Pearson & Co. . POV .

Contextual Campaigns

Six steps to successful campaigns

Increasing information overload, fragmented media, and shifting power dynamics are making it harder than ever to reach and engage the customers and prospects that your business depends on for growth. To be truly relevant and engaging, campaigns must be designed in multiple contexts to reach the right target, with the right appeal, at the right time.

Consider these six strategic contexts in defining your campaigns:

  • Individual Role. Where do your prospects sit in the organization? What role do they play in the purchase? What issues are most important to them right now?
  • Business Type. Are you targeting large enterprises or small businesses? Which vertical markets represent the best targets? What are the pressing trends in those industries?
  • Relationship. Are you interacting with installed-base customers or net new prospects? What's the state of their relationship with your company? When was the last time you interacted with them, and how are they feeling about you today?
  • Competitors. What solutions do your prospects already have in place? Which of your competitors are courting them, and what are they saying?
  • Buying Stage. Is your prospect actively seeking a solution? Or do they not yet recognize that they have a problem? What beliefs must be created or changed to move them closer to a purchase?
  • Interaction. Where did you find this prospect? Did they stop by your booth at a tradeshow? Did they see an ad in a trade pub? Or did they find your site from a link on a blog?

The answers to these questions should drive a unique contact strategy, value proposition, and offers for each context. For instance, an account-based loyalty campaign for at-risk customers in financial services and pharma companies or an online competitive attack campaign to acquire new prospects in small businesses would each feature entirely different messaging and incentives to break through current belief-sets and compel action.

3 things you can do now

Pick a pilot.

Pick a scenario that best aligns with a key strategic imperative and design a contained, contextual campaign around it.

Create customer snapshots.

Collect existing intelligence from internal research and third-party sources, then sort by role, business type, and relationship to see where the insight gaps are.

Set goals for learning.

Define a learning agenda, including the aspects you want to test and iterate for each campaign, then put basic tracking mechanisms in place to capture those results in real time.

Consider every context

Web 2.0 has influenced not only the way people research and buy products, but also what they'll tolerate in communications. Customers have expectations that you will treat them uniquely and engage with them dynamically in ways that give them more control over the dialogue. Integrating more interactive, two-way communications into your campaigns — including online peer polls, blogs, and even games — can increase engagement levels and entice customers and prospects into a deeper relationship with your brand.

Use integrated, multitouch and behavior-based vehicles to deliver appropriate content/offers at the right moment, and intersperse a variety of such touches as email, direct mail, and telemarketing. Progressive profiling and feedback mechanisms, such as peer polls to gather insight about prospect mind-set and buying stage, can help you tailor subsequent touches for greater relevance and impact.

Designing your campaign in the context of your customers' unique dynamics will help you meet them where they're at, and engage them more deeply in entertaining and informative ways.

Iterating in a dynamic online world

A necessary profound change is the development of a learning agenda and the ability to iterate dynamically for integrating learning and optimizing results. Test value propositions, messages and offers — even media and orchestration — to find what works best.

"Co-creating" with customers

You can more finely target and touch people in a very discrete way using contextual campaigns that are:

  • Designed in context of customer-buying dynamics
  • Integrated on multiple levels and orchestrated over time
  • Iterative and dynamic to integrate learning and optimize results
"The single company message broadcast consistently to every audience approach will no longer suffice."
—  Jerri DeVard,
former CMO at Citigroup

A recent McKinsey report found that consumers are increasingly ignoring push marketing, preferring to use the Internet to research products before buying.