Transcript: Fundamentals of Contextual Marketing

Video 1: What is contextual marketing?

Hi, I’m Rachel with HubSpot Academy.

When a person visits your website, whether they’re a first-time visitor or a longtime customer, the website
experience is the same — the same message, the same content, page after page.

What if there was a way to provide individualized experiences to different people based on their preferences and
needs? Can you imagine a great website experience for a visitor who’s browsing your website on a mobile
device? And can you think of content offers that would be especially helpful for a visitor who came to your
website through social media? These are both examples of contextual marketing.

Contextual marketing is personalized marketing based on the context of who a visitor is and what they’re looking
for.

Take a look at this word (“bow”), and this one (“seal”), and now these (“tear,” “read,” “change”). It’s hard to
understand what these words mean and even how to pronounce some of them without context. These words
take on a specific meaning in relation to the rest of the sentence:
Take a bow.
Seal the envelope.
She read the note.
There’s a tear in this shirt.
I have spare change.

Your marketing strategy can operate in the same way. Contextual marketing takes into account the user’s context
so that you can provide content tailored to their needs.

There’s a chance you’ve already been creating marketing with context by using personalization. You may have
personalized an email, call-to-action, or other content on your website. By adding this individual touch, you’ve
been creating contextual marketing.

With contextual marketing, you can target and address individuals and groups of people with similarities. Think
of contextual marketing as part of a larger strategy for the user experience. You’ll be able to provide the best
experience for each individual visitor by showing them content that’s appealing and applicable to them.

This means that two visitors with different needs are presented different things, even when those visitors are on
the same page at the same time.

As HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah said, “We have got to stop thinking like marketers and start acting like
humans.”

And humanizing the website experience is a top priority for a lot of businesses. A study showed that 94% of
businesses agree that a personalized experience is critical to the current and future success of their company.
 Transcript: Fundamentals of Contextual Marketing

By creating dynamic content, or content that changes based on the individual, your website becomes a valuable
tool for each stage of the inbound methodology:

Attracting visitors to your website;

You’ll also stand out from your competitors by being the company that shows them something new and relevant
each time they arrive on your website. A study found that 73% of consumers prefer a personalized online
experience. They like to do business with companies that make their experiences and interactions more relevant.
Through contextual marketing, you can provide relevant content that aligns with their interests.

This personalization helps with conversion rates, too. HubSpot ran a study and found that on average, conversion
rates are 20% higher when pages use contextual marketing.

In short, content that’s shown to the right person has a higher chance of converting them into a lead.

You can also use contextual marketing to provide visitors relevant content based on where they are in their
buyer’s journey. You’ll ensure that your website is providing a great experience to each person every step of the
way.

When it comes to conversions, you’ll be able to promote new offers to the right person, which will make the
conversion process smoother. A visitor won’t have to search as much, and you’ll be able to ask better questions
for each person on your forms, providing you with more insight on your leads.

Ultimately, contextual marketing is a great way to create a personalized user experience. You’ll get the right
content, in front of the right person, at the right time.

Video 2: What are the fundamentals of contextual marketing?

Using contextual marketing to personalize a visitor’s experience on your website sounds pretty exciting, right?
You might be tempted to jump right in, but first let’s take a step back and consider these fundamental best
practices:

Start small.
Be helpful to your visitors.
Optimize content for search results and first-time visitors.
Don’t confuse your visitors.
Make sure visitors can get to all valuable content.

First, start small with your contextual marketing efforts. Use it sparingly in one area to begin with. Contextual
marketing is an advanced marketing tactic. There are many ways to use it, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed with
all the possibilities.

It’s recommended to add context to your content little-by-little, over time, so that you can evaluate its
performance and make changes as needed. Like the rest of the content on your website, it’s a continuous
process to evaluate and update it based on your business goals.
 Transcript: Fundamentals of Contextual Marketing

Second, promote a good user experience by being helpful to your visitors. When you create content that has
context, you’ll start by asking yourself if you’re truly helping your visitors.

57% percent of people are okay with providing personal information on a website as long as it’s for their benefit.
Benefit is the operative word in that sentence, and it should direct how you use contextual marketing.

For example, when you know someone’s name, you don’t necessarily add value by displaying it. Providing an
offer that’s relevant to that visitor is more effective than displaying “Welcome back, Sarah.”

By understanding your visitor’s context, you’ll be able to provide content that helps them progress through their
buyer’s journey and have a good user experience at the same time.

Next, optimize default content for search engines and first-time visitors. Don’t focus all your efforts on your
contextual marketing strategy and neglect the first-time visitor.

Your website needs good default content so that a first-time visitor can get just as much value out of your site as
a segmented group that you’ve targeted in your contextual marketing strategy.

Much like your website before implementing contextual marketing, your content should educate and inform a
broad segment of your audience.

Search engines are also evaluating this default content that you create for the first-time visitor. A search engine
won’t look through all your content variations. So whenever you optimize for search engines, focus your efforts
on the default content since that’s what search engines will evaluate.

Now onto the next best practice: Don’t confuse your visitors. Since marketers have been using personalization in
emails for a while, the general public is used to seeing their name appear in an email.

But most businesses aren’t using contextual marketing on their websites, with the exception of ecommerce.
Maybe Amazon or Netflix come to mind in how their sites make recommendations based on your interests and
display your name. However, it’s just not ordinary to see on a home page, “Here’s a new offer for you, Matt.”

Don’t personalize your website for the sake of personalizing. It can be confusing or frightening to a visitor,
making them ask, “How does this website know my name?!” Using personalization effectively is a skill you should
develop.

Lastly, make sure that visitors can get to all valuable content. There should be a way to navigate to every last
piece of content, even if you don’t promote it specifically to a particular segment. You don’t want a visitor to miss
out on a great eBook you’ve created just because they aren’t in the right segment to see it. Users should still be
able to browse your website fully and discover information that’s relevant to them.

And those are all the best practices for getting started with contextual marketing. Begin by starting small with
your contextual marketing strategy, be helpful to your visitors, optimize content for search engines and first-time
visitors, don’t confuse or frighten your visitors, and make sure that visitors can get to all the valuable content
you’re creating. Refer to these fundamentals to create a great experience for your users.
 Transcript: Fundamentals of Contextual Marketing

Video 3: What does contextual marketing look like?

Contextual marketing is a powerful approach to creating a personalized experience that adapts to a user’s
needs. Let’s see how a couple of different types of businesses could apply contextual marketing.

Here’s a CTA, or call-to-action, by LyntonWeb, a HubSpot Partner Agency. This is a CTA on their website that’s
offering a LyntonWeb social media community manager playbook.

As an example, LyntonWeb has noticed that a lot of users who click on the playbook come from LinkedIn. Since
the playbook is for social media community managers, it makes sense that the offer would be interesting to
social media marketers.

LyntonWeb wants to target visitors with a social media referral source of LinkedIn and provide them with content
that would be most applicable to them.

They can target users from LinkedIn and provide a different offer to them. All visitors that arrive from LinkedIn will
see a free eBook for prospecting with LinkedIn. The prospecting eBook is even more targeted and specific to
users arriving from LinkedIn.

Here’s another example. Spotify’s homepage has content at the top of the page with a special promotion to try
their music subscription services.

But what about their current customers? The offer isn’t applicable to them. Instead, Spotify could segment their
customers. For any customer who visits their homepage, they can promote new releases in order to get
customers to engage with their content.

Let’s take a look at another type of company. Topshop is a clothing company that provides free shipping to some
countries. They can segment their visitors by country to relay this information to relevant visitors.

They can also provide different messaging, even in different languages, based on the website visitor’s location.
This is a great way to target first-time visitors. They haven’t filled out a form just yet, but you’re able to target them
based on their country.

Feeling inspired? Hopefully the examples have given you a few ideas for your own business and how you could
use contextual marketing on your website.