Although context marketing (contextual marketing) was in development for approximately ten years before it was officially launched, many marketers continue to ask themselves whether contextual marketing is worth the time, effort, and cost.
Everyone has an opinion, but let’s look at the facts.
As most already know, in marketing, your principal goal is to send the right message to the right people at the right time using the right channel, and this… is what “marketing context” is all about.
According to the Harvard Business Review, the four Ps of traditional marketing (price, placement, promotion, and product) needs to be broken up and each presented and promoted according to the particular needs, wants, and circumstances of your ideal audience.
Clearly, what’s being taught in colleges and universities today isn’t making the grade.
On the other hand, context marketing enhances your customer’s overall experience by providing them with data-driven content that is customized to an individual customer’s wants, needs and desires.
This kind of content delivered via the platform that your target audience is using (social media, blogging sites or company websites) helps develop and more importantly, maintain a meaningful relationship between you and them.
One other added benefit you gain is… customer loyalty which in today’s marketplace can be rare to nonexistent.
Today’s Current State of Marketing
Nowadays, marketing is no longer centered on your brand or product.
Rather it’s all (rightly so) about your customer and their needs. It doesn’t matter how good your offer is, because if you’re not delivering value in the form of engagement to your target market, your sales and revenue will not grow.
As technology continues to evolve, consumer patience is reduced. In light of this, marketers need to find ways to capture the attention of a user and hang on to it.
It’s no secret that today, customers are more demanding than ever before, so it’s imperative you develop a contextualized and personalized strategy to increase your sales.
Consumers now expect marketing materials to talk to them and not only be helpful, but highly relevant to their particular situation.
The bottom line is, customized customer experiences are here to stay.
Prospects tend to choose the brands that provide them with the most valuable content and communicate with them in the most personalized manner.
This is why the right kind of contextual marketing is critical.
Advantages of Contextual Marketing
Cost Effective: Implementing or maintaining contextual marketing doesn’t require a huge investment. To expand on the framework of your communications, you simply need to have the right data. This requires that you set up customer data collection and retrieval via a CRM tool.
Seeing there are even CRM options for small businesses on restrictive budgets, you can rest easy knowing there are a range of choices available to you, as it relates to selecting a program that’s just right for your business.
Targeted Traffic: Contextual marketing uses advanced behavioral targeting. What this means in practical terms is, by zeroing in on a specific behavior and demographic, you can target your prospects right when they’re about to make a purchase decision.
Doing this will also enable you to place your brand front and center at optimal times in order to encourage brand awareness, recall, engagement and ultimately… sales!
Enhanced Customer Experience and Satisfaction: Since contextual marketing is highly personalized, the marketing messages that get sent to consumers are precisely timed and strategically targeted.
For instance, your customers don’t need, nor do they want to be showered with marketing messages they didn’t ask for or need.
The solution to this is… you simply send the message a customer needs at the time they need it.
So, by improving the context of your marketing campaign, you ensure that each prospect or customer is cared for properly.
When your customers feel like they matter to you, trust will be established between you and them, resulting in your customers becoming more confident, and comfortable about your brand.
Increased Customer Engagement: It should be clear, but just to reiterate, the goal of contextual marketing is to create interactions with consumers by anticipating their needs.
Doing this open the door for you to engage them. Specifically, you get the opportunity to place your brand in front of the customer as well as promote active participation of your brand messaging.
This means that the more you can engage with your customers, the better your chances are of retaining them and converting them into brand advocates.
More Sales and Revenue: Because the advertisements you’re posting are specifically targeted, personalized, and strategically positioned at the time your customer is about to purchase, conversion rates will be higher as will your sales figures and revenue.
Conclusion
Contextual marketing is a cost-effective way to reach your target audience and generate more sales and revenue. Because it’s strategically targeted to a specific group of people, you can easily measure its success by only taking that particular channel into account.
So, to answer the question… is contextual marketing worth the investment?
Yes!
What if you could generate an increase in email subscribers and client inquiries from some simple changes to your website? You could make more money from the website visitors you already have. This is the basis for conversion rate optimization– the idea that small changes can stack together and create better results from your existing online presence.
