but most will. Use them.

Tuning Your Relevance

The first step to ensure your message is relevant to your audience is the focus of the second step of the Pitching Pyramid: Understanding your audience. This entails asking a series of questions to determine how you will approach your topic. These questions include:

• What does this audience know about your topic?

• What are the common beliefs amongst the audience about your topic?

• What are the common misconceptions about your topic?

• What are the opposing or promoted ideas regarding your topic?

• What importance does this audience associate with your topic?

• What are some connections between your topic and something important to this audience that they may need to be made aware of?

This is not an exhaustive list of questions, but when you have an answer to a number of these questions, it gives you a roadmap of how you can approach your topic with this audience in a way that is relevant to them.

As I have frequently said, the goal is to enter the conversation that is already taking place in your audience’s mind. -Meet them where they are, and then take them on a journey to a new perspective or understanding.

This is the function of relevance.

The opposite of this, which is far too common, is to rock onto the stage and enthusiastically talk about the things that you find fascinating about your topic.

While there is nothing wrong with showing your passion for your topic, you need to realise that you have already undertaken a journey to get to the understanding you have to be excited about the latest information you have.

By contrast, your audience may have yet to take that journey and need more understanding to get the most out of the information you share with them. Your cutting-edge information is simply irrelevant to them at this point.

At best, they will lose interest. At worst, you will confuse them.

The Audience Journey

Once you have an understanding of where your audience is (step 2 of the Pitching Pyramid) and where you want to take them (step 1 of the Pitching Pyramid), then it is time to craft the journey to take them there (step 3 of the Pitching Pyramid).

This is the next opportunity for the speaker to derail relevance with their audience.

If you know where your audience is right now and initially speak to that point, then you are in a good relevant position. The key is to ensure that your progression from where they are to where you want them to be, is made in digestible leaps.

In coaching, I get speakers to list objections that might come to the audience’s mind over that journey. These then need to be put into a logical order, becoming objection gates in the audience journey that you need to lead them through in the right order to remain relevant throughout the journey.

This is very nuanced and beyond the scope of this short article, but the point is that how you approach each of these gates will impact the relevance to your audience at each step.

Speed Bumps

Speed Bumps are a concept we brought to coaching our speakers later in their preparation for their talk.

Effectively Speed Bumps are a phrase or wording that is irrelevant to the audience and which causes them to stop and try to work out what is being meant. Meanwhile, the speaker continues on, meaning that the audience hitting the Speed Bump is being left behind.

Often a Speed Bump is simply the use of unexplained jargon.

Conclusion

Relevance is a yardstick by which you can and should measure every segment of your talk or communication. You can only be engaging and compelling when you are relevant to your audience. When you lose relevance, you lose engagement.

This applies to a talk, a pitch, a sales letter, an educational piece, written fiction, or a short film. Basically, any and every form of communication you use to communicate with an audience needs to be tested at multiple stages for relevance to the audience.

Passing that test is necessary to maintain engagement. With engagement, it is possible to be compelling. Without engagement, this becomes impossible.

So do yourself a favour, and the next time you craft a message, find out more about your audience and test your relevance throughout.

Snippets is a section where I take some interesting text I have come across in the previous week and comment on it.

This week’s Snippet is a bit different.

I am excited this week because Alex Hormozi has advised that his second book, $100 Million Leads, is being released next month. I have been hanging out for this book for over a year now.

You may have come across Alex online, a big, fit guy with an even bigger beard and a straight-up point of view. But looks can be deceiving, and Alex does not look like a writer, but he absolutely is.

A big part of his current momentum in Social Media has been driven by the word-of-mouth success of his first book, $100 Million Offers. Alex spent two years writing and re-writing that first book, which shows. I found it so good I bought both the Kindle version and the Audible version.

Alex is launching the new book on a webinar Sunday, 20th August (NZT). You can register to attend the launch webinar by using this link. Using this link means that if a few of you register, I will get access to two unpublished chapters of the new book, which I will be sharing with readers of this newsletter.

So I would take it as a great favour if you registered for the webinar with this link, even if you don’t make it on the day.

Bottom line, I think the first book focusing on offers is great, but it really needs the leads to make it effective, so I am really looking forward to seeing what Alex has done.

Unpacking Wisdom is a weekly section where I dive into a famous (or not so famous) quote and explore how this can apply to the Compelling Communicator.

Napoleon is one of my favourite people from history. Famed as an intelligent wartime commander, his varied scientific and mathematical pursuits and achievements never cease to amaze me.

Hi Egyptian expedition was one of war, yet he brought with him the most impressive scientific people he could lay his hands on to study and record ancient Egypt.

Not many people know that the current house numbering used in New Zealand and many countries worldwide, with odd numbers on one side and evens on the other, was first developed and popularised by Napoleon.

I think this quote works equally well in the discipline of communication as it does in the martial world. Effective communication with real cut-through comes from bringing order to chaos.

Clear communication makes sense regardless of the background noise or chaos. It is what we should all be striving for every time.

What I am up to this week…

Professionally:

I did nothing professionally this week as I was recovering, but I do have some offers I am putting together.

Recreationally:

Being a bit braindead with COVID this week, I spent some time completing DLC’s of Sniper Elite 5 on Authentic mode.

What I am reading:

I finished Bill Browder’s second book Freezing Order. I highly recommend it, as well as his first one, Red Notice. In addition, I re-read Alex Hormozi’s $100 Million Offers

What I am watching:

I finally finished Season 3 of Succession.