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Real Time Marketing: Responding Creatively to the Unexpected in a Timely Manner

 

Getting the attention of your main audience is not an easy task. For the past three to five years, social media has progressively transitioned from being an organic marketing tool where the content had to engage with the audience naturally to a paid medium where we now pay to develop the audiences for our content. With Facebook leading this charge, social media channels have shifted their algorithms  to give more importance to the paid/promoted content compared to the organically distributed content. As a consequence, companies now struggle with relevancy with their content creation.

At this point, it seems reasonable that some companies have joined the real-time marketing trend as an alternative to make an organic impact on their audiences. Winning the moment seems to be a good option to get people’s attention. Twitter is currently the top social media channel that offers an opportunity for an effective, organic, and viral marketing for businesses.

So, what’s the real definition of real-time marketing? According to Sproutsocial, real-time marketing is marketing based on up-to-date events where brands add value to a cultural conversation by reacting to the unforeseen in a timely manner.

However, something as easy as being there at the right time could turn out to be more difficult that what it seems. It actually requires a lot of time and a creativity.

Real-time marketing takes a lot of time and money, so it’s definitely not a fit for all companies. The sooner your company realize that,  the less time your team will waste trying to come up with a plan or to imitate what other brands have done in the past. The reality is that trying to replicate something  is never a good practice; what worked for others in the past is probably not going to work for you.

Here are five keys for a successful real-time marketing campaign:

  1. Set up your main objectives and goals for that campaign.
  2. Listen to your audience and understand the context.
  3. Trust and understand your brand. Be confident in you and your team’s creativity.
  4. Understand the platform capabilities and implications of success and failures.
  5. Create hashtags that you can handle, and be ready for all the positive or negative impact it might have.

Be present and be creative. Don’t jump into the conversation just because a lot of people are talking about it. Jump on it with authority and to add value. In the social media war, with so many users trying to dominate their territories, creativity and opportunism will be your best warriors to win the moment, to win the battle of real-time marketing.

Good luck!

Lydia.