Brands Struggle Because ‘Real-Time Marketing’ Is Too Narrow A Term

hand touching digital tablet, social media concept

While everyone is harping on about how brands need to do some ‘real-time marketing’ a report coming from market research company TNS Global has said the term is too narrow, which is why marketers are struggling to actually do the marketing tactic.

Many big calendar events are the ones that have marketers rubbing their hands together in anticipation, however, the research states: “By defining real-time marketing as something that happens only on a given few dates in the calendar, too many brands are focusing on occasions when they have no relevant and passing up plenty of more accessible, more appropriate opportunities.”

Marketers are constantly trying to achieve Oreo’s well-documented tweet during the Super Bowl blackout, ‘you can still dunk in the dark’, however the research said brands who try to hard too mimic this end up appearing as the “over zealous” and “out-of-place” party guest, “ignored until they blurt out something embarrassing”.

The research, called Connected Life, was introduced at this morning’s Talking Shop breakfast in Sydney all about retail marketing, by Alistair Leathwood, executive director at TNS Global. It’s an annual piece of research documenting how digital marketers can better use digital marketing when everyone has their eyes glued to mobile devices.

With millennials interacting with their devices 35 times an hour, it came as no surprise Leathwood said Australia was one of the most connected countries in the world, with people now owning 5.3 connected devices each.

Rather than just focusing on the big calendar events, says the research, brands shouldn’t forget about the other times of year when they’re contextually relevant: Christmas, big holidays, and historic events.

And marketers shouldn’t either forget about the general moments in everyday life they could be partaking in.

Google’s Lucinda Barlow recently explained the tech giant’s term ‘micro moments’ in which there are multiple times a day a brand could be getting in front of a consumer.

Similarly, in the TNS Global research, the research said: “The predictable rhythms of social media discussion around coffee, the weather or dinner plans provide real-time marketers with the ability to target the fabric of life at specific times of day and on specific social media channels, not just one-off events.

“All too often, these rich, real-time marketing opportunities are squandered because brands rely on superficial or incidental topline data to do their planning for them. On social media, rapid, automatic response is no substitute for contextual understanding.”

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