A practical guide for product marketers navigating complexity
The Invisible Lever of Context
Your product demo just flopped. Again. The features are solid, the messaging is sharp, but the prospect is comparing you to completely wrong competitors. Sound familiar? You’re not missing better data or a cleverer tagline — you’re missing context.
That missing piece has a name: context engineering.
So, What Is Context Engineering?
Think of context engineering as deliberately shaping the signals, stories, and environment around your product so people instantly get what it is, who it’s for, and why it matters right now.
As April Dunford reminds us, positioning is “context setting in the opening of a movie” — a frame that can completely change how a product is seen. When you deliberately engineer the context around your message, product, or strategy, you change not just how others see it, but how fast your organization can learn and adapt.
Context clarifies relevance by showing people why something matters in their specific situation. It shapes perception by surrounding your product with the right comparisons, stories, and signals. And ultimately, positioning is simply the art of context-setting — the strategic choice of a market frame and comparison set that makes your strengths impossible to ignore.
Why Context Engineering Matters Now
In today’s complex, fast-moving markets, product marketers must become context engineers. Information overload is the norm, not the exception. Buyers are drowning in options, and your team is struggling to keep up with an ever-expanding competitive landscape.
Context cuts through the noise. Done well, putting context to work helps people learn faster, makes teams more adaptable, and ensures your product story lands exactly as intended. Without it, even the best products get lost in translation.
The same forces that help a person master a new skill also help a buyer instantly understand why your product matters. When you design for context, you make it easier for people to absorb knowledge and easier for customers to absorb your message.
Dive Deeper
This is especially critical in our AI-accelerated world where the prompt wars are over and context engineers have won — those who can architect the right context around their AI interactions and customer touchpoints.
Why Learning and Buying Are Mirror Processes
Learning and buying are mirrors of each other: both take scattered information and turn it into action. The same contextual cues that help a learner retain knowledge are the ones that help a buyer decide with confidence.
- For individuals learning new skills: Context provides the hooks that make knowledge stick. Think of how you master anything new — active recall and spaced repetition aren’t just drills; they’re contextual anchors that help your brain retrieve information at exactly the right moment. A marketing message works the same way when it connects directly to the situation a buyer faces.
- For teams onboarding new members: The most effective 90-day plans create structured learning environments with interviews, documents, and small experiments that give new hires the context they need to contribute quickly. Customer journeys need the same structure — every touchpoint should reinforce consistent context so buyers don’t waste mental energy piecing together your story.
- For organizations adapting to change: Companies that treat failure as part of the learning context adapt faster than those waiting for perfect answers. Markets work identically. The most effective go-to-market teams treat campaigns like experiments, testing and adjusting context cues until buyers respond with both understanding and urgency.
How to Build Your Context System
Design Stories That Stick
A strong narrative provides the shortcut from confusion to clarity. For learners, it’s the real-world problem that makes theory meaningful. For buyers, it’s the before/after/bridge story that makes your product’s role obvious.
As Kindra Hall explains in Stories That Stick, the best stories don’t just entertain — they create a frame where the audience immediately sees themselves and the change you’re offering. Different stakeholders need the same core story told in their specific context — whether they’re users, budget holders, or compliance officers.
The best context-engineered stories are measurable—you’ll know they’re working when prospects stop asking basic questions and start discussing implementation.
Dive Deeper
For more on crafting stories that resonate with technical audiences specifically, see my deep dive on The Evolution of Developer Marketing: From Open Source to AI.
Draw the Map Everyone Can Use
Behind every successful context engineering effort is a shared map that keeps everyone aligned. In education, this means prompts, schedules, and objectives. In marketing, it’s what I call a “context graph” — mapping personas, stages, and objections so every channel and team member stays consistent.
Without this map, learners struggle to connect the dots, and buyers get confused by mixed messages. With it, you create a system that guides people naturally toward the insights and decisions you want them to reach.
Make Feedback Your Fuel
Both learning systems and marketing systems thrive on quick iteration. The faster you can test context cues and adjust based on response, the faster you improve outcomes. Set up mechanisms to capture how your context is landing — whether that’s comprehension checks for learners or engagement metrics for prospects.
Avoiding Context Traps
As powerful as context engineering is, it comes with risks you need to navigate:
- Overgeneralizing: Success in one situation doesn’t always transfer. Before applying a context approach broadly, ask: What about this worked only because of these specific circumstances?
- Overfitting: Waiting for perfect context alignment leads to paralysis. Balance sensitivity to context with the momentum needed to make progress and learn from real-world feedback.
- Crossing ethical lines: Personalization only works when it’s expected, transparent, and valuable. Use data responsibly and always show clear value for what you’re asking people to share.
Five Quick Wins You Can Implement This Week
You don’t need a massive overhaul to start seeing results. Here are five moves you can make immediately:
- Rewrite your top five web pages to explicitly name 2–3 alternatives and highlight your key differentiator in the first paragraph. Imagine a prospect comparing you to a legacy competitor: don’t leave it to chance that they’ll figure out why you’re different — make it crystal clear right away.
- Add context-rich social proof — not just logos, but “How [Company] chose us over [Alternative] to achieve [specific outcome].”
- Create a one-page “context brief” template for your next campaign covering audience, alternatives they’re considering, and key differentiators.
- Implement smart routing — direct “comparing us to X” traffic to tailored landing pages that address that specific comparison.
- Add context scoring to your CRM — track each prospect’s awareness level, considered alternatives, and primary objection to personalize follow-ups.
From Noise to Signal: The Context Advantage
In a world where buyers are overwhelmed with options and information, context isn’t just a marketing tactic — it’s your competitive moat. The companies that master context engineering won’t just capture attention; they’ll accelerate understanding, shorten sales cycles, and create customers who become advocates.
For product marketers, mastering context is more than messaging. It’s a leadership skill — a way of helping your organization learn faster, adapt better, and win more consistently in an increasingly complex marketplace.
The question isn’t whether context matters — it’s whether you’ll engineer it or leave it to chance.
Your next move: Pick one quick win from the list above and implement it this week. Then come back and tell me how it changed your prospect conversations.
Master the context, and you’ll master the market.
Madam I’m Adam
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