Just when you thought it was safe to close the door on your inbound and online marketing vocabulary-building efforts, there’s one more to add to the list — and in terms of bottom-line profitability, it’s among the most critical entries: context marketing.
What is Context Marketing?
Interestingly, context marketing is not about specific pieces of collateral, such as eBooks, white papers, infographics, videos, social media posts, and so on. Rather, it is about the strategic order in which pieces of content are delivered to specific prospects at specific times.
To understand why this context marketing is so important, think of one of your favorite movies. You may not know that the movie wasn’t filmed in linear order from first scene to last. For both cost and scheduling reasons, scenes were filed out-of-sequence and then put together in the right order — or in other words, in the right context.
Now let’s flip back to connecting with prospects through collateral. If you simply push out content as it becomes available — like one of those machines that automatically fires tennis balls — then it’s possible, and in most cases likely, that prospects will not get full value because the totality of the content experience doesn’t fit together in a cohesive, personalized way. It’s like they are watching a movie out of sequences. And in some cases, prospects will get so confused, annoyed and overwhelmed, that they disengage and exit the buyer’s journey altogether. It wasn’t that they had a problem with a specific piece of information (i.e. a specific scene in the movie). It was that they didn’t see how to information (i.e. scenes) connected.
Context marketing is the glue that holds your content distribution strategy together, by enabling you to look at the big picture, and make decisions based on that broader perspective. Here’s how that dialogue might sound:
“One week ago, we sent prospects in buyer persona group "Procurement Manager Pat' an email about a special offer. Now, let’s target members of that group who didn’t take up the offer with a follow-up report that highlights some of the key benefits that our customers have experienced. And let’s also target those who took up the offer with a special white paper that helps them get the most out of their investment, and helps thwart any buyer’s remorse.”
As you can see, there are two pieces of content here that are in themselves quality assets: the follow-up report and the white paper. But it is context marketing that determines who gets what and when, and ultimately, plays a pivotal role in whether the content experience is successful or not.
The Bottom Line
By far, the biggest reason that most businesses — and especially small and mid-sized firms — fail to exploit the immense profit potential of context marketing, is that they don’t have the resources or the time to look at the big picture. Understandably, they are too busy running their operations to think weeks, months, or even years down the road, and build an editorial calendar and an asset inventory that provides the foundation for a context marketing approach. Fortunately, that’s where we come in!
On behalf of our customers, we create high quality, relevant and buyer persona-targeted assets, and integrate them with a strategic context marketing plan. The end result is that the right target customers get the right information, at the right time, and for the right reasons. That’s the essence of effective marketing itself — and the gateway to more sales, profits and growth.
To learn more, contact us today. Your consultation with us is free.
Also, be sure to check out our FREE eBook about how to turn your website into a lead generation machine:
Topics: Inbound Marketing
