In theory, real-time marketing seems straightforward. Follow the trends, be responsive to the interests of your audiences and build a live, relevant relationship with them. In practice, real-time marketing is not quite so easy though. Combining real-time online PR and social media marketing and integrating it with offline communications is time, resource and investment intensive.
In the latest benchmark report from immediate future, ‘In The Social Moment’, our research shows the practical hurdles of managing real-time marketing. It seems the struggle is more operational than about the risk to reputation…
It’s the everyday management, processes, technology and people, that is proving to be difficult. Most of the report’s survey respondents came from well-known, established brands. Brands with complex structures and traditional ways of working. The results reflect the immediate issues of managing real-time social engagement.
The biggest challenge for almost two thirds (62%) of brands is managing out of hour’s engagement. Social of course, goes beyond the 9-5 of business. Staff need flexible working and a level of trust that lets them work autonomously. Almost a third (31%) of brands also struggle with gaining post approvals. The traditional ways such as multiple approvals or several review meetings do not work for real-time. Instead those at the coal-face need to be trained and given the authority to keep on delivering content and engagement.
Which brings us on to another significant issue. Real-time social media marketing needs skilled resource to work in and out of hours. People with the experience, capability and expertise. Yet 45% of brands cannot find people with the right skills. People who can meet the need to create content on the fly. Hence 38% of brands find content production a challenge too.
62% of brands consider monitoring trends, headlines and conversations to be best practice. It is essential for responsive real-time engagement. But over half of brands (51%) tell us that getting real-time data and insight is a difficult challenge.
When you dig into the report though, it comes as no surprise that data analysis is difficult. Only 27% think it is best practice to use a monitoring tool. Those brands using tools are using a wide range, mostly free, and from different vendors. The data is not easily brought together and reporting is time-consuming.
With so much to contend with on the operational front, brands are less concerned about the risks of real-time. A quarter of brands are concerned about legal and governance issues. Only 13% of brands think the biggest challenge is in mitigating against audience backlash. Yet increasingly brands are in the limelight for getting the audience opinion wrong. Recent campaigns such as Coca-Cola at Sochi Olympics and Paddy Power’s ‘Oscar Campaign’ demonstrate the consequences of being on the receiving end of consumer vitriol.
Many of the answers to these challenges can be resolved with more resource, training and focus. Until brands can prove the value of real-time (or social for that matter) in hard numbers, it is difficult to justify the investment. Make measurement your priority if you want to avoid the struggle. Plan up front and pilot to prove the ROI. It will make real-time easier and results happen faster!
Earlier in March, CERN celebrated 25 years of the World Wide Web. So, it’s official, we can no longer call new media “new”. Yet despite the opportunities for digital media to deliver more relevant, contextual, responsive communications, a common theme in this roundup is that options for targeting through digital marketing are not being fully exploited by many.
76% of marketers don’t use behavioural data – this is the shocking finding in this new research from Razorfish. Reviewing the implications of this, Dan Bosomworth gives his 5 recommendations for a real-time marketing blueprint.
Digital Marketing budget allocations 2014 – this summary shows the proportion of marketing budget allocated to digital channels. There is a huge range in % spend on digital according to business sector and maturity. How much of your budget is allocated to digital media?
In March announced the first Smart Insights Digital Impact 2014 conference – take a look at the programme if you need to learn about best practices to managing digital marketing transformation and integration to deliver more relevant communications and experiences.
We’ll combine talks and workshops from our Expert commentators and B2C and B2B brands like Autoglass, Bupa, Domino’s, RS Components and Tesco covering all the key channels we cover in our monthly roundups and articles.
Competing with content marketing – we published a new infographic giving 7 steps to compete with content marketing.
B2B Video marketing examples. It’s easy to forget that YouTube can be an important platform for social media marketing with sharing now integrated with Google+. It’s also the second biggest search engine. In March, Neil Davidson, gave 5 examples of how video can be used to give an impact in B2B and brand marketing including the following video which demonstrates the essence of the Intel ‘Look Inside’ campaign.
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New managing SEO checklist – we created this free download to help marketers review their approach to SEO, plus we have a companion Managing content marketing checklist.
Integrating SEO and content marketing. With Content marketing, social media and SEO now being managed together by more businesses Gavin Llewellyn looks at the options for integrating them.
A case study of integrating SEO and content marketing – a case study showing how the Met Office manages their content marketing and SEO together.
Targeting and segmentation options to improve conversion – a post from Mark Patron showing how opportunities to target are often missed.
Ecommerce conversion rate benchmarks – we have updated our compilation to include the latest published in 2014. We have also updated with the latest mobile adoption statistics for 2014.
4 ways to use a preheader in your marketing emails – a practical article from Mark Brownlow showing a simple yet powerful way to get your message across.
Email open and clickthrough statistics – we have updated our compilations to enable email marketers to benchmark their performance using the latest figures from 2014.
Value:
Recommended link: Download InPowered/Nielsen report
With the increasing focus on content marketing, it’s important for marketers to work out how effective different types of content are at different points in the buying process. This new research from Nielsen, commissioned by InPowered shows dramatic differences in the effectiveness of content types across sectors affecting these brand metrics:
The research reviews three types of content, credible experts, third-party articles and user-generated content reviews. The importance of this type of content is shown from the statistic that 85% of consumers regularly seek out expert content - credible, third-party articles and reviews - for products they consider purchasing. The impact of content through the buying process is shown below.
It’s clear that all three content types have a role, but Expert content is most influential. This is supported by this sector breakdown too.
I think the research shows the importance of blending different content types, since some consumer groups will prefer different content which they will seek out to inform their decision.
I always take a look at the methodology on research, since the sample frame and size is so important in assessing the validity of research. Since this is Nielsen the research review seems well designed, but the recruitment approach was a new one to me:
“900 respondents were recruited off casino floors in Las Vegas, NV to participate in the experimental design at the Nielsen MediaLabs. Each respondent was identified to be in the target audience for the products in the content they would be exposed to. Respondents answered an online survey before and after the experience in order to measure the impact of the content on their familiarity, perceptions, and purchase consideration of the products“.
Are this audience representative of consumers? They certainly have time on their hands, but their minds may be elsewhere?
