Real-Time Marketing: Tactics & Examples To Win As A Marketer

Don’t you feel marketing is an essential part of any business? You must have seen that unless and until you market your product, you won’t be able to make sales as expected. Statistics say that 75% marketers reveal that campaigns affect the company’s revenue.

You have to constantly keep honing your skills to be relevant because getting the target audience’s attention is not easy.

If you are trying to use the real-time marketing approach to win over customers, you have to keep many things in mind. Let’s see what is real-time marketing, its importance in your marketing plan, examples, and the tactics you should use. 

What Is Real-Time Marketing?

Just like its name, you do real-time marketing in real-time. You can refer to it as the content marketing strategy that connects customers with products or services they require at a given point in time. 

Real-time marketing involves responding to customers in real-time based on the ability to find out how they are engaging with your brand through all channels. It makes you as a marketer trigger promotions when customers signal it. Also, you have to match your ability to provide customer experience with the customer’s speed of making decisions. In addition, you have to respond to customers on various channels, in a few seconds, right from social media to your website. However, if you take hours, days, or weeks to take action, you cannot label it real-time marketing.

The marketing strategy involves combining marketing and technology to get a better outcome. There are different sources that give you updated information such as the following:

1. CRM software

2. Social media analytics

3. Breaking news and trending stories

4. Website analytics

You can use the collected information to create a marketing message that resonates well with prospects. 

To ensure that real-time marketing is sustainable, you have to find a systematic way of responding to customers on all the channels available. 

Also, note that the strategy has come of age, and B2B businesses can include it in their digital strategy guide. We’ll discuss more on that later in this post so stay tuned! 

Understanding Real-Time Marketing

Real-time marketing is more customer-centric today than it was a few years ago. It is not just about following trends alone anymore. It is a strategy that analyzes every kind of customer data and gauges the behavior of clients for outreach. Businesses are trying out different ways to reach out to their target audience.

Real-time marketing is not only about presenting the right message at the right time on the right platform; the content has to be engaging enough for the strategy to be successful. 

Why Is Real-Time Marketing Important?

Real-time marketing is an important strategy that you should incorporate. Here are the benefits of real-time marketing strategy that you should know about, 

1. It is impactful

It is usually a struggle for you as a marketer to find creative ways of staying close to the consumer. The solution for this problem is real-time marketing or RTM. It helps build connections with prospects at the right place and right moment.

2. It helps increase engagement 

Businesses can reach individuals having an interest in their product or service with RTM. Also, it is possible to personalize messages, get into conversations with prospects and thereby increase sales engagement. It is way better than sending generic messages on all social media platforms.  

3. It helps in diversifying content

To demonstrate your worth, you may employ both long-form and short-form types of content marketing. Smaller content such as tweets, one-liners, graphics helps in engaging the target audience better and offers them something worth remembering. 

4. It invokes a sense of urgency

Since nobody likes to miss the latest trend, your product or service will look more enticing when you customize your marketing as per the latest happenings. Following this, you can tailor your ads according to current events and trends to make consumers realize that your offering is quite helpful in the present moment. When they feel so, they have a sense of urgency that makes them engage with your product or service.

5. It is cost-effective

You don’t have to spend a fortune on RTM, making it the best way for a startup or small business to market its products or services. You need creativity to link your product or service with the ongoing trends and happenings. Just be in the know about the latest trends and see how you can connect them with your business. Undoubtedly, it will fetch you great results at a minimal cost. 

After knowing the benefits of RTM, are you ready to add it to your existing outreach strategy to propel sales? 

Top 4 Real-Time Marketing Examples

As you know a bit about the concept now, here are a few real-time marketing examples to help you understand RTM even better, 

1. JetBlue Airways welcoming a customer

JetBlue Airways takes efforts in interacting with its customers, and on one occasion, it replied to a flyer’s tweet that said- “Goodbye, California! Thanks @JetBlue for the #flyfi!”. After this there was a casual conversation similar to that between thick friends, and the flyer said to the airlines that she expects people to welcome her at the airport when she lands. The airlines obliged to the lady’s whim, and the joke became a reality when the JetBlue crew welcomed the flyer with signboards at the airport!

This is a classic example of real-time marketing made possible by quick thinking and timely action. 

2. Twitter war between two museums

London’s two most prestigious institutions National History Museum and the Science Museum, got into a Twitter battle when someone tweeted who of the two will win the staff battle. The series of tweets got the museums a lot of attention, and the results were much better than that of a regular marketing campaign. This twitter battle is yet another example of real-time marketing. 

It is good to be ready with creative ways to make your presence felt. 

3. Wendy’s getting retweets

Wendy’s, the fast-food burger chain, used real-time marketing and successfully grabbed huge amounts of attention. 

A guy named Carter Wilkerson tweeted, “Yo @Wendys, how many retweets for a year of free chicken nuggets?”, Wendy’s replied, “18 million.” What started as a joke eventually started taking shape. The tweet went viral and broke all records. Celebrities and business giants like Apple, Amazon and Google took part too! A single reply to Carter’s tweet gave Wendy’s massive publicity at the national level! And it was a well-played game. 

4. Samsung making the most of the situation

In 2020 Apple surprised everyone by announcing that they won’t provide chargers with their iPhone. It got some flak from consumers as expected, and Samsung swung into action and posted a Facebook post reminding consumers that their Galaxy phones are always accompanied by chargers which has helped them stand tall in front of their competitor. 

How Can B2B Marketers Incorporate Real-Time Marketing?

Though real-time marketing is quite effective for consumer products, it works for B2B marketers as well. You can enjoy the benefits as you connect better with customers. 

For example, a conference is a real-time event, and you can build your marketing campaign around it. You need not be a big business to leverage the power of RTM. Even if you are a B2B startup, you can target the people in the conference with live tweets.

There is yet another easy way to understand what is going on in customers’ minds and how you can put your foot in the door, and that is data. Check your website and social media analytics. You will get plenty of information that will help you. 

Here’s what you will come to know,

1. The most popular website pages, how visitors land there and when they leave.

2. The questions visitors ask and how you answer them

3. What are people talking about you on social media 

Therefore, with analytics, you get your hands on the information you require to create great strategies for social media.  

Responding quickly on social media is essential, and you shouldn’t procrastinate, or else the individual will lose interest in you. 

Real-Time Marketing Tactics For B2B 

Here are a few real-time marketing tactics for B2B that have helped our clients see a good 40% jump in their revenue. Do try them out and you can thank us later!

1. Listen actively

As a B2B marketer, it is essential to listen to trends as soon as they emerge. Check out how you can do so,

1. Find about industry trends by setting up Google alerts – It would help you know about the latest buzz in your industry.

2. Keep track of all events in your industry – You must know what your competitors are up to at industry events. Are they employing the real-time marketing strategy or not? Are they doing things better than you?

3. Keep an eye on what influencers are doing.

4. Be in the know by reading industry-related newsletters and publications.

2. Be ready with resources

You have prepare well in advance to go ahead and grab an opportunity when it is there. In the B2B world, it is best to keep monitoring events of the industry and acting on the latest trends. It will be helpful if you use a tool for this task so that make data-backed decisions. 

3. Have an ambassador network

In real-time marketing, it is crucial to do everything at the right time. You have to act when the opportunity is right. That is, you should be involve yourself in the trend when it is there. Spread the word about your initiative before the trend vanishes. Ask your employees and social ambassadors to share about it on their social media platforms so that their network comes to know about your initiative. It works for B2B lead generation. 

4. Be where the conversation is

For B2B marketing, you will not get what you want by placing an ad on TV. It will be better if you review industry publications and events. It will go a long way in helping you connect directly with prospects. 

5. Take part in the conversation

You must try your best to participate in conversations and reply to messages on social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn. Also try to be around and answer the questions asked, ask your questions, and stay active so that when the prospect wants to make a purchase, they will come to you. In a nutshell, make your presence felt on social media. 

What Makes Real-Time Marketing Different From Social Media Marketing?

With social media, you can take action in real-time. For instance, by replying to a tweet of the customer or a post, you are responding in real-time, which is real-time marketing at that point. However, you cannot consider social media marketing as real-time marketing on its own. 

You support real-time marketing by using technology to get notified about customer interaction and responding to them almost instantly on social media. However, you are not living up to customers’ expectations if you reply only on social platforms and do not use the data to interact with the same customer on other channels such as live chat. You cannot term this as real-time marketing. So, as you can see, there is a difference between social media marketing and real-time marketing. 

How Do You Do Real-Time Marketing The Right Way?

The crux of the matter is that to do real-time marketing the right way, you have to develop a well-organized approach to collect customer data related to their actions across multiple channels. You then have to respond to them through the channels they prefer. You have to make sure that you know about the latest customer updates. For example, if a customer buys your SaaS tool from your app and gets in touch with our support team on your website, the support representative must be aware of the purchase of the product. In short, you have to make sure that everything is in sync with each other. 

How Employing Real-Time Marketing Helps A Business Succeed?

The most vital goal to succeed is to make marketers shift their mindset from campaign to continuity. In a campaign, you launch an advertisement or social media program, analyze its results, and improve future campaigns. On the other hand, the continuity mindset involves considering marketing a series of ongoing interactions with customers. You have to continuously engage the customers no matter how they come across your brand. It is quite different from a campaign that has a starting and ending date. 

Also, to succeed with real-time marketing, there has to be an increase in a company’s risk-taking appetite and ability to experiment. You cannot win when you cannot tolerate mistakes at all. With the marketing strategy, you have to be ready to adapt yourself to the changing consumer behavior. 

Start Being A Real-Time Marketer

Businesses start with real-time marketing by giving customers a personalized messages. They provide tailor-made content based on what the customer is presently doing. However, it would take time to get results, and you have to ensure the following:

1. Find out whether your brand and technology are in alignment with customer behavior. To do so, you need to find out the needs of customers.

2. Use techniques to determine how customers interact with your brand. Find out whether you are active on those channels round the clock or not.

3. See how customer interactions can benefit from personalization and speed. 

4. Experiment with different real time marketing platforms, namely, social media platforms and email. 

Get Outstanding Results With Real-Time Marketing!

RTM is one of the best marketing approaches as it increases customer engagement. Try implementing it the right way to see your business scale new heights. Also, try to be up-to-date with trends and relate your brand’s product or services to them as you also have to give importance to timing. Use our tactics and see how it fetches you great outcomes. It would even be better to use a real-time marketing platform to make the task easier for you. 

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