Without any question, the numerous data, platforms, devices and content contributed largely to the success of digital marketing in 2012. These components have proven that consumers are online and it is possible to find them and get in touch with them in ways like never before.
However, digital marketing experts believe that 2013 will be a new playing field. Today, content marketing is considered king; next year, context marketing will most likely take centre stage.
Yes, context marketing is the next most logical progression of digital marketing. The advancement of technology has made possible behavioral targeting and profiling for many marketers. Finding out what a potential customer has recently read, browsed, watched, bought online and other activities done that can be monitored online is an easy function to do. All these information are interesting to know and are considered valuable information for marketers. So the question naturally arises, how else can one make digital marketing efforts stronger and more efficient moving forward?
The answer is Context Marketing.
What is Context Marketing?
Context marketing so to speak is the process by which strategic practices are created based on a clear understanding of the target markets behavior to increase the value of a brand’s content and communication efforts.
A good way to understand context marketing is to realize that a consumer while tagged for example a health enthusiast in one profile, can still be tagged as a runner, yuppy, techie, dad, son, foodie in other profiles. One consumer plays several roles thus having several contexts and consumer’s purchases will reflect all those different context. To maximize any marketing effort, it becomes essential to engage this specific consumer when he is most likely to be receptive of the brand’s communication. Identifying the right messaging, time and platform to engage the consumer are all part of context marketing.
How do you start with context marketing?
Understand the behavior of your consumers.
Social network, for example, has been a very potent platform for “virality” or what we like to refer to as digital word-of-mouth. With just a few clicks, content is easily shared to a user’s network thereby efficiently increasing the brands exposure. A brand’s shared content is what we want at the end of the day. But we know that not all content posted are shared. Marketers now need to understand the context within which users share content. It’s not enough for a brand’s profile page to just keep posting content. Determining the context of the consumer while on a social network will enable marketers to identify the circumstance and messaging that will get users to share content more.
There is also the idea of localizing the marketing efforts. Different platforms now are able to determine the exact location of a consumer. Locations are excellent opportunities for context marketing. Digital offers that come as a “surprise” to consumers checking in are great executions of context marketing – not to mention that these are the things that get the attention of a user’s network online.
These are just some examples of context marketing. 2013 is going to be another exciting year for digital marketing as it unfolds new ways to develop and deliver highly targeted marketing communication to different consumers online.
So, while developments in 2012 have enabled marketers to find a brand’s target market through digital marketing, the challenge now lies in being able to not just find where the consumers are online but to be strategic enough to be able to customize the right message and send it to them at the right time, with the right channel.
Do you need help building and mining your database for an efficient and targeted digital marketing strategy? We’re good with that. Talk to us!
Get Hooked 360, Digital Marketing Agency Philippines.