New Age selling requires that your engagement with customers be contextually relevant to what they are looking for and where they are in the customer journey at any given point in time. You are thus able to offer timely solutions to problems for which they are seeking answers. That’s context-driven marketing, also called contextual marketing.
Rise of Context-Driven Marketing
Context-driven marketing has popularly been used by B2C marketers so far, but this method of digital marketing is gaining significance in the B2B space. Many B2B customers have begun following certain buying behavioral patterns of B2C customers, such as the extensive use of search and social media in the buying process, and the use of mobile.
Context-driven marketing requires that you anticipate your customer’s needs in advance and design the product experience that delivers answers to the pressing questions that your customer may have at any point in the buyer’s journey. The Forrester report, “How to Build a Contextual Marketing Engine”1 defines the need for a contextual marketing strategy for B2B CMOs like this: “The age of the customer demands customer obsession for successful competitive differentiation. Firms must build a contextual marketing engine (CME) to orchestrate continuous engagement with customers who expect relevant content and value exchanges in their moments of need.”
Developing a Context-Driven Marketing Plan
Contextual marketing helps a brand cut through the information clutter and make its relevance felt to a potential customer. In developing a context-driven plan, ensure that the brand stays meaningful to the customer at every touchpoint and design product experiences that can be delivered across channels and over multiple devices, based on how customers interact with your brand.
Context-driven marketing is "the next step in a progression from mass marketing to segmentation, personalization and finally contextual", says an SAP report on Contextual Marketing.2
For maximum impact, think one-on-one and treat your target audience as humans rather than leads. This will help you set the context for better understanding their needs so you will be able to add greater value to the solution that you bring to them.
Leveraging AI to Drive Context-Driven Marketing
According to a 2017 Gartner Research Circle survey,3 AI-driven processes will play a key role in contextual marketing. The report suggests that applications which drive real-time personalization will be important for new-age customer engagement.
Propensity modelling, machine learning, machine vision and NLP will help extract context, intent and journey stage data.
The Gartner study further goes on to say that propensity modelling, machine learning, machine vision and NLP will help extract context, intent and journey stage data from various interactions to help the organization deliver tailored content, offers and promotions.
Context-driven marketing presents a great opportunity today because of the large amount of data that is available to B2B marketers, and the technology which can help them make sense of the data. All they need to do is develop an information journey that resonates with what customers are looking for, and the leads will follow.
References
https://www.forrester.com/report/How+To+Build+A+Contextual+Marketing+Engine/-/E-RES115730
https://www.sap.com/documents/2015/09/4ae20331-407c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa.html
