In today’s crowded marketing landscape, simply broadcasting your message and hoping it sticks is no longer effective (and if it was, count yourself lucky, and don’t bank on it happening again). To drive real engagement and sales, you need to establish deep connections with your audience. This is where affinity scoring becomes crucial.

Affinity scoring uses the power of AI to measure the “hidden” similarities between your brand and your customers. It reveals a numerical score from 0-100 (much like a lead score) that quantifies the strength of relationships – for example, between a description of your product and a customer’s LinkedIn profile (or publicly available data). The higher the score, the more your brand resonates with a particular audience.

This technique enables you to identify your ideal customers and fine-tune your messaging to be hyper-relevant to them. It also equips you to uncover emotional triggers and values that you can align your brand with.

For example, say you work for a mortgage company that generates an affinity score of 85 when matched to John Doe, a contact in your CRM. This indicates John has significant familiarity with mortgages – perhaps he even works in the industry. You now know that financial language will resonate with him, and therefore you can craft targeted outreach (like a marketing or sales campaign) highlighting how you’ll save him time or money. You have data-driven evidence that you don’t have to nurture John in order to educate him on your pitch – you can meet him where he already stands, so to speak.

The psychology behind this is simple: people are more receptive when you mirror their interests and frame of reference. Just like building rapport in personal relationships, establishing common ground makes your audience more open to your influence.

And here’s the best part – affinity scoring methods are driven by cold, hard data, not mere gut feelings. Benchmarking against empirical evidence of what resonates can significantly lower the risk associated with your marketing efforts.

To implement this, start by breaking down your brand into discrete elements like mission statements, emotional triggers, and functional benefits. There are now, more than ever, AI tools that can help you measure the affinity of these elements with prospects across your total addressable market.

The resulting insights allow you to segment your audience, identify mismatches between brand and audience perceptions, and optimize both strategic positioning and tactical campaigns.

Winning attention in nearly any given industry demands true audience insights. With affinity scoring, you have a powerful data-driven tool to cut through the noise and make meaningful connections.