It’s January which can only mean New Year’s resolutions and predictions for the year ahead.  It’s going to be an interesting year for marketers and as ever it will be of upmost importance to create great brand experiences across a range of digital platforms. 2015 looks set to be the year of content, real time and mobile marketing, but what’s most important is that brands market to consumers in the right context, enter context marketing.

Context marketing

Context marketing is about timing communication with consumers so that it’s relevant and provides: the right content, to the right person at the right moment. Context marketing is one step further than content marketing as it provides information with the added element of timing. You could combine, content, real time and mobile marketing to create excellent context marketing.

Content marketing

Content marketing is all about honing the idea that ‘brands are publishers’. Brands need to create free shareable content that will attract, engage and drive profitable customer experiences.  The key thing is for brands to create relevant shareable content. Customers are drawn towards what their friends like, rather than traditional commercial push marketing, so create content that’s worth sharing in its own right. A genius example of content marketing is the Dove campaign for Beauty, why? Because the campaign isn’t too product or brand focused, instead it tells a story, the content stands in its own right, it connects with viewers and therefore was shared. In fact the Dove Real Beauty Sketches has been viewed over 65 million times on YouTube.

Other brands that are creating great content include Knorr UK, yes that’s right they make stock cubes. The UK Knorr website is a hub for foodies with hundreds of recipes by great chefs – perfect for sharing via social media. www.knorr.co.uk/recipes

American Express Open Forum is an example of B2B brand content initiative. The AMEX Open Forum is an online community for small sized business owners; and was set up as over 50% of new businesses fail within the first four years. The forum is full of advice, insights and tools to help business owners grow their company. This example shows how great content and great people can create great ROI. The forum has over 200,000 unique views each month and has surpassed revenue goals for new client credit cards. www.americanexpress.com/

Real time marketing

As the number of people using social media increases brands need to take advantage of this new platform to communicate, and they need to do it in a creative and timely way just like these brands:

One of the most iconic real time marketing moments was the Oreo tweet during the infamous Super Bowl XLVII’s blackout. Oreo sent out a timely tweet which became massively popular on social media. In a crowded environment where advertisers are spending as much as $4million to get an ad spot during the big game, having a brand respond in real time on social media is a clever way to reach consumers.

Just after the iPhone 6 launch in September 2014 Kit Kat and Pringles hit the spot with their tweets on #bendgate:

Mobile marketing

If you thought mobile marketing was big last year, hold on because this area of marketing is growing at a lightning speed. The fact that over half of the world’s population own a mobile phone shows the potential reach brands have if they use mobile marketing correctly. In the UK 7/10 adults have a smartphone. http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/7-10-people-uk-now-own-smartphone/

Check out this mobile marketing case study where H&M in Poland used Snapchat to reach out to its target youth audience to celebrate its H&M loves music 2014 campaign.