“It’s time for the conversation about real-time marketing to move on. It’s not that the conversation is over. Rather, it’s that real-time marketing needs to evolve into something bigger and more important than simply sending out catchy posts timed to news events.”
That’s eMarketer‘s take on a series of interviews it recently conducted with brand and agency executives for a new eMarketer report, “The Evolution of Real-Time Marketing: What Marketers Are Thinking—and Doing—Now.”
The findings provide “a snapshot of the current state of real-time marketing and how companies can expand their thinking about this important topic.”
The definitive point? There’s a difference between “real-time marketing” and “right-time marketing.”
“The definition of “real-time marketing” is changing,” eMarketer explains. “Many now refer to it as “right-time marketing.” The difference is subtle, but important: Something delivered at the right time doesn’t necessarily have to be created in real time. Even if it was developed days or weeks before, if it is delivered at the optimal moment, it feels real time.”
Many in the industry agree.
“It’s about the right time. It feels real time because it’s the right thing to get in that moment,” offered Anne-Marie Kline with DigitasLBi. “Now, that thing could have happened three months ago, but when you received it, it was the perfect thing for you to get at that time. The more data we have and the more companies that pop up with data about where you are and what you may be doing and what your past history has been, that’s going to inform what kind of content is served up to you. And mobile obviously is where this is going to happen.”
Matt Wurst of 360i and Expion agrees.
“We have adopted a similar but not totally identical moniker, which is right-time marketing. Right-time marketing is about the right message at the right time on the right platform,” noted Wurst.
And then there’s this from Charlie Treadwell from Symantec.
“I personally hate the term newsjacking because I think it sounds opportunistic,” said Treadwell. “I think of what we’re doing as momentum marketing. We’re using data and insights to create the right content that hits the right people at the right time.”