Categories: Marketing,
Operating a company through a pandemic has tried and tested many business owners across the nation (and world).
Many are adjusting rapidly to the changes, and others are barely holding on, if at all. Now that we’re months into the pandemic, B2B marketing teams are questioning what it’ll be like after the dust settles.
If we look closely at what’s happening, you’ll find customers demanding the same thing they always have—just a bit more of it, namely, personalized experiences.
How do you do this in a way that caters to your audience’s needs amid the pandemic? Everyone’s looking for highly-targeted solutions (and, more importantly, help) to get them through their struggles.
This is where contextual marketing comes into play.
What Is the Role of Contextual Marketing in B2B?
In B2B marketing, your primary intention is to get your message in front of the right people at the right time.
With contextual marketing, you go beyond the typical segmentation (company size, persona, and past purchases) and dig deeper. In a nutshell, it’s about finding the context of a particular lead or account and then creating a unique message for them.
Take this, for example:
Pre-pandemic companies focused on following leads through a funnel and delivering messaging to help them make a final decision.
Post-pandemic, things will be a bit different. Like today, it’s all about helping customers with relevant problems they’re having now.
So rather than creating a message talking about the benefits of a relevant product or service, you discuss how it can help them with a current issue. For instance, it could be a message about maximizing their productivity with a smaller (or remote) staff (due to downsizing for COVID-19).
In other words, it’s taking segmentation and personalization and putting it on steroids.
What Are the Benefits of Contextual B2B Marketing?
Adding context to your B2B marketing may sound like another hassle for your team. However, with the right tools, you can quickly assimilate this into your strategy.
By doing so, you can witness the following benefits:
- Improve the customer experience (and satisfaction): Messaging that’s adequately timed and presents the perfect solution will be meaningful.
- Boost engagement from leads and customers: Taking the time to hyper-personalize your content and anticipate their needs will make your audience receptive (and responsive) to your communications.
- Increase your sales and revenue: Your messaging won’t feel disruptive because it’s speaking directly to their needs, and they’ll be more inclined to purchase.
As an added benefit to you, you’re doing all this without spending a lot more money on your B2B marketing.
How to Do Contextual B2B Marketing Using a CDP
So how do you use a customer data platform to implement contextual B2B marketing?
Here’s a quick overview:
- Create lifecycle stages to generate insights about your customers’ buying journey and where they are at any given time.
- Develop buyer personas that dictate the best content and platforms to use to reach them.
- Clean and unify your customer data to ensure your leads, contacts and accounts are accurate and still relevant to your campaign.
- Monitor top-performing content to determine what’s working and to provide insights into the context of your target audience.
Using a Customer Data Platform to Add Context to Your Strategy
B2B marketing is more critical now than ever. As the pandemic wears on and eventually ends, you’ll need new, agile strategies for approaching your B2B audience.
This includes learning about their current needs as it pertains to effects caused by COVID-19. The more you understand their woes, the easier it’ll be to add context to your segmented campaigns.
At Leadspace, we offer a customer data platform that enables you to develop personas, segments, and even cleans and unifies across multiple data sources. To learn more, watch the webinar: CDP: Is it Really Your Single Source of Truth for Sales and Marketing? today.
