Brand Relevance: How to Identify Untapped Opportunity

Is your brand relevant to the various audiences—customers, influencers, the media, others—you want to reach? More specifically, how can you find the untapped opportunities for establishing relevance? How can you identify what they want so you can provide it?

In economics, “supply and demand” refers to the relationship between the price at which companies wish to sell their product/service for and the price that consumers are willing to pay for it. The more of something there is, the less valuable it is. The more people want something, the more valuable it is. The balance shifts all the time based on various economic factors.

There’s an argument among economists as to what comes first—supply or demand. However, within the context of brand relevancy—the rational or emotional affinity toward your brand by an audience—it starts with demand (primarily for help or information), and understanding demand requires research, data analytics, and audience intelligence.

Content/Topic Demand and Supply

The below model illustrates how supply and demand can be used to determine brand relevance, and how analytics can find white space—a small corner of the market about a specific topic that no one else owns. In short, an untapped opportunity to claim a position.

On the right are various audiences. Demand represents the stories, content, and topics demanding their attention; it answers the question, “What is important and relevant to my audience right now?”

On the left is a self-assessment of the content that you are supplying into the marketplace. The question you have to ask yourself here is, “Am I meeting the demand of my audience with the supply of my content?”