Content + Context = Inbound Marketing | Marketing Matters Inbound

Inbound 2013 – Adding Context to Inbound Marketing Strategy

-One of the biggest themes from HubSpot’s 2013 Inbound Marketing Conference is how important Context is to Inbound Marketing Strategy. Context defines who we are and how we see things, even if the context is pervasive. Context influences how we think, act and ultimately shop and buy. So content needs to be in relevant places, targeted at the right people, at the right time.

The Difference Between Content and Context Marketing

Content Marketing

Content Marketing is the practice of producing educational, informative and engaging content to Attract, Engage and Convert visitors. Each piece is produced with specific audience, depending on where they are in the funnel. Content Marketing involves:

Being found by visitors through relevancy
Engaging with the visitor at their level
Nurturing the visitor into becoming a lead
Converting the lead into a customer

To see if your website is equipped with the tools to effectively convert, try an inbound assessment.

Context Marketing

Context Marketing is a set of best practices that help you to amplify your great content using what you already know about your prospects. Using what you already know, you can present your content in the proper frame of reference so it appears as any of the following:

Natural
Useful
Timely
Noteworthy

Context in Relation to Inbound Marketing

Targeting is important, but targeting the right people at the right time is key to context marketing

We experience context marketing all the time. When properly executed, context marketing presents information to us at just the right moment, almost like a website can read our thoughts. Some examples of context marketing:

Emails reminding us of items left in shopping carts
Suggestions of similar items that we bought or considered buying
Reviews of the products we purchased
Notification of sales on similar items
Re-purchasing email reminders (think haircuts, every 3 months)

The entire concept of inbound marketing revolves around the drawing of visitors to your site through content. The early stages of this concept focused on just content in the search box. However, it has become clear that relevant content needs to be present at every stage of the process; from Top-of-funnel to purchase.

The future of inbound marketing amplifies this adaptive content based on visitor characteristics. During the Inbound Conference, HubSpot released a new product that extends the content tools that customize websites, landing pages, and emails to now work together and personalize the customer experience. HubSpot calls it the Content Optimization System (COS).

For more information on COS and other new products, request a HubSpot Demo.

Mastering Context Marketing

Mastery of Context Marketing begins at your prospect personas. Unless you understand who you are trying to reach and what their needs are, all the marketing automation tools in the world won’t help your website effectively attract, engage and convert these visitors. It is important to expand personas and develop them to include related interests and activities, even negative ones.

After personas are researched and established it is vital to include dynamic calls-to-action, timely emails, automated?workflows, and smart forms. A well thought-out plan involving each of these tools will increase conversion rates. ?When used together in coordination with your persona research, HubSpot’s content software will convert your targeted visitors and ultimately yield tremendous ROI for your digital marketing efforts.

Context marketing: delivering the right content to the right person, at the right time.

Marketing Matters Inbound?is an inbound marketing firm specializing in online conversions, content?strategy, PPC campaigns and traditional media placement. Our experience in?B2B digital?marketing?and?traditional media?allows us to deliver results through a strategic media mix. We believe in?aligning and merging marketing and sales/operations for optimal return on your marketing investment.