There is nothing new about the idea of context marketing—providing the right content to the right audiences when they need it.
What is relatively new are technologies like the Sitecore Experience Platform that enable marketers to deliver and measure personalized experiences at a relatively low cost.
But the technology alone can't get the job done. To be successful, organizations need to be ready in three areas to make context marketing a reality:
Strategy
Marketing strategy is the foundation that context marketing is built upon. Here are some important questions to consider:
- Is your marketing strategy clear?
- Is your brand promise well defined and understood across the organization (or at least the relevant parties)?
- Do you know your audiences' needs during all the stages of their customer journeys?
- Do your products or services align with their needs?
Technology
CMS and email systems that make content marketing a reality sit within an overall system architecture. Ask yourself questions such as:
- Do you have the right CMS and other marketing platforms for context marketing?
- Is your website properly designed and built?
- Are your analytics tools in place?
- What is the integration between your CMS and mass email system?
- What is the source of truth for customer data?
Operations
Being operationally ready to execute on context marketing requires having the right staffing and resources in place. Some question to consider include:
- Are your staff (and suppliers) digitally savvy—properly trained and ready to take on context marketing?
- Are you prepared to explain to business owners and other stakeholders across the organization what context marketing means and how they can benefit?
- Do you have the processes and budget in place to generate first-class content on an ongoing basis?
- Are you ready to measure and analyze the effects of content marketing?