Contextual marketing is another tactic or approach in digital marketing. It analyses the behavior of the targeted users, the conditions and effects of marketing strategies, and arrives at ways to make more relevant and well-placed, well-timed ads and campaigns to the target audience. The more insights and analytics used, the better is the context in which the audience views the ad or marketing campaign and is more likely to act upon it, thus immediately contributing to the conversion rate. 

Contextual marketing is a part of inbound marketing where customized experiences to best suit the customer are focused on a general approach. Contextual marketing does not have to be specific to just one factor. It can be oriented to the timing, placement, and content of the ad. There is a range of studies and data to consider before producing a successfully contextualized marketing strategy. Demographics, psychographics, geographic locations, cultural backgrounds, socio-political and economic backgrounds, etc., are major contributors to contextualized marketing. Using inbound marketing tactics as these provide higher, more guaranteed ROI (return on investments). Buyer personas and segmentation are methods that go together with contextual marketing.

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Importance of contextualization in marketing

Studies have found that the average consumer is bombarded with more than 5000 advertisement messages per day. This has led to people growing immune or indifferent to basic marketing strategies, meaning that it does not have the effect it is supposed to. 55% of users have been known to delete an app at least once in their lives because it kept pushing notifications. 58% of customers have known to unsubscribe to email communications. 69% of consumers have agreed to unfollow several social media accounts of businesses and brands due to the irrelevancy in the content they received. 

This major repulsion to standard marketing norms begs for an upgrade. And this upgrade is offered by contextualized marketing. Using the right channel to post the right content at the right time to the right audience and using data, analytics, insights to arrive at that decision is all part of contextualized marketing. Some of the top reasons to follow contextualization are: 

• Lower patience level in consumers – users are growing intolerant or indifferent towards advertisements and marketing strategies as they are exposed to too many of those. And the use of multiple social media platforms that offer enormous amounts of instant gratification and instant satisfaction, marketers are forced to provide the same quickness in their marketing interactions. 
• Demand for personalization – The current day consumer or any consumer has always been keen on engaging with personalized experiences with brands and companies. Contextualization helps achieve that sense of personalization and relevancy that the current-day consumer craves. 
• Omnichannel marketing – Using a combination of multiple platforms through multiple mediums is one of the latest trends in marketing strategies. 
• Cost-effective – Investing in contextualization brings higher ROI rates. Resources and time are saved from generalized marketing, which has proven to be futile in the past. 

Top brands equipping contextualized product marketing

• Google – Google is one of the most popular search engines. Although it does not necessarily use contextualization for ‘marketing,’ it does equip contextualization in delivering content. When there is a search made, all relevant data related to the niche of the search, keywords, previous search history, user profile, and behavior are utilized to produce a recommendation of the next possible searches or categories like ‘other people also searched for. This is the perfect execution of contextualization. 

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Though Google does not always use this strategy for marketing, the Google AdSense service does equip the same in marketing by delivering paid ads to users as suggestions. 

• Amazon – the famed E-commerce site uses the latest predictive analytics tools to deliver personalized recommendations, combo offers, better deals, etc., that are tailored to meet the consumer’s needs. As a result, almost 35% of amazon’s sales are contributed by suggestions from the site. 
• Snapchat’s Bitmoji – The app has access to the mobile phone gallery and collaborates with Bitmoji to provide personalized comic strips with the users’ avatars. This feature is known as the “bitmoji stories.” It creates specially curated storylines regularly, thus increasing user engagement. 
• Target – Customers are assigned Guest ID numbers from their first visit to Target. Their preferences, purchases, buying habits are monitored. Offers, deals, product recommendations, emails, and messages are sent with recommendations. 
• Coca-Cola – The global brand, in an attempt to reach the newer youth generations, introduced the personalized inscriptions feature. This campaign named “share a coke” had labels and engravings on the coke bottles with terms like ‘better-half,’ ‘mate,’ ‘dude,’ ‘family,’ ‘baby,’ ‘friends,’ ‘crush,’ ‘someone naughty,’ ‘someone nice’ etc. It went to the extent of printing the popular regional names like ‘Julia,’ ‘John,’ ‘anna,’ ‘tom,’ ‘jack,’ etc. Coca-Cola had local languages and dialects like ‘Jaan,’ ‘papa,’ etc.
• 16handles – The frozen yogurt company based in the USA discovered that most of its customers were teenagers and millennials. They tracked down Snapchat as one of the most preferred apps for photographing and sharing among their target demographics. The company introduced coupons and discount offers of 15%, 50%, and even 75% for people who snapped their yogurt purchases. More discounts were offered to people who shared the pictures more. The campaign was a huge success reeling in more people of the same demography.

The world of consumers is in constant demand for better products and experiences. The marketing industry keeps coming up with new tactics to cater to the latest demands and trends of the people. Achieving the maximum ROI is only possible by equipping methods such as contextualization. Achieve successful marketing, stay ahead of your competition, and attain better ROI rates by adopting contextualized marketing strategies. 

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