CleanPix Blog

In the 21st century, attention is the currency of the realm. The companies that can generate and hold it on a large scale are the ones that find the most success. If your company is struggling to garner the attention it needs, it may be time to invest in real time marketing.

In this article, we’ll talk about what real time marketing, why it’s important, and how to implement this strategy for your organization. Then we’ll show you two stellar examples of real time marketing in action.

Sound like a plan? Then let’s get started!

What is Real Time Marketing?

While the term “real time marketing” has been around for years, many people — even professional marketers — are unfamiliar with it. With this in mind, we’ll start with a definition.

According to Sprout Social, real time marketing is:

“The process of engaging with customers instantly based on breaking news and information. It’s about maintaining a consistent relationship with your audience with cutting-edge data.”

In other words, real time marketing is the act of marketing one’s organization to a specific demographic of people using current happenings, known holidays, relevant news stories, and other popular events as fodder for conversation.

We’ll talk more about specific real time marketing examples in a later section of this article. But first, let’s talk about why real time marketing is important and how to effectively engage your target audience in real time.

Why is Real Time Marketing Valuable?

Now that we have a shared understanding of what real time marketing is, we can discuss why it’s an important practice for modern marketers. There are two main advantages of real time marketing that we want to dig into:

Brand Awareness

By injecting your brand into conversations that are already happening, you’ll be able to introduce your company and its offerings to new potential customers. More than that, you’ll be able to build real relationships with them, thus generating warm leads and improving marketing ROI.

Isn’t that exactly what marketing teams are supposed to do?

Once you learn how to build relationships with your target audience and turn them from strangers into leads, everything changes.

Customer Retention

Real time marketing can also help your company retain its current customers. Modern consumers tend to buy products from brands they know, like, and trust.

By building relationships with your target audience via real-time conversations, you’ll give your organization the chance to be known and liked by your ideal customers, and make it much easier for them to trust you. Win!

How to Engage Your Audience In Real Time

Alright, it’s time to get down to brass tacks. We’ve proven to you that real time marketing is important. Now we just need to show you how to effectively engage your audience in real time. Here are four tips to help you get it right:

1. Plan for Real Time Engagement

Real time marketing often requires a certain level of spontaneity. After all, you can’t always say for certain when viral videos, global new stories, and the like will pick up steam.

But you can (and should!) make sure your company is prepared to pounce on these opportunities when they arise.

For example, you might not know what a certain speaker will say at an industry conference before they stand up to speak. But you can be prepared to comment on their keynote by attending the event and planning to post about the experience on Instagram.

See how that works?

Keep your ear to the ground and be prepared to comment on the things happening in your industry. That way, when they do, happen, you can engage your audience in meaningful conversation on the topic(s).

2. Make Use of Social Media

Before social media, real time marketing was much harder to get right. These days, each of us can easily voice our opinions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other online outlets and engage complete strangers from different corners of the world in conversation.

Don’t let this amazing opportunity go to waste!

The easiest way to take advantage of real time marketing is to be active on social media channels and develop your brand’s following on them.

Then, when something noteworthy happens in the world, you can take to these digital channels and publish relevant content that drives conversation back to your brand and its offerings in a natural and authentic way.

3. Create an Ambassador Network

Does your company have an ambassador network? If not, maybe it’s time to create one.

If you’re not familiar with the term, an ambassador network is a group of people that love your company and the products or services it provides. They’re your super fans. You know, the folks who buy everything you sell and tell their friends and family to do the same.

Real time marketing initiatives rely on speed. Your team needs to publish content quickly, before the current happening, news story, or holiday has passed and is no longer generating conversation.

And once that content is published, it needs to pick up steam or it will simply get lost in a sea of other tweets, posts, videos, etc. being produced on the same topic. This is where your ambassador network can really assist your real time marketing efforts.

Ask your ambassadors to support your real time marketing strategies by liking, sharing, and commenting on your content. That way your content can cut through the noise and get seen.

4. Have Real Conversations

Last, but certainly not least, make sure your real time marketing efforts produce real engagement. Then stick around to participate in the conversation with your audience.

You could think of an incredibly clever tweet regarding a current event and send it out into the world wide web at the perfect time. But if that’s all you do, you’ll miss an amazing opportunity to connect with your target market and generate more leads.

So reply to comments, ask follow-up questions, and spend time with the folks who engage with your real time marketing initiatives. This is the only way to find success with this strategy.

2 Real Time Marketing Examples

So what does real time marketing look like in real life? We’re glad you asked! Here are two amazing examples of real time marketing in action:

1. Oreos

This tweet from OREO is probably the most famous example of real time marketing in existence. When the cookie company published it during the infamous power outage at the 2013 Super Bowl, it instantly picked up steam and went viral.

2. Nintendo

Due to OREO’s Super Bowl tweet success (shown above) other companies decided to get in on the real time marketing action as well. One of the brands that got it right was Nintendo.

During the 2013 Oscars, the video game company published this tweet showing their disappointment that Wreck It Ralph (an animated movie that one of their characters, Bowser, had a cameo in) didn’t take home the coveted golden trophy.

In Conclusion

Real time marketing will help your company boost brand awareness and retain its customers. Fortunately, if you follow the four tips outlined in this post, you’ll be able to take advantage of this strategy. Just remember to:

1. Plan for Real Time Engagement
2. Make Use of Social Media
3. Create an Ambassador Network
4. Have Real Conversations

To find success with real time marketing, you need to act fast. Which means you need a reliable way to store and retrieve the content you’ll be posting to social media sites, your company’s blog, and other marketing channels.

Enter CleanPix: a powerful and intuitive digital asset management (DAM) service that makes it easy to properly organize and distribute your organization’s most important files. Give it a try for free for 14 days and experience the CleanPix advantage today!