Although contextual marketing is a relatively new concept, it didn’t take long for misunderstandings to take hold among marketers. There are many misconceptions surrounding contextual marketing, but once you move past some of those myths, you can start discovering the benefits of prioritizing context in your digital marketing.
So, what are the benefits of using contextual marketing? In short, it brings together behavior, historical purchasing patterns, and the unique situation or environment that your consumer is currently in. Understanding the context of your consumers allows you to curate truly personalized experiences through content and product recommendations that meet consumers’ needs.
Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the way consumers shop and interact with brands. In a world that has rapidly shifted to remote work, remote social interaction, and remote shopping, it’s imperative that brands meet consumers where they’re at and provide relevant and proactive digital experiences. After all, you’re competing for consumers’ attention in a sea of messaging, and consumers will go with the brand that provides the best experience.
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That’s where contextual marketing comes in. This strategy allows you to adapt your consumer experiences to the changing “context†of each consumer, which includes customer journey behaviors as well as external factors. For example, a clothing retailer might change the products featured on the website as the seasons change. As summer rolls around, they might showcase swimsuits and shorts, but in the colder months, highlight their winter clothing lines.
Contextual marketing goes far beyond this simple optimization, personalizing the product recommendations to the situation the consumer is facing in real-time. An alcohol retailer, for instance, might know that a consumer purchases red wine and dark liquors regularly. If the forecast for that weekend is hot and sunny, though, they’re more likely to opt for a lighter beverage like seltzer or beer that’s available at a store nearby. Contextual marketing takes these external factors into account to create a more relevant experience and help the consumer find exactly what they’re looking for.
Contextual marketing isn’t exactly new, but the time for applying context in personalization is here. Personalization is successful only when you approach executing on these experiences holistically, pulling from historical data and taking into consideration the external factors that might influence the consumer. Now, the ability to process consumer preferences and act on them in real-time and at scale has exploded, all thanks to advances in artificial intelligenceOpens a new window .
Busting the Myths About Contextual Marketing
If you can understand how AI helps in marketing personalization despite the myths and misconceptions, you can use it to stand out to your target consumers. Here, we bust four of the main myths around contextual marketing and explain how to capitalize on the benefits of this powerful marketing strategy:
1.You don’t need a team of data scientists
Yes — contextual marketing is fueled by data. That doesn’t mean the act of collecting and analyzing it for insights requires a team of data scientists. Data science is increasingly at home in a marketer’s tool kit, with AI technologies helping make effective and science-driven data management easier. However, depending on whether your business has an in-house data science or engineering team, the tools and resources you need will change.
Setting up contextual marketing practices in your team can seem like a lot of heavy lifting up front, but how you frame this process is important. For example, by focusing on data collection early on and using it to produce actionable consumer insights, you can identify opportunities to improve the consumer experience through personalization. Understanding context in your digital marketing will give you the power to make stronger decisions, saving time and money as you move forward.
2. You should have a specific business goal in mind
Contextual marketing is not a general tactic that businesses can implement and check off their list. Instead, success with contextual marketing depends on how you set your goals.
What do you want to learn from your data? Do you want to increase sales by offering more personal consumer experiences through optimized product carousels? Do you want to drive CRM registrations with dynamic website banners? Increase engagement on your long-form content with personalized content recommendations? Knowing the specific business goals you want to achieve will help you determine what steps you need to take to get there.
3. You should understand that context means more than past behavior
People often associate creating a personalized consumer experience with historical data, but contextual marketing involves more than looking at previous purchases alone. For example, a consumer might have purchased red wine twice a month for the last six months. Although this is a valuable buying pattern to consider, context will tell you that it’s now the height of summer, meaning the consumer might be more open to purchases of soft drinks and spritzers than a full-bodied merlot.
Despite the story past behavior tells, contextual marketing can help you balance this narrative with a more predictive outlook, helping you provide a more relevant digital consumer experience.
4. You can take advantage of AI
Utilizing AI in digital marketing might seem daunting or intimidating, but the truth is that it’s an integral part of successful contextual marketing efforts. When exploring how to use data to personalize experiences for consumers at scale, you can’t rely on manually curating every experience along each individual consumer journey.
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With the predictive and automatic powers of AI (and potentially a strong vendor to help move your efforts forward), marketers can spend more time distilling data into actionable insights and making decisions about how to improve the consumer experience rapidly. This takes you from basic optimization — like seasonal shopping picks — to being able to automatically personalize individual digital consumer experiences in real-time based on factors such as weather, date, and geolocation.
You need a personalized consumer experience to reach consumers and keep them engaged with your brand. Contextual marketing should happen at the first touchpoint or consumer visit. Done right, it will streamline your efforts, open your marketing teams up to tackle more campaigns, and drive ROI for your business. Most importantly, however, it will create stickiness and promote consumer loyalty to your brand.
Which of the four myths about contextual marketing got busted for you? Share with us on LinkedInOpens a new window , FacebookOpens a new window , and TwitterOpens a new window .