Real time marketing is one of those buzzwords that is here to stay. Real-time has two distinct meanings – it could either be content served in a timely way, often via social media. Or, it could be timely advertising, usually served on programmatic platforms.
For the purpose of this piece we will focus on social and content.
Social networks continue to be extremely popular in the UK according to the Office for National Statistics, so opportunities for real-time marketing are increasing.
More planning, not less
Mike Tyson said, ‘everyone has a plan. Then they get punched in the face’. Lots of different plans are necessary. Plan ‘A’ is fine, but plans B-F are equally important. “You need to know what you need to measure, and what success looks like. What are the KPIs, and the processes to agree with clients? What is successful, and contingencies need to be taken to take advantage of real-time insights? If real-time can’t inform your behaviour, then there is no point,” explains MEC’s head of real-time planning, Dan Plant.
Do you have permission?
Brands can get it wrong. There are many examples, particularly on social media. Everyone has seen awful or even offensive campaigns that have done more to damage a brand than promote it. Make sure your campaign isn’t one. If people follow your brand on social media, does this give you permission to dictate to them? Well no. If brands focus just on what they can get out of their followers then they are heading for disaster. What do consumers get out of the relationship?
Understand the data
What you observe might not be the whole story. Dan Plant gives an example of this, working on the launch of EE. EE had a six month lead over other 4G operators, and everything that could be tracked was tracked. One search term, ‘Nokia 920’ scored very highly in tracking. Intuition would be to put money behind the phone, perhaps create more content around it. Wrong. “Sentiment analysis showed this was top for negative reasons. People complained that EE had the phone exclusively, but EE was an untrusted brand. So instead the money was spent against the audience not the phone, so persuade them the network was right, regardless of the phone.”
Relevant and topical are not the same
Making relevant statements is not the same as being relevant. KitKat used an image of a battered tennis ball, the numbers 70-68 and the phrase ‘Have a break, have a KitKat’ on sandwich boards around Wimbledon the day of the longest-ever game of tennis between Isner and Mahut in 2010. The numbers referred to the games won in the final set. This was a great example of how to do it right. A brilliant piece of real-time advertising, and not even digital.
Timing and patience
Comedian David Schneider saves reams of jokes about things that might happen, then releases them when they really do happen. Plan everything as well as you can, and with as many contingencies as possible.
Adapt and refine
Improve your campaigns based on what you have learned and don’t make excuses or find a scapegoat. Better to learn from mistakes and move on. “Real-time marketing is really pseudo real-time, because you still need human decision making, human instincts to do this properly,” says Plant.
