Contextual marketing is about knowing the right context. It’s about understanding not just who someone is but where they are, what they are doing, and what they are likely to do next. It’s about leveraging as much information as you can about a customer and the context to deliver the best message at the precise moment it offers the most value.

The real value of contextual marketing is a high degree of personalization which results from specific, more targeted and relevant customer communications. Whether a marketer is pushing products, services, content or coupons, delivering it in a contextually relevant manner significantly increases the value for end users.

In the past, if you asked a marketer to define “contextual marketing” they referred solely to the online marketing model – where people are served with targeted ads based on search terms or recent browsing behavior. You’re in the market for a new car; you go online to do a few searches and read reviews on fuel-efficient models. Next, you go onto a news site and the pages are wrapped with ads for hybrid cars – ads you may or may not care about.

Mobile has changed the game

Now marketers have the opportunity to target customers while at work, at home, in transit, while shopping, traveling, or visiting with friends. Yet to be relevant and offer services and content that are truly meaningful to today’s on-the-go consumer, context is more important than ever. After all, who wants to know about a traffic app after they’ve already arrived home from work?

Mobile marketers are in a unique position. They have the opportunity to leverage a wealth of information that operators have about their subscribers. Armed with a view of the subscriber’s context, mobile marketers can deliver highly personalized communications and offers that add real meaning to consumers’ everyday lives.

Relevancy is What Matters

For any product or service, whether it’s an operator’s mobile TV offering, the latest fitness tracker app, or a luxury brand, you’ll have individuals in certain times and places where products, services, apps and ads are more or less relevant. These spikes and dips in terms of relevancy are based upon context. What is relevant to a consumer on a Friday afternoon isn’t relevant on a Monday morning. What is relevant at home isn’t relevant at work or while traveling.

The ability to understand these spikes and dips is extremely valuable when marketing or advertising. But to understand them is a huge challenge. It requires both a deep understanding of individuals – their behaviors, their interests, their locations, their social networks – as well as a deep understanding of how those individuals purchase and use the products, services, and content available to them.

Contextual marketing gives marketers the ability to be truly relevant with consumers. Leveraging the mobile channel and a rich understanding of customers, they are able to act in the context of a moment and provide customers access to products, services and content at the precise time they are most likely to realize its value.