Why You Need to Implement a Real-time Marketing Strategy
If you are not reacting to what’s happening at the moment, you are being left behind by your competitors who are using this strategy successfully. It’s time for you to learn how to weave this method into your business plan so that you can stay ahead of the curve and achieve success!
We live in a world where everything is moving at lightning speed. Your customers have no patience for waiting around, they want their needs met now. With more than 50% of online traffic coming from mobile devices it has become absolutely essential that marketers adopt a real-time marketing approach if they want any chance at succeeding in today’s chaotic environment. We all know that timing is everything when it comes to winning over customers, but did you know that your entire business plan could be thrown off if you aren’t keeping pace with the latest market trends?
Here’s how Real-time Marketing can help you with that!
But first, some statistics:
80% of respondents consider ‘real-time’ to be two minutes or less. (Our Social Times)
More than 80 percent want to use analytics to generate real-time actions from customer data. But companies are struggling to achieve this goal. Only 22 percent of those surveyed say they are effective in using analytics and data. (SAS)
More than half of respondents say they need to interact with customers more quickly. (Monetate)
29% of respondents are not engaging in any type of real-time marketing. That’s still almost a third of marketers not seeing the potential in the strategy. By taking advantage of real-time data, you can overtake them in your marketing efforts. That said, 85% of respondents say it is fundamental, significant, or important to their future business success to provide experiences that are responsive to customers based on real-time, in-the-moment behaviors. (Monetate)
Now that you know some facts about Real-time Marketing, let’s take a deep dive into this strategy.
What is Real-time Marketing?
Real-time marketing is all about providing high-quality content in response to events, news, and other items that are currently trending on social media or other channels. This type of strategy can be extremely beneficial for your business but it isn’t an undertaking that should be taken lightly. Your real-time marketing efforts should mainly be focused on social media management and responding to what’s happening in communities.
There are a lot of factors at play when it comes to achieving success with this approach, but we’ll get into those later in the article.
Right-time Marketing
There is a lot of overlap between right-time marketing and real-time marketing, but there is one key difference: right-time marketing is more about predicting the future via customer behavior, whereas real-time marketing is more about reacting to the present.
With right-time marketing, you are trying to anticipate the needs of your customers and provide content that meets those needs before they even arise. By using behavioural signals, for example, you can determine the needs of your customers and provide them with information that meets those needs.
In essence, right-time marketing is a more sophisticated, in-depth version of real-time marketing. It uses more data which leads to more conclusions, and, at the end of the day, better targeting, responses, channels, and timing.
Why is Real-time Marketing effective?
Real-time marketing is effective because it allows businesses to react quickly to the latest news and events. By being able to respond quickly, businesses can take advantage of the latest trends and capitalize on the opportunities that arise.
Additionally, real-time marketing allows businesses to build relationships with customers in a more personal way. Customers appreciate the ability to connect with a company in a timely manner, and they are more likely to return in the future if they feel that they have a good relationship with the business.
Finally, real-time marketing is effective because it helps businesses to stay ahead of the competition. By being the first to react to news and events, businesses can gain a competitive edge over their rivals.
What are the main challenges faced by marketers today and how can Real-time Marketing help you tackle them?
Marketing has changed forever thanks to social media, smartphones, and real-time marketing technology. Gone are the days when consumers were not hyper-connected with brands. Today, it’s crucial that digital marketing strategies adopt a “live” component to their approach or they will be left behind by competitors who know how to use this actionable data in real-time to create compelling offers and content.
The main challenges faced by marketers today are optimizing the customer experience across all touchpoints, dealing with disruptive technologies like mobile phones and contextual advertising which can change without warning, integrating multiple channels for an optimal experience (touchpoints), understanding cross-channel marketing metrics like the attention span of digital natives (usually about two minutes) over traditional demographic features like age, income level or gender, creating multi-channel campaigns that reach the right targets more efficiently.
The amount of market research for customer insights you can do is larger than ever. Social channels have experienced a tremendous surge of new users in the past few years. For this reason, you need A LOT of data to make sure that you stay on top of your social media marketing campaign, which is another challenge in and of itself.
The benefits of real-time marketing are manifold. It is very helpful for businesses to improve their customer experience by reacting quickly to changes in demand. Customers want an engaging experience at all times and even minor problems can lead to churn if they are not resolved quickly.
Real-time marketing also helps marketers to understand the online sentiment and adjust their content accordingly, which allows them to create compelling offers that suit our audience’s immediate needs. This, in turn, improves individual customer loyalty and engagement.
Finally, real-time marketing can help you increase your cross-channel conversion rates by optimising every touchpoint – whether it’s social media, email, or an ad campaign. As industry trends continue to evolve, your marketing strategies should too.
What are some Real-time Marketing examples?
Oreo’s 2013 Super Bowl campaign is a perfect example of real-time marketing in action. When the lights went out at the stadium, Oreo reacted quickly by releasing an ad on Twitter that said, “You can still dunk in the dark.” This tweet was retweeted more than 10,000 times and received more than 6,000 likes. Not only was it a clever ad, but it was also RELEVANT to what was happening at the moment.
ASOS quickly reacted to their spelling mistake on 17,000 bags by posting a tweet that owned up to the error. Their quick response allowed them to establish themselves as a company with personality, and the laid-back format of the post generated lots of engagement.
Starbucks has a reputation for acting quickly on social media. One of the most famous cases of real-time marketing done by their team was their response to the cancellation of one of the most popular seasonal drinks – the eggnog latte.
Since the drink was loved by hundreds of customers, they expressed disappointment in hundreds of tweets. Needless to say, Starbucks was almost forced to bring back the treat, as the uproar was too much for the company.
They got to work and replied to each and every customer who was unhappy about the situation.
Now you know what a proper strategy might result in. Let’s take a look at how you can implement it in your customer relationship management.
How to implement a Real-time Marketing strategy?
It’s time for you to learn how to implement this strategy into your business so that you can stay ahead of the curve and achieve success!
Gathering your own data – media monitoring and sentiment analysis
Many businesses these days are turning to media monitoring and sentiment analysis to help them with their real-time marketing efforts. By tracking online conversations about their brand, they can get a sense of what customers are talking about, what they’re happy or unhappy with, and how they’re reacting to the company’s latest announcements and products. This information can be used to adjust marketing strategies on the fly, creating more relevant and engaging content that responds to customer interactions and feedback.
Another benefit of gathering your own data is that you can track the impact of your real-time marketing campaigns. By measuring sentiment before and after campaigns, you can see how well they’re resonating with customers and make changes as needed. This helps you to fine-tune your campaigns and provides you with the data you need to prove their success (or failure).
Brand Monitoring tools such as Brand24 can help you monitor your brand’s online reputation. Tools like these allow the user to search for keywords related to that brand or company, then see what people are saying about it in real-time. Not only do they let you know that there’s a conversation about your brand, but they also let you see how that conversation is going, garnering actionable insights.
Competitive intelligence
Competitive intelligence is a critical part of any real-time marketing strategy. By keeping tabs on your competition, you can stay ahead of their latest moves and react quickly to any changes in the market. This information can help you make better decisions about what products or services to offer, how to price them, and how to market them.
Real-time interaction management
If you want to be successful with real-time marketing, you need to have a solid real-time interaction management plan in place. By being able to quickly and effectively respond to customer feedback, you can create a better customer experience that will keep them coming back. Additionally, you’ll be able to more easily capitalize on any opportunities that come up at the moment, which can help you boost your business’ success.
Creating relevant messaging
Real-time marketing is all about being relevant and timely with your messaging. If you can create content that is appropriate to what is happening right now, you will be much more successful in reaching your target audience. This is because people are more likely to be interested in current events, and they will want to read about what you have to say about it.
Relevant messaging is key when it comes to real-time marketing. If you can create content that is on-brand and on-message, you will be able to capture the attention of your audience right away. In order to do this, you need to be aware of what is happening in the world and how it relates to your business. You also need to make sure that your brand guidelines are up-to-date and reflect the most current messaging that you use.
Multiple channels
In order to be successful with real-time marketing, you need to be using multiple channels to reach your audience. This is because people are using different channels to get their information, and you need to be where they are. If you are only using one channel, you are limiting your reach and you may not be reaching the right people.
By using customer analytics, you can see which channels your target audience uses most often when it comes to getting their information. You can then focus on using these channels when doing real-time marketing campaigns in order to ensure that they are successful. Using a variety of channels will help you reach more people and get them excited about what you have going on in real-time.
Conclusion
In a world where social media moves at the speed of light, it’s more important than ever to be able to react quickly and take advantage of opportunities as they arise. This is why you need a real-time marketing strategy in place that incorporates all channels for reaching your target audience. If you’re not using customer analytics or competitive intelligence data to make decisions about what product offerings are best right now, how should people find out about them? What if there’s an opportunity with one of your competitors but you don’t know because you didn’t monitor their latest move on Facebook? By implementing these strategies into your business plan today, you’ll be better prepared for tomorrow!
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Real-time media monitoring