We’ve spoken before about how you should keep your content relevant , but we’ve not addressed the dangers of not doing so. Irrelevant content won’t get read by customers or targets, of course, but it could be holding your business back in more damaging ways than that.

IDG recently released a report in which 79% of business buyers said that content relevance affected their opinion of a brand, and 55% felt that irrelevant content delayed their ability to make a decision. Perhaps most importantly, the report stated that irrelevant content made vendors 25% less likely to be shortlisted by buyers on average. So irrelevant content doesn’t simply get ignored – it actually can make your customers less likely to buy from you.

When the stakes are that high, relevant content isn’t something that’s just ‘nice to have’ – it’s a competitive necessity. It’s not enough to assume that you know what your audience thinks is relevant, either; you need to be sure. If you haven’t checked on what your audience is interested in for a while, it might be time to gather some customer insight and see if anything’s changed. If the idea of gathering insight from your customers is a daunting one, our ebook on customer insight has some great advice on how to go about it . Whatever you choose to do, it’s clear that your business cannot afford to get it wrong.

Before we get too depressed though, the good news to come out of all this is that, because buyers are frustrated with the lack of relevant content out there, by providing content that is relevant you can gain a real competitive advantage over your competitors.

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