Contextual marketing, often called contextual advertising, is another specialized marketing field that can bring great results when executed effectively. It relies on context, user data, and current user interests to modify and create effective marketing strategies.
It’s time to explore what contextual marketing truly is, why it is so valuable in the modern marketing area, and how you can implement different contextual marketing strategies to skyrocket the marketing ROI of your business.
What Is Contextual Marketing?
Contextual marketing is an individualized marketing approach that leverages data on current customer interests to deliver relevant ads.
Collecting and analyzing recent customer data, contextual marketing techniques identify the best marketing approach to capture each new lead.
In essence, this approach is a cheat sheet that allows marketers to create more targeted campaigns that are more likely to be successful. The customers are presented with offers that feel like they were crafted just for them, and in the case of contextual marketing, they were!
TechTarget defines contextual marketing as “an online marketing strategy model in which people are served with targeted advertising based on their search terms or recent browsing behavior”.
The focus of this definition is on the fact that contextual marketing is, in fact, a form of targeted advertising. This is good to keep in mind going forward, as the premise of contextual marketing is mainly on understanding your target audience.
Key Takeaways
Contextual advertising leverages recent user interests and current browsing data to present prospects with contextually relevant ads;
Contextual advertising boosts engagement, enhances the ability of prospects to recall the advertisements, and improves the overall customer experience;
Using automation tools to obtain and analyze customer data is a common strategy in contextual advertising.
How to Define Contextual Marketing?
Contextual marketing can be defined as a digital marketing strategy that focuses on delivering relevant and timely content to customers based on their current interests. That way, if a prospect is browsing a web page about shoes, they would not be shown an advertisement for a product that is not shoe-related. Personalized messages are delivered to customers based on location, web activity, and other criteria.
By understanding the motivations behind a customer’s actions, companies can create more effective campaigns tailored to the individual’s needs and interests. Contextual marketing can be used across many channels, including email, website, and social media.
With this type of marketing, companies can create engaging content that not only resonates with customers but also saves a lot of money that would be spent on marketing.
However, the contextual marketing approach does take time to execute. It could be considered a tradeoff. Companies get more cost-effective marketing but at the cost of investing more time into customer data collection and analysis beforehand.
Why Is Contextual Marketing Important?
Contextual marketing is essential as a modern marketing tool that uses customer data in context. With the development and more frequent use of technology, customer data is plentiful, and for companies who know how to use it, the market becomes much easier to capture. However, the benefits are not only reserved for the business implementing this marketing strategy. Customers may benefit as well.
1. Customer experience
Advertisements are often considered a nuisance by customers, as they have no interest in the products or services offered to them. However, contextual marketing analyzes what the customers may be interested in and serves them the results.
The contextual marketing approach creates a better customer experience, as customers are shown products and services that are relevant to them.
As a result of more relevant content being shown to prospects, statistics such as customer engagement often rise drastically for businesses that make good use of contextual marketing. Still, to maintain a good customer experience, the process should be made as smooth as possible in the marketing stage, during sales, and in providing post-purchase services.
2. Personalisation
Contextual marketing helps you deliver personalized experiences to customers based on their specific needs and behaviors. When you understand the context in which prospects interact with a brand, you can tailor your marketing messages and offerings accordingly.
Personalization creates a stronger connection with customers, making them feel valued and understood. Ultimately this increases the likelihood of engagement and conversion!
3. Higher engagement and conversion rates
Contextual marketing allows businesses to deliver relevant and timely content to their audience, capturing their attention and increasing engagement. Contextual offers are the key to higher engagement rates, as customers are more likely to interact with content that is directly applicable to their current situation.
As a result, conversion rates also improve. Your customers will be more motivated to take the desired action when the content is contextually relevant and compelling.
What Are The Best Contextual Marketing Strategies?
Contextual marketing is an effective way to target customers with relevant and timely messages. However, picking the right strategy is also essential. We’ve compiled a few of the best contextual marketing strategies that could help your business thrive. Let’s take a look.
1. Content creation
Having a backlog of content that can be easily modified is a time-saving approach to contextual marketing. It allows marketers to modify the content rather than create it from scratch. This content optimization and delivery type takes some practice, so it may not be the most suitable strategy for businesses just starting out with contextual advertising.
2. Market segmentation
Market segmentation is an old but gold marketing strategy that works just as well when combined with contextual advertising. By segmenting the target audience, businesses can create more targeted campaigns that effectively engage customers.
3. Marketing automation
Marketing automation is a separate field of marketing that is often combined with various marketing strategies to save time and money. Leveraging automation tools to deliver timely and relevant content can help businesses keep their customers engaged. In contextual advertising, automating specific processes is essential to compensate for the time lost in customer data analysis.
4. Behavioral remarketing
This is a powerful strategy that targets customers based on their previous online behaviors and actions. The focus is on tracking customer interactions, such as website visits, product views, or abandoned carts. Based on this info, businesses can create customized remarketing campaigns that reconnect with customers and encourage them to take the desired action. Behavioral remarketing leverages the power of personalized recommendations to drive sales.
5. Real-time marketing
Real-time marketing involves delivering timely and relevant content to customers based on current events, trends, or customer behaviors. It requires businesses to monitor and analyze real-time data, such as social media conversations, trending topics, or customer feedback, to identify opportunities for immediate engagement. Real-time marketing allows you to create a sense of urgency, driving much higher engagement than many of the strategies out there.
| Strategy | Brief Description | Benefits | Drawbacks | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Content Creation | Modify existing content for contextual relevance. | Time-efficient content adaptation. | Requires substantial content library. | |
| Market Segmentation | Divide target audience into segments for targeted campaigns. | Highly tailored messaging to specific groups. | Complex setup for accurate segmentation. | |
| Marketing Automation | Use automation tools for timely content delivery. | Consistent and timely customer engagement. | Initial setup and integration complexity. | |
| Behavioral Remarketing | Target customers based on previous online behaviors. | Reconnect with interested customers for conversions. | Limited to existing customer interactions. | |
| Real-time Marketing | Deliver content based on current events or trends. | Capitalize on immediate engagement opportunities. | Requires constant real-time data monitoring. |
Additional Tips & Tricks
- Take into account that 98% of users prefer mobile research in 2023; in addition mobile user flow is even more preferred than online shopping, especially for millennials;
- Unlike behavioral targeting, contextual targeting focuses on recent customer interests and serves advertisements based on that context;
- If regular display advertising has not worked for you so far, implementing contextual ads could be a way to prevent banner blindness;
- A study designed by GumGum has shown that contextual ads generate 43% more neural engagement, resulting in a much greater ability of users to recall the ads.
The Bottom Line
Contextual marketing is a personalized marketing approach that looks at previous behavioral data from customers to create effective marketing content. The content created for contextual advertising can effectively capture new leads, primarily when delivered at the right time.
You’ve learned what contextual marketing is, why it is essential, and strategies for contextual marketing, and you’ve got a few tips & tricks in your pocket. With all this knowledge and information, it’s up to you now to determine if contextual marketing is the marketing approach you need to take for your company or organization.
Contextual Marketing FAQs
Behavioral advertising focuses on previous historical data on a customer’s behavior and serves advertisements based on that date. On the other hand, contextual advertising focuses on current interests in addition to previous data and focuses on the content itself.
The Google display network is a large group of websites and platforms on which Google Ads can appear. Contextual advertising often leverages these websites and platforms.
Contextual advertising brings a variety of benefits to a business. For one, it is a cost-effective approach to digital marketing. Additionally, it comes across as less creepy and more relevant than pure behavioral ads. Lastly, privacy legislation does not limit it, as it does not necessarily use browsing cookies.
There is no one part of contextual advertising that could be described as the most important. However, identifying key elements in user data and using that knowledge to create engaging content is one of the most important parts.
