Real-time marketing is the new sexy.
That’s according to Ekaterina Walter, social media trailblazer, author, and speaker in the new on-demand webinar called Real-Time Marketing Strategies: Dos and Don’ts. Its key point is both honest and simple: Relevance has a deadline. To stand out from the crowd and continue making an impact, marketers must (again) shift their mindset.
That shift is to real-time marketing (RTM).
The concept isn’t new; RTM has been known by other names in the past, including agile marketing, always-on marketing, and responsive marketing. What IS new is technology and the expanding set of communication channels it affords.
For marketers, antes and expectations are both up. And as Ekaterina illustrates throughout the webinar, some are executing in-the-moment marketing better than others.
A fast-moving 56 minutes
It’s actually 41 minutes if you don’t count the Q&A, though I recommend you stick around for that.
The webinar is broken into three parts – an overview of RTM, a review of strategies, and RTM dos and don’ts – with each segment being equal parts insightful and fascinating.
Real-time marketing is not necessarily about developing creative in real time. It’s about having a creative approach that allows you to operate in real time. – Bonin Bough, Mondelez International
Here’s a peek. Let’s start with insightful.
Did you know …
- Americans now engage with 7 different sources of information every day, through multiple channels, screens, and devices.
- The average adult attention span is between 2.8 and 8 seconds.
- The average lifespan of a Tweet is 1 hour (used to be 24 hours not too long ago).
Although I didn’t have the precise numbers at my fingertips, these facts didn’t surprise me.
This one did:
Every 48 hours, we are cranking out the same amount of information as has been produced from the beginning of recorded time until the year 2003.
That statement begs a ton of questions (none of which are addressed in the webinar) but nonetheless … insightful.
It’s also fascinating, and there is no shortage of these types of examples throughout the webinar, complete with great visuals to connect the dots. For instance:
In response to a snarky Tweet about how pigeon poop totaled a Smart car (the implication being that Smart cars are so tiny, a single pigeon poo can demolish one), Smart car countered with this:
“Couldn’t have been one bird, @adtothebone. Sounds more like 4.5 million. (Seriously, we did the math.) pic.twitter.com/aLYScFR3.”
And this:
Pretty smart, right? Not only did Smart’s response get kudos for cleverness, it also did what Ekaterina says brands don’t do enough: it directly addressed negativity.
“Because marketers are so scared to draw attention to negativity, they miss an absolute golden opportunity to turn it around. When someone posts something negative, they need to feel pretty strongly about it to take the time; if they were indifferent, they wouldn’t bother. Marketers need to understand that it’s so much easier to turn hate into love than it is to turn indifference into love.”
Key takeaways marketers can use right now
The final portion of the webinar is a handy list of do’s and don’ts that marketers would do well to print out, hang on the wall, and start using immediately.
You’ll have to watch the webinar to get it, but I’ll leave you with a tip of what NOT to do: Do not try to profit or leverage or otherwise capitalize on a tragedy. It’s tremendously bad form, as Sears demonstrates in this spectacularly awful Tweet:
Watch the webinar for more
To learn about real-time marketing and get a big dose of inspiration about how to use RTM in your marketing, watch Real-Time Marketing Strategies: Dos and Don’ts now.
