“We’re moving from a world where we plan campaigns for the future, to one where we adapt campaigns to the moment.” – Joel Lunenfeld, Twitter’s VP of Global Brand Strategy and the keynote speaker this morning at SES New York.
Lunenfeld shared his vast experience and insight in real-time marketing in Optimizing Second Screen Engagement: Trends, Data & Insights. Mobile has certainly changed the way people find, consume and engage with information. Twitter came of age with the right tools, at just the right time, to answer the need for a real-time communication platform.
Now, said Lunenfeld, 85 percent of users say the phone is their primary way to access Twitter and the average mobile user follows 11 brands. Every 2.5 days, there are a billion tweets sent and over the past year, the amount of Twitter users has doubled.
Brands see the opportunity to connect with consumers in real-time via Twitter, yet many are still falling down when it comes to actually doing so in practice. Oreo’s infamous Super Bowl tweet made clear the possibilities when brands think on their feet and are poised to react quickly. Yet one recent study shows that only 29 percent of retailers with Twitter accounts actually respond to customer questions and complaints.
Here are a few tips from Lunenfeld’s keynote to help brands better connect with consumers in real time:
Plan ahead to react to and win the moment.
You can’t plan real-time content, but you can put yourself and your team in the best position to react quickly to opportunistic situations. This means having the people and policies in place to allow for creativity, taking calculated risks, production or design and publishing all in rapid succession. This is a challenge for brands, yet the potential payoff is huge.
Integrate Twitter by designing ads with hashtags.
Designing ads for Twitter by using hashtags helps brands increase the conversation. For example, SuperBowl commercials with hashtags averaged 1.6 times more Twitter engagement than those without. Brands can take that one-way message that is a television commercial and make it the beginning of a two-way conversation by pointing people to Twitter.
Use Promoted Tweets and other Twitter Ad products to increase your reach.
Twitter Ads help brands take their social presence to the next level. Promoted Tweets increase brand favorability by 30 percent and purchase intent by 53 percent, according to Lunenfeld. Try Promoted Tweets, Accounts or Trends to get your brand in front of a greater – and relevant – audience.
Be part of the conversation.
Once you’ve gone to the work of getting users active and engaged, don’t leave them hanging. Being part of an amazing conversation can actually create your Twitter campaign, Lunenfeld pointed out. Being there and active in the space allows marketers to see opportunities and react quickly.
Social listening and monitoring tools are great for drawing insights from your social community, but they don’t replace an active brand presence. If you want to kill it in real-time marketing, you have to be there… in real time. It sounds simple, yet brands have built-in obstacles to overcome by way of corporate policies, lack of buy-in across the organization, legal or other concerns. The opportunity to grow as a truly social brand with Twitter for real-time engagement is there. Is your company keeping up or falling behind?
