Developing a marketing campaign takes a lot of planning. You need to have a detailed strategy and carefully schedule your advertising to line up with new product launches. Nowadays, trends in online spaces move ridiculously fast, and your marketing campaign can be outdated before you even launch it. A great way to combat this is by using real-time marketing and adopting a reactionary approach. Therefore, we will cover the five most effective real-time marketing strategies.
What is a real-time marketing strategy?
This marketing approach implies that a company reacts to current trends instead of planning out its own strategy. We aren’t trying to suggest that real-time marketing has no thought put into it. To be effective, it needs to be very clever and topical. However, real-time marketing isn’t the product of weeks or even months of planning and preparation.
Over the years, audiences have become desensitized by traditional marketing. This led businesses to push for more advertising hoping to attract customer attention in a situation where online spaces are oversaturated with marketing. However, advertising is less effective than it used to be since ads constantly bombard users. Marketing experts started to look for new ways of grabbing customer attention. That naturally paved the way for real-time marketing, which could tie a company’s advertising to what is popular right now. The main benefit of real-time marketing is its ability to connect to your audience. You can also use topical marketing to make a statement on your company values regarding a current trend.
A real-time campaign planning process is much shorter since your marketing needs to come out while the trend you are reacting to is still relevant. To develop a real-time marketing strategy, you can partner with a California marketing company that can develop creative solutions on the fly. Besides quickly coming up with a plan, you will also need to act fast and deploy your marketing while the trend is still hot.
Here are the five most effective real-time marketing strategies:
Know what’s trending
Have someone on your team actively keep track of what’s trending. It can include being up to date on the latest social media trends, but you should also pay attention to real-world events. The best way to launch an effective real-time marketing strategy is to be the first to latch on to a trend as soon as it emerges. You need to strike the iron while it’s hot and try to be the first brand to capitalize on a trend. It will lead to people associating your brand with the trend. As the trend grows in popularity, your marketing will gain more visibility and give you a great ROI.
However, this doesn’t mean you should be trigger-happy and jump on any meme making the rounds. You may end up investing in something that fails to gain enough momentum. That’s why we recommend working with professionals who know which trends are interesting and worth developing a content strategy for.
Develop a strong social media presence
Marketing always takes time, regardless of the resources you invest. The best marketing strategies start by slowly building audience awareness. Unfortunately, you have no time to spare with real-time marketing. You must cut corners wherever you can, but rushing your marketing is also a bad idea. Thankfully, you can do a lot of the prep work in advance. Ensure that you get the reception you are hoping for when you are ready to start marketing. Create profiles on social networks and build a strong community around your brand. If you already have an audience receptive to your marketing, half the battle is already won.
Have the right infrastructure in place
If you want to take part in a trend making the rounds, there isn’t going to be time to stop the press. Whether you can launch your marketing before the trend dies out will depend on how fast you can put together quality promotional material. The ad needs to feature your brand interacting with the trend in meaningful or funny ways. Be careful with humor if you want to take part in serious topics.
It’s a good idea to have designers part of your permanent staff so that they can start creating ads and promo material for your brand as soon as you give them the call. The same can be said for any other type of resource, such as digital and traditional marketing tools. Have working licenses for the software you are using and reach out to marketing agencies before you need them.
Master content creation
Don’t wait for a TikTok trend to get popular before you start learning all about vertical videos. Effective real-time marketing strategies are the ones you can get off the ground at a moment’s notice. It can take a long time to master SEO and the intricacies of content creation. However, we recommend that you start your research immediately. Know your ideal customer and do keyword research well before you start advertising. Different platforms are better suited to specific forms of content. Try to learn the requirements and limitations of the platforms you plan to advertise on.
Bring outside help
A great way to ensure your real-time marketing is effective is to engage your audience and get them to contribute. User engagement is always important for online visibility, but if you plan to piggyback on trending topics – getting your followers to contribute can make your campaign go viral. You can also reach out to influencers who can help you boost your reach in online spaces.
In conclusion
Each one of the five most effective real-time marketing strategies relies on being punctual and using the momentum of a current trend to propel your advertising. Keep your ear to the ground and get ready to pounce in real-time when an exciting opportunity presents itself.
