Context Is King: The Marketing Effect of Location in Asia

Speaking at the Social Media World Forum Asia, U.S.-based digital watcher Brian Solis told the cream of digital media in the region in no uncertain terms that the new media adage ‘content is king’ is no longer applicable. “Context is now king”, declared Solis, who spoke at the event remotely.

These words and many more found their way across the Web through social networks, themselves the architect of this new change, but despite all the noise, do marketers in Asia really understand the consequences of this shift?

First, it is important to remind ourselves that while it may no longer be king, content remains an important part of the digital marketing process. As we are so often told, and can see in our work, technology and social networks are ‘touch points’ for engaging consumers, disseminating messages, and communicating a campaign – the message remains key.

Still, the message is powerful. A great campaign can be rendered ineffectual if the message is wrong, however in this new world order, context has risen to be a greater influence although it is a more illusive factor.

Context is about timing, location, conversations, and relevancy. The right marketing message is an essential ingredient for success but, more than that, increasingly social Internet habits – for example, Asia’s usage of core social networks, Facebook and Twitter, which is growing faster than in the U.S., have changed the way in which information is consumed.

Marketers, in turn, must be aware of such changes and must react accordingly. One increasingly important facet of finding the right context is location.

Take, for example, a basic store product promotion. Campaigns using social media may leverage the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and the blogosphere in addition to more traditional methods, yet a successful campaign is more than just platforms, it is about providing the right messages at the right time.

A Twitter promotion will resonate better just before or when a target consumer is in a shopping mindset – be that physically out shopping or online.

The good news for marketers is that location can give greater context to campaigns, but there is no quick fix and companies engaging in this emerging medium will need to be both brave and patient.

Facebook’s new location service – initially rolled out to users in the U.S., U.K., and Japan – is likely to arrive across greater parts of Asia soon, while Indonesian start-up Koprol and Foursquare are established amongst early adopting consumers across the continent. The latter in particular is a big courter of business and its latest revamp Foursquare 2.0 gives companies greater opportunities to weave marketing and promotional campaigns into their presence on the service.

Facebook needs little introduction given its 500 million user base. Its location service has been long anticipated and described as a ‘Foursquare killer’, and will aim to add context to the social network’s hugely successful existing offerings for businesses.

Suddenly a Facebook page can be given a specific location, with the possibility to offer unique discounts and special offers to members who ‘check-in’ at the location. Facebook’s adoption of location is likely to take the concept from being well used in early adopter circles towards mass market opportunities, although privacy fears have inevitably promoted some users to opt out of the service, for now at least.

However, that doesn’t change the new emphasis on location, which, in Asia, is driven by the growing adoption of smartphones, which linked with more and more affordable data plans are becoming the access device of choice for ‘instant Internet access’.

A mobile oriented Web is a dimension for digital marketers to explore as mobile Internet usage will, by definition, provide greater context. Tapping into this feature and being able to provide a level of context and relevance based on location will become an important factor for campaigns.

Location is not the only contextual factor. But it’s emerging at the most rapid pace and cannot be ignored by digital marketers in Asia.