Time: 20.3. 2015
Place: UK
Event: Solar Eclipse
The hero of this event: Oreo
Do you remember the famous Oreo campaign that covered solar eclipse? That is when giant advertising screens filled the streets showing “Oreo Solar Eclipse”?
Well, what do we call this creative technology of advertising?
It’s real-time marketing!
What is real time marketing?
Brands need to take advantage of the moment and harness the current trend to be different in providing content that attracts the attention more.
Real time marketing focuses on employing current events in a way that marketers can use them based on information about what is happening in real time. Instead of creating a marketing plan and executing it according to a set schedule, this marketing trend creates a strategy that focuses on relevant current events and immediate feedback from customers in the online world.
- On the other hand, real time marketing detects user information and data online, in order to provide them with specific ads.
- Online data collection gives companies the ability to present real time advertisements that respond to what individuals have been doing recently, such as what an individual is buying, looking for, and browsing.
Types of real time marketing:
Online retailers primarily use real time marketing, by following searches, selections, purchases, and comments submitted by customers to create deals, ads, text messages, emails, and special offers for them.
For example, “Urban Outfitters” gathers information as a visitor browses the site, such as the items he/she views, the used keywords, and the made purchases. As a visitor goes through the site, banner ads specifically related to these keywords, product views and purchases pop up.
Also, real time marketing includes entertainment news and online posts, and the interaction and response to news as it happens. This includes new website stories, “breaking news” emails, and texts for subscribers. The organizations that use the information and data in real time marketing are CNN News and TNZ.
Benefits of real time marketing:
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Easy and fast content:
Real-time marketing saves the time you spend generating new ideas that serve your marketing goals. As a small business owner, you have so much to do and it can be hard to find the time to write a post or come up with ideas for content. However, constant online presence and engagement on social media is critical for capturing interest, as well as obtaining and maintaining clients.
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Unmatched effect:
Marketers often struggle to come up with new and innovative ways to engage the ever-connected consumer. Real time marketing offers a solution that enables marketers to adapt their message to a specific context. This type of marketing allows companies to communicate with people in the right place and time.
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Increased interaction:
With real time marketing, companies can reach people who are interested in their products or services anywhere and at anytime. Instead of blasting out generic messages across all social media platforms, you can customize these messages to spark a dialogue with customers, and increase the quality of interactions.
Real time marketing can also increase audience engagement, with 76% of brands claiming that using this type of marketing has increased customer engagement. It appears that real time marketing can bring customers and companies together, given that brands are producing relevant content to what is happening in the real world. Actually, this type not only increases engagement, but can also contribute to increase customer satisfaction and create positive feelings about the brand, as reported by 56 % of brands.
- Real time marketing is a real success in every sense of the word. 25 % of brands believe that using this type improves conversion rates and return on investment. Customers prefer to receive more relevant, credible and modern messages to give them a greater sense of connection with your brand. In short, this type of marketing contributes to improving brands’ efficiency up to 44%
Real time marketing tools:
There are many tools that facilitate the process of managing your social efforts associated with real time marketing, such as “Hootsuite“, “GoTweet” and “TweetDeck“. These tools can post to multiple networks, schedule tweets, and filter your broadcasts so you can focus more on your content. “Hootsuite” also provides subtle features such as team collaboration processes and analytics.
- Want to know what’s being said about your brand on the web? All you have to do is using “Social Mention” that will help you with this challenge.
- There are other very useful tools, and let me call them (social monitor tools) such as “Radian6”, “BuddyMedia” and “BuzzMetrics”, all of which provide the ability to monitor, measure and follow social activity.
Once you know who is talking about your brand, you will be curious to see how much they are affecting the social media scene in the moment. “Klout” and “Peerindex” are good for attaching some context to the personality of Internet users by monitoring their social activity, then arranging their influence on specific topics and with other people.
Real time marketing strategies:
Why do you need a real time marketing strategy?
What makes you build instant content in your strategy is that customer interaction will increase incredibly, and that is proven with the following numbers:
- 76% said that the real time marketing increased audience engagement.
- 35% said that they got an increased number of reach and followers.
- 25% believed that it improves conversion and return on investment.
However, you need to focus on the following points:
Always be ready:
To do real time marketing properly, you need to follow the current course of events and employ trends as they happen. Here are three methods that help you with this task:
- Search on Google recent trends in your field. What are some of the most exciting topics related to it?
- Monitor all real time events in your industry. How do your competitors use current events in their business?
- Follow influencers closely and develop relationships with them. They can be advocates of your brand and help spread your marketing efforts when needed.
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One try is not enough:
Be ready to participate in, respond, and start conversations at any time. If your customers are active on LinkedIn and Twitter, be there to answer their questions. Be an active part of the conversation so that you are the first choice when they are ready to buy because you already there for them.
- Learn about keywords and SEO techniques that help improve the effectiveness of your audience on social channels.
Real time marketing examples:
Oreo again?
Yes! Well, the marketing team members are really the masters of digital marketing in general and real time marketing in particular.
During 2013, New Orleans experienced power out and Oreo marketing team took the opportunity to uniquely market their products on Twitter.
They tweeted a picture of Oreo in the dark with the caption that reads “You can still dunk in the dark.” And they commented on it saying, “The power out? No problem.” It was a big hit among Twitter audience, and to this day, we cannot stop praising the genius of the Oreo marketing team.
Real time marketing and social media:
In short, the rapid development of social media trends prompts us to seize opportunities as quickly as possible; you need to share content while you are having a live conversation with your customers. If it is too late, no one will care.
This content must be:
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Timely:
Your content needs some kind of meaningful contribution to the conversation. You can’t just add a popular hashtag to a completely unrelated Tweet.
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Shareable:
The first goal of your digital presence remains to publish content that is easy to share. Aside from PDFs, long blog posts, or hours-long videos, Tweets, Facebook posts, short videos, and GIFs are a good example.
Real time marketing and Twitter:
Due to its instant sharing options, Twitter is especially useful for sharing events in real time, from the FIFA World Cup to TV shows. Instead of waiting for news to be picked up through TV shows or newspapers, people follow social platforms like Twitter to get information as it happens.
Probably, daily trends are the best dose to upgrade this kind of marketing agenda. Anything can be popular, make sure to follow trends that you can easily adapt to your business or brand services in general in a smart and concise way.
- One of the most famous examples of real time marketing using Twitter trends is the release of iPhone 6 and iPhone Plus. Several companies shared humorous comments such as “KitKat” when it referred to the popular tune of “Give me a break”, KitKat’s appropriate and funny tweet got a huge response with nearly 30,000 retweets.
This example of real time marketing demonstrates the benefits of using trends and waiting for the opportunity to come up with an appropriate marketing message. Create a message that is relevant and self-referencing (the song).
Proper advertising via real time marketing is the first key to build awareness of your brand as well as strengthening the bonds of affection with your audience.
Most importantly, it should be employed in a way that is relevant to the topic and herein lies the creativity, because the brand adapts itself to an already created story, rather than promoting its own one. Thus, the message will also be very effective when executed correctly.
Remember…
“Real time marketing is not for everyone. To take advantage of it, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve through it.”
David Amerland
Therefore, you must choose the good method, the right time, and the message that you want to deliver. All these steps are going to be well prepared at Shibly Marketing with a very special offer. Connect with us!
Digital marketing services in our company
Resources:
https://www.oktopost.com/blog/5-strategies-real-time-marketing/
https://blog.tomorrow-people.com/the-power-of-a-real-time-content-marketing-strategy
https://www.grouphigh.com/blog/real-time-marketing-look-like-twitter/
Real time marketing is certainly a prominent digital marketing strategy.