When the lights in this year's Super Bowl game went out the Oreo cookie people swung into action. Within minutes the company had the "you can still dunk in the dark" ad campaign up and running. This is an example of real-time marketing at its finest. Creating content at the speed of life is vital in today's business world.
Run It Like A Newsroom
The conventional advertising campaign is generally static and rigid. Once created, these models may not keep up with what's happening in today's world. Last week's news is old news, generally very old news.
That's why it's necessary for your client's business to stay on top of things. Think of running your marketing campaign like a newsroom. Instead of spending months on top of months putting together a slow-moving, plodding advertising campaign think of your marketing endeavor as a continuous stream that needs to be created and delivered in real-time.
Improvisation
Your clients will have capitalize on every possible opportunity in today's fast-paced business climate. This means you and your marketing team will have to improvise and be ready 24/7 to seize the moment. The action may have to be fast and furious to get the jump on your clients' competitors. Or you may have to move quickly minimize damage to their brand.
Tools For Real Time Content
Of course, you need to know when to move quickly. Monitoring what's going on is a serious and round-the-clock undertaking. Let's look at a few tools that can be used for keeping track of content regarding your business:
Onsite monitoring tools
Google Analytics, Woopra, Clickly, among others, give you a real time view of interactions with your site, such as how many people are on at one time and the pages they are viewing. This data can provide vital clues, in an instant, on what direction your content marketing should follow.
Web-based tools
You not only have to monitor your site but you have to keep track of where your visitors are coming from. A whole host of new breed tools such as Mixpanel, GoSquared and Lexity give information on just that. These give current data on content, referrers, searchers and social media influence. Armed with this data you can target your content quicker and have it more focused. Some sites, such as InboundWriter, will not only monitor online activity but will give you advice on how to create content that your customers want and also help you customize that content.
Actions You Can Take
So you know you need to on-the-spot content for your marketing program. What can you do to implement this agenda? Following are three steps you can take to get your program started:
- Dedicate a team or at least one person to real-time marketing. The goal here is to spot opportunities as they occur and get on the ball to capitalize on those opportunities.
- Have a team member engage online communities on the night of big events, such as the Super Bowl. They can tweet and engage in other online and real-time actions to give expose to your brand.
- Foster a company culture that values speed over slow-moving when it comes to creating content. Be ready to jump on every opportunity in real-time.
The key in real-time marketing for your client's company is to seize the moment. And that moment is literally right now! Creating content at the speed of life, the speed of your client's company, is vital to competing in today's hurried business world. Get them ready, in a moment's notice, to capitalize on emerging trends in their industry and beyond.
