Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Introducing Real-Time Marketing

Real-time marketing is the antithesis to the Times Square billboard scenario. Imagine if the billboard could reflect consumer insights, creative, and execution that were all driven to respond to who you are, what you’re thinking, and pop culture in the world at that very given moment. In other words, real-time marketing is all about going from strategy and consumer insights to creative and advertising in a matter of minutes or hours instead of a matter of months or even years, as is sometimes the case.

This is arguably a complex, seemingly unrealistic concept. Until the advent of social media and real-time buying, it seemed a pipe dream. But that has changed with the increased digitization of the entire media ecosystem. For the first time ever, we can now get real-time consumer insights as they are formed by consumers. We can design creative experiences responding to those insights and even run them in digital media locations — all in a matter of minutes. In the future, too, as television sets get continuous Internet connections (often referred to as addressable TV), the creative, once produced, will be changeable in near real time too.

But to make real-time marketing practical for your business, you need to understand its core components. They are the following:

Real-time insights

Real-time response

Real-time engagement studios

Real-time co-creation ...