Context Marketing is Better than Quality Content: Here’s Why

“Content is King,” goes the saying, but context marketing is the crown. In the online marketing world, “just” having quality content isn’t always enough.  By focusing only on creating amazing content, you miss out on a bigger piece of the pie.

If you want to get the most from your online marketing campaigns – and who doesn’t? – you need to start digging a little deeper. Rather than focusing on content only, you also have to look at context. It’s vital to take the context of each article or post into consideration if you want to enjoy the best results.

Why is Context Marketing so Important?

“Context” isn’t just another fancy marketing term to make you wonder what you’re missing. It’s important.

Why?

Content Marketing

Content focuses on providing engaging information. It adds value to the lives of your audience. This is a wonderful thing, and shouldn’t be discounted.

The problem, though, is that content alone doesn’t take timing into consideration. Current trends and the mood of your audience make a difference. No matter how good your content is, it has to be relevant to your target audience to perform at its best. Not just relevant to their situation, but also to their current environment.

That’s a tall order for any piece of content.

Context Marketing

Context marketing takes those factors into consideration. This is why it will outperform straight content marketing most of the time. Audiences find context-based content more compelling, captivating and interesting. When it’s put into play, you’ll start to be viewed as an expert in your industry. This, in turn, increases your sales and profitability.

Market Research

Before you can start an effective context marketing campaign, you must conduct market research. This will help you better understand your prospects. Remember, market research is an ongoing project, not something you do only once.

A few things you can do when you want to understand your customers on a deep level:

• Offer a few free consultations.
• Ask your customers what they’ve been looking for but were unable to find.
• Keep updated on the most recent trends to keep your marketing efforts relevant.

Bonus: Watch Discussion Boards

Keep up with your prospects by monitoring the discussion boards they use to ask and answer questions. Create an account and watch your potential customers interact with each other.  This can give you valuable insights you can use in your next marketing campaign.

However, understanding the questions your customers have is not enough when you want to reach your desired outcome. You must also take the time to recognize the words they use and the way they talk when interacting with one another.

Putting It All Together

When you take the time to learn what your customers desire, you can start to add context to your content. Your videos, articles and infographics will have great information, which is par for the course. -But, they will also be relevant to your potential customers in a way that will keep them captivated and engaged in what you have to say. You can take this concept even deeper by learning what time the majority of your prospects are online. Then, release your content accordingly.

Rather than being opposites, content and context marketing are both vital to any online marketing effort. Choosing one over the other would be a foolish mistake.

Context marketing means creating content that is appealing to your prospects. It’s about taking the time to get to know them, not guessing what they want. When done properly, context marketing will allow you to experience a greater level of success than you once thought possible.

Final Thoughts

In a nutshell, you have just discovered the basics of one of the most vital aspects of online marketing: context. Randomly creating content without understanding if it meets the needs of your audience is like taking shots in the dark. You have no way of predicting if you’ll hit the mark.

If you can’t keep your audience interested in your material, it’s a fast way to lose followers, customers and money. -But when you understand your market enough to produce informative, relevant, and entertaining content, you’ll reach a level of success few marketers have ever experienced. That’s context marketing.