Contextual marketing is about providing the right content at the right time based on the potential customer’s preferences, using behavioral targeting and enabling brand awareness, appeal and engagement. It feeds targeted ads based on user information, such as recent searches and web histories. The aim is to offer products and services to customers who are already interested in them.

ADVANTAGES OF CONTEXTUAL MARKETING 📈

Contextual marketing offers marketers several advantages, including:

  • Cost efficiency – Does not require a huge investment. Simply collect the right data in a CRM tool.
  • Targeted traffic – By focusing on specific behavior and demographics, you can target your potential customers just when they are about to make a purchase decision.
  • Improving the customer experience – Because contextual marketing is highly personalized, the marketing message that is sent to consumers is appropriately timed and strategically positioned to bombard them with marketing messages they don’t want.
  • Most customer involvement – Not only can you position your brand in front of customers, but your messages at the right time encourage active participation with your brand.
  • Don’t disturb consumers – With the right timing, your marketing doesn’t feel like advertising. It looks like a solution to consumers’ problems.
  • Better sales and revenue – Because your marketing is highly targeted, conversion rates will be higher and sales will increase.

Contextual Marketing is a discipline that bases its success on collecting data from users in real time and in context to deliver the right message at the right time to the right person. Contextual Marketing is a technique that takes information from users in their context in real time and combines it with a variety of information sources to deliver the right, relevant and personalized content to the right people at the right time.

The context has always been important to understand the message but, if we also talk about getting in touch with our audience from mobile devices – authentic engine of contextual marketing together with location-based services -, it is essential to “understand” well the context in which the interaction takes place, because it will determine whether the same message is accepted or rejected.

HOW DOES IT WORK ⚙️

Now, we understand that this always happens from the knowledge of our audience (buying person); otherwise, if the message only takes into account the right moment according to its current context, we would be talking about Contextual Advertising, not Contextual Marketing.

Mass and irrelevant marketing has no place in attraction marketing, and seems even more intrusive when sent to our personal devices. On the contrary, asking permission to advance in the decision-making process – even if we already have permission (opt-in) to address our consumers or subscribers – is the basis of the new contextual communication.

Firstly, Contextual Marketing empowers customers and consumers and puts them in the driver’s seat. From now on, they govern our marketing strategies. Secondly, it increases users’ commitment to our brand. According to Forrester, “the vast majority of consumers (74%) said they are comfortable with companies using their data to provide personalized experiences. And, of course, response rates and conversion rates are five to twenty times higher than the results of conventional online advertising (The Guide to Internet Marketing by Nathan Hull)

With contextual marketing, the physical and digital worlds merge to achieve results and provide the ultimate in intelligent marketing. We are talking about customer intelligence provided and interpreted by consumers themselves. This is a game change that will impact the organization. However, just because the results are improving doesn’t mean we’ve done everything. It is up to us to determine the context in which we will ask consumers’ permission to move forward in the decision-making process.

The trust at this point is the cornerstone: we only put our contextual marketing techniques into practice when we have a certain level of trust; it is the threshold of tolerance between continuing or feeling overwhelmed. We must ensure that all actions comply with the 4Rs of Contextual Marketing:

  • Try to make all your actions RELEVANT for your audience in the context in which they are located.
  • Ask permission to proceed with the decision making process and make sure you have the right RESPONSE.
  • Use contextual information in a RESPONSIBLE manner, always respecting privacy.
  • Make sure that the RESULTS obtained build a strong relationship with your customers and consumers based on trust.

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