Does Real-Time Marketing Work On Social Media?

Currently there has been a delay in rising media such as podcasts and streaming services, however, real-time marketing is not slowing down anytime soon. It is still the best way to engage with your target audience and convert leads into loyal customers. A current study by Monetate and Econsultancy stated that UK marketers have a 26% increase in conversions through the process of real-time marketing. 

The above statistic is difficult to ignore and proves that real-time marketing does work on social media. However, you need to implement your real-time marketing strategy with best practices in mind to ensure it’s a success.

Let’s take a look at how you can use real-time marketing successfully through your social media platforms. 

3 Best Practices for Real-Time Marketing on Social Media

1. Understand your brand's tone of voice

Your brand needs to be authentic when engaging with its social media audience and this means your social media team needs to have a thorough understanding of your brand voice. Make sure that they understand the tone of voice of your brand and what processes need to be followed for approval. One of the biggest challenges brands face with their real-time marketing is not understanding the voice of the business and this leads to miscommunication between the brand and its audience.

The key is to train your team. If the brand voice is even slightly off, or the wrong processes are followed, the consumer won’t trust the business and this can lead to an onslaught of online negativity. 

An example of a brand that takes its tone of voice seriously when conducting real-time marketing and real-time responses to clients and fans is fast food chain Wendy’s. 

The chain has created a beloved social media personality with its charming, friendly and witty tone of voice. Wendy’s has established itself in the online space and has seen enormous growth on social media thanks to its sassy tone of voice. In fact, Wendy’s is a prime example of how tone of voice can help you in your social media real-time marketing. A few years ago a Wendy’s Twitter follower tweeted to the brand asking for free nuggets, tweeting, “Yo @wendy’s, how many retweets for a year of free chicken nuggets?” 

This is what happened:

Wendy’s responded in its witty tone stating outright that if the user got 18 million retweets, they would provide him with free nuggets for a year. The tone of voice was expected from Wendy’s - but the result may not have been. Carter Wilkerson actually created the most retweeted tweet in the history of Twitter and at the same time, Wendy’s social media following soared. Both Wilkerson and Wendy’s were winners due to the brand's tone of voice and the brand sticking to its tone of voice at all times. 

Here is some perspective on how this helped the brand: Wendy’s added 1.2 million new followers by the end of the year following the tweet, bringing its fan count to 2.24 million. And it registered a 126.5% follower growth rate in that year.

The lesson: understand your brand tone of voice - and stick to it. 

Now that you understand your brand's social media tone of voice, it is time to put real-time marketing processes together. 

2. Streamline your real-time marketing processes

This is vital. It's all well and good for your social team to understand your brand's tone of voice, but you also want to make sure nothing serious gets handled incorrectly. Make sure to outline what circumstances must go through leadership or director approval before being responded to. When creative and copy have been put together in moments, the process needs to be streamlined and almost rehearsed. Your team needs to make sure that all the relevant processes have been followed before engaging in a real-time marketing initiative. 

The lesson: Stockpile your resources for responses ahead of time and make sure that everything is handled according to well-understood processes. 

Now that your team understands your tone of voice and you have processes in place, it is time to make sure you don't miss anything. 

3. Invest in social media listening tools

A social media listening tool will help you listen to conversations around your brand in real time. You will be able to view what comments people are making about your business and these make for excellent jumping points for real time marketing - essentially, you are able to anticipate what is happening around your brand and events related to your industry or brand. 

Social listening helps you keep track of all social media platforms when it comes to conversations and mentions regarding your brand. With the right tool, you are able to analyze these mentions for insights and discover opportunities to act. 

Once you track what is being said about your brand or industry, you are able to analyze the information and use it to take a specific action. For example, you may respond to a happy company or do quick damage control if something has gone wrong - allowing you to shift your entire brand positioning when needed. 

This isn't simply social media monitoring - it is about taking action in response to data that you have collected through social listening. Social monitoring will take a look at metrics such as numbers of mentions and your engagement rate, while social listening looks further than numbers and analyzes the mood behind the data collected. This helps your team understand how people feel about your business and your competitors, and provides you with opportunities to take action - opportunities you would never have anticipated without social listening. 

In fact, with social media listening at hand you are able to:

• Engage with customers in real-time
• Manage possible crises
• Track competitors and what is being said about them online too
• Identify possible pain points
• Discover new leads
• Identify brand advocates or social influencers 

There are a multitude of social listening tools available on the market today but CRM powerhouse HubSpot provides one of the most effective. With HubSpot, you are able to monitor all social interactions with contacts, create custom keyword monitoring streams, and trigger email alerts so your marketing team can be informed as a prospect mentions your business on social media.  Learn more about the HubSpot social listening tool, here. 

The Lesson: If you don't use social media listening you are not going to have a successful real-time marketing strategy in place. Without social listening, you’ll be missing out on a lot of valuable information to help you anticipate what your target audience is looking for. Social media gives brands the opportunity to learn exactly what their target audience thinks - and if you care about your audience, you need to listen in order to create the ideal real time marketing strategy. 

The Wrap Up

In order to implement a successful real-time social media marketing strategy, you need to listen to your audience and know where and what conversations are being had about your business. Then you need to react accordingly with the right process and tone of voice. 

Now, more than ever, real-time marketing is vital but it is important that you have the right processes in place to get the best outcomes. 

How We Can Help

At Nexa, our social media listening, engagement and reporting services include 24/7 monitoring of publicly available conversations on the web, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn as well as other sources.  

Our team has been trained to engage with brands using correct and appropriate tonality and use enterprise-level tools to provide extensive reporting for each client and activation.

Contact us and begin your successful real-time marketing journey.