Real-time Marketing is about staying in line with the current trend and mapping it with your audience’s pain points. Such real-time techniques address the timely needs of your target market and put you at the top of their minds.
A conventional marketing strategy might suit the time when people are less exposed to social media. But, people are no longer the same. By the time you plan to market your brand, they might be up to date with the most current trends and hottest releases.
Then, how will you stand unique among the umpteen brands they see in a day? Adapting to real-time marketing can help!
Do you remember Oreo’s spontaneous marketing move utilizing the massive power outage? That was indeed a viral tweet that grasped the attention of millions! If you want to master such real-time marketing strategies and learn how they work for your business, this write-up should be helpful.
Quick Links
- Real-Time Marketing: Align with Current Trends
- Real-Time Marketing Strategies
- Real-Time Examples of Real-Time Marketing
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Final Thoughts
Real-Time Marketing: Align with Current Trends
Reaching out to your audience with a marketing strategy is appreciable. But, don’t you think approaching them with the right content at the right time would work better? A social media ad on summer suits may resonate better on sunny days than on a day of heavy downpours. This is where real-time advertising comes into the picture.
Well, this is not all. Apart from the current fashions to be on track, you must also consider user data. You can’t reach out to those less interested in your product and expect them to become your customers. To win this game, you should also analyze their behavior to see where and what they are interested in.
How Does Real-Time Marketing Differ From Others?
Every strategy requires creative and analytical skills to get the desired results. Real-time marketing is no exception. But, the one additional skill every marketer must possess is spontaneity.
You can’t always plan the idea firsthand to execute it later. Your opportunity of utilizing a real-time event may pop in at any time and anywhere. The smart initiatives you build on top of the sensational triggers are all matters.
Key Components of Real-Time Marketing
To decide if you are all set to kick-start a real-time marketing campaign, you must go through a checklist. A check mark on all these means you are packed with all the necessary components to expect tremendous success. Here is a list of them:
Events
The essential component is the “event,” or “action,” based on which you roll out a marketing campaign. The event may be anything, like a natural disaster, a political announcement, or a technological release. The trigger event does not necessarily have to be a huge one. Sometimes, it could also be a random action that brings unexpected results.
User Profile
The next step is to study what sort of audience reacts to the event. When you say user profile, it doesn’t refer to the actual profile. Instead, it denotes the sample characteristics based on various perspectives like age, location, interest, and profession.
Medium
The communication medium is another crucial component when it comes to marketing. Based on the medium, you can identify the nature of the audience. You can also decide on the tone, pitch style, content, and other creative elements to add.
Aim
This is a cumulative approach to be decided based on the other three elements. Though your ultimate aim is to improve your sales conversions, you may develop the goals, or target, of your specific marketing campaign. With all these in place, your sales success is simply achievable.
Real-Time Marketing Strategies
Handling data has become a basic business qualification these days. On analyzing the rapidly generated data, you can build your business plans. Here are some unique strategies to churn out better results from your efforts.
Monitor User Behavior
It is crucial to understand your customer’s likes and dislikes, as well as their strengths and challenges. In a real-time marketing strategy, you can see the dynamic data that keeps changing every so often. You can tweak your strategies based on these.
- Frequent search phrases
- Heat maps
- Website visitor count
These are some of the factors to track the audience’s behavior and understand what interests them.
Use Listening Tools
Are you aware of how well your business is performing? You can track what sort of audience your business is resonating with, as well as its performance. To do so, there are many qualified listening tools out there in the market. These tools help you track the mentions of your business by competitors or the general public.
Stay Updated with Current Trends
Redefining your marketing strategies by current trends can keep you fresh and vibrant among the audience. This bridges the gap between you and your target and increases the chances of striking deals with them.
Collaborate with Influencers
You can initiate win-win collaborations with celebrities, or influencers. Influencers have the potential to take your business to the nooks and corners that your other marketing strategies missed. Making use of realistic opportunities, influencers will help your business reach new heights.
Peculiar Examples of Real-Time Marketing
Here are some iconic examples that baffled a wide range of people. This list includes unique events, smart business initiatives, and unforgettable impacts.
#1 – Ice Bucket Challenge
The Ice bucket challenge was started by an individual in 2014 to raise awareness and funds for ALS. The public challenged their buddies, which got in popular celebrities, as well to participate in this.
Trigger: This real-time marketing did not have a proper trigger. Still, the severity of the disease, the need for money, and an easy-to-do challenge contributed their part in this course of action.
Initiative: In 2014, an individual drenched himself by pouring a bucket of cold water on him to raise funds for ALS.
Impact: This challenge went viral, urging many celebrities to actively participate in the chain of passing challenges. This social media challenge, collected around 100 million dollars to treat ALS patients.
#2 – ASOS
ASOS’s spontaneous move in 2018 even had the hearts of people who always come first to pinpoint mistakes.
Trigger: On March 2018, ASOS manufactured 17,000 bags that misspelled the word online as “onilne”.
Initiative: They were really quick to react to their own mistake. They posted a message admitting the misspelled word on the bags they manufactured. They dipped their words with sarcasm and called it a limited edition.
Impact: People enjoyed the self-roasting and didn’t even consider reacting to the mistake.
#3 – Oreo’s Lights Off Capture
Oreo’s lights off capture is a decade-old marketing win that had the attention of millions in a timely tweet.
Trigger: An unexpected power outage disheartened millions who were super-excited about the Super Bowl in 2013.
Initiative: When the audience was annoyed by this interruption, Oreo made a smart move through a simple tweet. With an image of Oreo in the dark, the tweet worded,
“Power out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark.”
Impact: They rolled out a strategic move expecting bored souls in social media. The tweet went viral and hit an ROI that wasn’t achievable through other advertisement strategies as planned.
#4 – Hashtag – Royal Baby
How did the tag “royal baby” become the marketing slogan of baby products businesses? Here is how!
Trigger: The birth of Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana. This was quite a popular event quoted with tags, like “royal baby.”
Initiative: A few brands wisely played on top of the trend #royalbaby. They pitched their marketing strategy in coupling with then-current trends and promoted their baby products.
Impact: The marketers were exposed to millions of views as they utilized the existing trend instead of creating one on their own.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why is real-time marketing important?
Real-time marketing highly resonates with people as it is the smart approach taken at the right moment in the right direction. Based on the social circumstance, you can analyze a suitable audience, reach them, and have their complete attention.
2. What is the difference between real-time marketing from outbound marketing?
Both terms refer to different styles of marketing. Apart from being types of marketing, they hardly have anything in common. Outbound marketing is the process of extending your outreach to external customers, while real-time marketing refers to the way of utilizing real-time incidents to blow up their business on top of it.
3. Will real-time marketing work in every scenario?
Real-time marketing is worth giving a try, but it doesn’t always succeed. Sometimes, you might mispredict the customers’ feelings about the trigger event. So, it is extremely important for every business marketer to carefully curate a business strategy.
Final Thoughts
A tour of impactful real-time marketing moves has explained its dominance in the marketing niche. Apart from the few thoughtful initiatives listed here, if you wish to share any that are still fresh in your mind, feel free to share them with us. If would you like to hire a set of professionals, who could implement these sensible techniques in your business, you can reach us anytime. Our team can handle your sales prospecting, so you can just close deals with potential customers who become curious through your real-time marketing techniques.
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