Marketing ‘On-the-Fly’
Marketing ‘On-the-Fly’
I like to think that the Internet and file sharing if utilized properly and embraced…is a high powered marketing design.
– Seal
Successful marketing goes beyond traditional research; it requires real time marketing. Tools such as social media, customer rewards, news media, and blogs allow companies to monitor the changing needs and interests of customers in the moment. This means that organizations can tailor programs, ads, and content to satisfy individual consumers. It also allows companies to engage with their customers in the moment to improve sales. Real time marketing requires dynamic content, engagement, consistent monitoring, and flexibility.
Dynamic Content
Dynamic content is tailored to the needs of individuals based on shopping habits, customer feedback, or sessions online. There are different methods of tracking customer-spending or shopping habits. Traditionally, sales representatives developed relationships with customers and remembered their preferences. Now, however, computer programs help companies track individual sales both in store and online. Automated tracking provides the perfect opportunity to create dynamic content.
Types of Dynamic Content:
Personalized Ads: Ads can be personalized based on interest established by information about habits, location, and history. For example, it is possible to advertise a sale on cosmetics to individuals who are known to be interested in specific cosmetic products.
Emails: When customers sign up to receive emails, you can take the opportunity to provide them with information about promotions and new products.
Personalized Content: Use gathered information to personalize the landing page and provide links that will interest the customer based on location, behavior, and keywords.
Product Suggestion: When a customer’s shops online, provide links to merchandise that is similar to the product being researched or added to the shopping cart.
Make Information easy to share: Allow followers to link content. This will expose potentially new followers to your site.
Engagement Builds Followers
Real time marketing is effective when it is done correctly. Social media, such as Twitter, blogs, Facebook etc., provides the opportunity to engage with customers on a regular basis when they choose to follow your organization. However, it is easy to transition for real time marketing to spam when the content moves from engaging to overwhelming and uninteresting, which will cost followers. Engaging customers requires you to understand them and their interests. Customers who follow will share engaging content, which will increase the number of followers an organization has.
Ways to Engage Followers:
Provide expert information: People follow organizations that have value to them. Showing expertise lends more value to the information.
Offer promotions: Many companies offer special promotions to their followers. Followers will then share this information with friends.
Be clear and consistent: Communicate clearly and be consistent with information. Poorly written content will not engage followers.
Converse with followers: Communication should not be one-sided. Address feedback quickly and respectfully.
It is also possible to purchase followers, but your marketing will be more effective if you earn followers with engaging content.
Constant Readiness
It may seem obvious, but real time marketing requires constant monitoring. Many programs have alerts that assist with monitoring, but they should not be relied on exclusively. Information on the internet changes quickly and it is easy to miss an opportunity if you are not constantly monitoring in real time. Many companies choose to assign employees monitoring duties. Monitoring customer communication, shopping patterns, and popular stories in social media will help determine changes that need to be made to real time strategies. It is also possible to find opportunities to address new customers.
Real time marketing requires greater flexibility than traditional marketing campaigns do. You must be ready to act quickly in real time marketing. You must change ineffective techniques based upon information you learned from your monitoring. You may also learn about stories that your customers find interesting. For example, the YouTube sensation “United Breaks Guitars” was a great opportunity for the owner of the Taylor Guitars to communicate with the musicians who were interested in the popular story.
The Time, the Place, the Media
In real time marketing, timing is everything. To remain relevant, be prepared to follow real time events and use social media. For example, Oreo chose to use the 2013 Super Bowl as an opportunity to begin a campaign. Branding experts carefully monitored social networking during the Super Bowl. When the lights in the stadium went out, Oreo tweeted “you can still dunk in the dark.” The tweet was shared over 15,000 times.
Oreo’s tweet was not just luck. The company already had a real time campaign in progress and was monitoring the game carefully when the moment presented itself. Sending the tweet even an hour later would have been too late. The moment would have passed. The lesson is simple; always be prepared because you never know when the right moment will present itself.
Practical Application
Henry was busy trying to improve the real time marketing for his restaurant, but he could never get ahead of it. He tried to engage followers, but his real time communications were always late. His friends told him to monitor everything and always be prepared, but he did not have the time. His friends offered to help him with monitor the opening ceremonies of restaurant week because it was so important to their market. Henry said he would rather stay home and rest. He took a nap during the ceremonies, and when he woke up, he discovered that his restaurant had been shown on television because it was a judge’s local favorite.
