Are you Adding Context to your Inbound Marketing Campaign?

In the last several years, in order to attract the attention of your buyer personas and customers, all you need was relevant and remarkable content.

In today's digital age, that's no longer the case.

With technology everywhere, companies and all of those apps you're downloading, are able to collect data and information about you (the user) through social media, your location, cookies, and sensors. And to think that the NSA might be going a little too far.

Unfortunately, all of those measures can make you come off a little shady and sneaky. That's why you need to keep your prospects, leads and customers engaged and intrigued.

In order for you to keep them engaged, you continuously need to learn more about them.

Why is Context Important?

Content and context must go hand in hand in your marketing efforts. Wait… content and context? What's the difference?

Context is about using the content you already have on your website to grab the attention of visitors and leads. Through content, you are able to have one-on-one interactions with them. Making your efforts more personal by aligning your content with their interests.

Context is all about delivering the right content, to the right people, at the right time.

Context gives your leads and customers more relevant and personalized marketing. People are going to pay attention to your marketing when they are receiving content they're interested in.

Outbound marketing is about interrupting people to tell them something that they probably don't care about. That's why outbound marketing doesn't work.

Your marketing will perform better when you add context to your content. If you are delivering content to someone who is interested, they are going to keep coming back and reconverting.

Implementing a Context Marketing Strategy Throughout Your Sales Funnel

Your marketing results will improve when you begin to deliver more relevant messages to your prospects and leads.

You don’t see marketing rockstars only talking about introductory level information.

Marketing rockstars are the one’s leveraging context about their audience, leads, and customers in their marketing. Unlike those marketing rockstar wannabe’s who only know your name and email, marketing rockstars also know what industry you’re in, what content he / she likes best, what channel of contact they prefer to consume your content, and even what pages and forms they’ve filled out on their site.

Knowing those little details can lend more clarity to what type of content you need to develop. It can also allow you to create workflows that will help push your leads down the sales funnel based on their behaviors and interests.

Blog / Website

Each month x amount of prospects, leads and customers visit your website.  Are you missing the opportunity to attract, convert, and reconvert them?

If so, you might want to consider adding primary and secondary CTA’s on your site, as well as Smart CTA’s. You want to encourage visitors to convert into leads, don’t you?

You might be asking yourself, what happens once they’ve already seen those offers?

By using Smart CTA’s and tracking the behavior and interests of your visitors, you’ll know what pages they’ve viewed and identified what channel (direct, social media, referrals, email marketing, and organic search) brought them to your site.

The first page visitors view on your site can be crucial. It can actually provide you with underlying information about their initial interest and what they’re interests are.

Don’t forget about your blog readers. Through the use of marketing software, you are able to know what articles your leads have clicked on and read.

Wouldn’t you love to refer blog articles your leads should read next?

Let’s consider Amazon.com as an example. Amazon.com has done a great job of creating this personalized experience for their users. They’re able to suggest books, movies and other products based on previous views.

Take some advice from the ecommerce giant that has context and personalization down and add a “you should read this next” box to your blog.

Forms and Landing Pages

Forms and landing pages are great ways to capture more information about your prospects, leads, and customers.

You don’t need to play 20 questions with them. Just ask them questions that will help you qualify them as a "great" lead.  You want to ask more detailed questions over time. It’s important to remember that your forms are all about gaining context about your leads.

To keep your leads coming back to your site and engaged, you need to ensure that you never ask them the same question twice.

Who wouldn’t love to ask different questions every time your leads went to a landing page? Therefore, you should take full advantage of progressive profiling.

Email Marketing

Companies send marketing emails almost everyday. But are you actually sending them to the right people? Often times you aren’t.

You definitely shouldn’t be selecting “send to all contacts.” That is a sure fire way to end up in their SPAM folder. Or even worse, they might unsubscribe all together.

Consider segmenting your contacts based on their interests and behaviors on your site. By developing segmented lists, you’re able to send your emails to individuals who will want to open them.

Unless you know whom your buyer personas are, all the marketing automation software in the world won’t help you become an effective content marketer.

Social Media

Even though it’s hard to personalize your experience and engagement on social media, you can still apply context.

Do some research and analyze what content you're publishing on social media that your leads are clicking on and engaging with.

Little side note: social media posts should be heavier on content and lighter on direct pitches or landing pages.

To engage with your contacts, consider using HubSpot’s Social Inbox. Whether they’re prospects, MQL’s or SQL’s you have the ability to see what your contacts are saying on social media.

There is no better time to engage with them. Don't miss the chance to send the right information to the right person at the right time.