Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Real-Time Marketing: The Power of Now


In this day and age, people have the "power of now." Within seconds you can buy products online, chat with someone across the world, read the news that broke moments ago and stream your favorite movies or TV shows. Everything is on demand and it's all about getting it "now."

Real-time marketing is advantageous because it provides instant communication with customers. Through social media, businesses and customers can connect on a more personal level and engage in listening and responding. For PEMCO, that instant feedback and communication with consumers proved beneficial. PEMCO is known for running ads that play off the quirks of people in the Northwest topped with the tagline, "We're a lot like you, a little different." In this situation, they released a new profile which poked fun at the "Gluten-Free-No-Refined Sugar Soy-Allergy" Northwest personality on Facebook. Almost immediately after the page went live, PEMCO received flaming posts from people saying how insensitive the ad was and made pointed arguments that some people did not live that way by choice (ie.- allergic to gluten, health reasons, etc). PEMCO shut the campaign down immediately and used the Facebook page to issue a personal apology. They personally responded to posts, and most people forgave the mistake and still viewed PEMCO positively. In this situation, they nipped the problem in the bud and the immediate communication with consumers saved PEMCO from potential large-scale backlash. Not only that but it demonstrated to consumers that...PEMCO listens. 

You can read their apology:

On the flip side of things, real-time marketing allows companies to "talk" with consumers as they are in the "listening" stage of the buying process. Certain marketing tools have made it very possible to "see" what people are searching online and deliver messages that will speak to them in that moment in time. From my personal experience, Express does a phenomenal job at this. I would occasionally browse their website for clothing and most of the time, I would consider a few items and later decide against it. Since I'm probably tagged with a cookie, I see their ads everywhere on the web. But what gets me every time is that the ads show are the very items I was looking at! Even though I am aware that these ads have been craftily targeted at me, they still work. They trigger this "want" I have for those items and most of the time, I just cave and buy it. 

All in all, real-time marketing works and it has arrived. It's about delivering a solution to their problems now. Giving people information right as they are looking for it. The back and forth communication that now exists between businesses and customers. Technology has enabled it and it's time to take advantage of the "power of now."


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