What do you know about real-time audiences? Here’s all about it and how to use this strategy to make your brand a reference online.

Did you know real-time audience monitoring is a must on marketing strategies? It’s basically a way to see what your public is doing and talking about your brand at the right moment the discussion is happening.

Certainly, everyone working in a marketing team knows the importance of controlling audience engagement. However, given the newness of this innovation, some professionals might not quite understand the significance of real-time audience tracking yet. Just a few years ago, marketing tools gave complete reports on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis about the brand’s audience.

Nowadays, some tools like the Customer Data Platform enable us to observe in actual time what are the company’s mentions throughout the internet. Because of this, a few things become viable, like improving customer segmentation, finding ways to have more engagement, and gathering more data on customer online behavior.

Since more data is available, that means better content and offers can be created for each consumer and segmentation group. Moreover, live content is also a new thing in the market. Although you might think of videos when you hear this term, blog posts, chats, and even more are a part of it too.

Experience dictates that consistency, frequency, and quality are what it takes to be successful in a digital marketing strategy. But now, that should be completed with real-time conversations that attract people’s attention and make them eager to have a conversation with the brand. 

In order for that to happen, the first thing you need is to understand the concept of real-time marketing and its benefits. Keep reading to see what we’re talking about.

Importance of knowing your audience

Communication is not easy work. Even when it comes to our families and close friends it’s common to get things wrong. And these are people who we spent most of our lives talking and getting to know each detail or their personalities. So, as a company trying to reach out to a customer, you can see how the conversation could be inaccurate if not done the right way.

That’s why it’s extremely important to work around the customer. Knowing who is your audience will help understand what they like and want out of your business. In order for that to happen, you need more than a name. That is, to gather information such as demographic and online behavior. From this type of data, it’s possible to be aware of how to deal with the brand’s public.

As a result, this is a crucial factor to provide better results. Some platforms even allow real-time data collection, which means the information will be stored from the first visit a person makes to your online page.

From this, new strategies based on real and accurate data can be planned, giving the customers what they want and the company better outcomes. Ultimately, there’s no point in having the best solution ever and the most perfectly designed products if you’re not getting the right people to see and try it out.

Real-time marketing benefits

Real-time audiences is not the only real-time strategy to work with. In fact, these days it’s possible to keep track of everything at the moment it is happening. Naturally, you need technology assistance for this purpose. It’s inconceivable to have a group of workers trying to handle all of the real-time data and its analysis hand-operated.

Still, with a CDP solution (for example), the company gets everything under control. The benefits of obtaining a real-time strategy include:

• data collection from the first visit;
• data analysis and storage;
• real-time action and content;
• customer segmentation;
• personalized content;
• increase in audience engagement.

First and foremost, real-time data collecting happens when a software,  like the CDP, starts gathering information about a visitor from the first moment they enter the company’s page. Even if they don’t interact or buy anything, their behavior is already being observed and stored in a database. 

Better yet, real-time action can be taken too. If you notice a visitor is acting in a way you can intervene and have them closer to taking action, that’s possible.

For example, someone clicked a product and added it to their cart, but gave up when they saw shipping costs were high. If the marketing team notices at the right time (a.k.a., real-time), they can work to create and send a real-time offer to that customer saying something like “hey, did you know you can get free shipping on purchases over $20?”.

Solutions like live blogging and Live Chats are also included under real-time marketing strategies. These attributes give your brand better outcomes by adding value to your product and content; increasing team productivity; improving customer experience, and building a follower base that’s more loyal to the brand.

More than that, all of the customer behavior will be kept in a database for future plans, such as knowing and finding new segmentation groups. Working with a system like a Customer Data Platform, the process, and the separation of single customer profiles into larger groups with similar interests will be automatized. So, not only you can work with a group segmentation, but also with personalized exclusive content and offers for each individual consumer.

Hence, this will assist in defining the target audience for each ad campaign the marketing crew has in mind. Real-time data collecting will also lead to an audience size increase while allowing the company to identify who are customers and who will be classified as leads — certainly, this will broaden the understanding of your audience.

Have you heard about liveblogging? Because real-time content should also be considered an advantage for a marketing group. It is the perfect way to share breaking news, talk about events that are currently happening, and even behind-the-scenes content. It doesn’t necessarily need to be planned ahead, it’s a kind of content that should be simple, spontaneous, and time-saving.

That’s exactly why it will catch people’s attention, it’ll make your brand more humanized with a language that’s closer to the audience’s day-to-day life. It’ll make them relate better and feel a part of your business — thus, increasing audience engagement. Besides, real-time content yields more audience insight, which will lead to learning what are the audience’s favorites, analyzing new data, and creating new compatible segmentations.

Of course, a balance between planned and previously written posts plus real-time content needs to exist. At the same time, you need to create a brand that’s first-hand connected with the audience, you should keep providing personalized and SEO optimized content. The combination of real-time data collection and real-time content will definitely improve your overall strategy.

How a CDP will support communication

To understand better how a Customer Data Platform will help in this case scenario we’re talking about, here is some important information about it.

By using a CDP solution, a company will have lots of valuable data. Yet, there’s even more to that: this software already processes data to analyze what is relevant and useful information and what is not. The type of data a CPD collects can include:

• customer identity (name, age, demographic);
• hobbies and interests;
• online behavior;
• how much time was spent on a page;
• what products were bought;
• what products were returned;
• number of abandoned carts;
• etc.

Much more information can be absorbed, but the important thing to keep in mind here is what you can do with all of that data. As a head of marketing, having the perfect image of a consumer makes a total difference in conversion rates. Of course, because that knowledge makes it possible to create the most accurate content for the brand’s audience.

Instead of waiting weeks to see monthly results and create new plans to improve a marketing strategy, real-time audiences and segmentation allow to act upon immediate results.

This not only gives the company equipment to work with but causes an impact on the audience with that real-time action speed. Live-blogging and live-chats features are also a part of what a CDP solution can offer your company.

Surely, there’s the need to see how your company can manage real-time marketing. Will the team be able to keep track of the information? Will they be able to act on immediate results? Will real-time audiences and segmentation bring better results? Once there are positive answers regarding these questions, you’ll know the Customer Data Platform is what your brand needs to reach new levels of audience engagement. 

How data can help create new approaches

Real-time data is a valuable resource for your brand’s marketing strategy. People notice it when a mark does their best to communicate efficiently with their customers. Using real-time information makes the company look active and on the spot, so people will pay attention to that.

When thinking about a solution to collect real-time data, it’s necessary to remember other details. For instance, is it important to work with real-time audiences? What about a Live Blog? What features does the software need to make a difference in your company? It’s important to recognize these factors since they’ll be decisive. 

A Customer Data Platform solution has all of that and more. From this type of system, you get a deeper understanding of the customers and are able to grow your follower base.

Optimize campaigns

The thing is, and I’m sure you’ve heard this before: by delivering the right content, to the right person, at the right time, and through the right channel, your conversion will most likely be a successful one. And how is that mission possible? With data usage.

When you have complete information about the people who are interacting with your brand, you not only get to know them better. You understand them so well that you can actually anticipate customer behavior and actions, something that is essential to optimize ad campaigns.

Promote better content sharing

Having enough data about your audience, it’s possible to show people that you care about them and you want them to have the best experience ever. You want to show them you’re not just another company trying to sell at any cost.

This is why it’s important to plan your content in a way to have more engaging materials than selling ones. However, this doesn’t mean real-time content should be left aside. Both varieties of content need to be a part of the brand’s approach.

Work with stages of awareness

Creating methods to be closer to the client and more assertive with content creation should be part of the main marketing strategy. As marketing professionals, some other things we worry about include increasing social media engagement, promoting events, and, more importantly, identifying who are the visitors prone to becoming new customers and which of those can become brand promoters.

That means analyzing real-time audiences to discern who is ready to make a purchase and who is just looking to learn more about your solutions — understanding the customers’ stages of awareness.

In addition, checking and connecting with who has already bought, approved your product, and is interacting with your brand online by giving good references, especially if those people are social media influencers.

These are just some ways a group can work with data collection. Realizing what is the best trajectory for the company will be the responsibility of the marketing manager. Whether it’s getting new followers, making people share more content, or simply optimizing ad campaigns.

Technology is essential to get the job done

Everything that has been said so far can be summed up in a few words: communication is more effective when you know your audience. Plus, technology is a must-have.

There’s no way you can get to know your public if all employees need to be constantly collecting and analyzing data by hand. Acquiring an automation tool is by far the best decision to enhance your whole marketing processes.

To clarify that fact, these are some of the things a marketing team will be able to achieve with software that gathers, analyzes, and stores data:

• find the best approach for each customer or segmentation group;
• know what type of content to create;
• understand what kind of visual elements will work better;
• learn the best language to use (slangs, formal, etc.);

As it was mentioned earlier, data collection implies knowing the audience. Because of that, a platform with this purpose will help recognize the best communication path to follow. Including every little detail from the tone of the company to the type of visual elements used. Creating a persona out of this material is ideal.

More than that, technology is necessary to get more tasks completed, such as monitoring social media posts. After all, that’s the communication channel where most of the engagement happens.

Having blog comments and forums supervised as well will permit you to see what the audience wants to know, what their questions are, and what are the gaps you can cover. It’s one of the best sources for inspiration content.

That means there should be constant monitoring of real-time audiences. This way the marketing team will always be precise and straight to the point with the public’s interests. They’ll be able to create content answering exactly what the audience wants to know. Even more, a real-time strategy will boost engagement with the brand.

Despite that, quality content doesn’t do the job by itself. It’s required to know SEO tactics that will improve reach — therefore, increasing shares as well.

Social media is the main channel to have real-time audiences interacting with your brand while making it more humanized. That’s something acknowledged brands are doing in the market, such as Coca-Cola and Airbnb. It’s a way to connect on a personal level with customers and prospects.

The streaming platform Netflix is a great example we can think of because of how they act online. Even though there are many people behind their strategy and social media control, their communication is flawless. 

Every post and every response they write to their fans, whether on Instagram or Twitter, has the same tone and exposes a strong personality — in spite of the company not having a face and body to show “behind the cameras”, you can practically see who Netflix is through their social media work.

Of course, the personality of your brand will depend on the type of service, and the target audience the company works with. For Netflix, that witty and fun characteristic works because it’s an entertainment business focusing on interacting with their young adult fan base.

Then again, this is the reason knowing your customers matters so much. The moment you get to know them, how they act, and how they talk, you have what it takes to transform them into brand advocates.

Are you ready to reinvigorate your marketing strategy? Arena has all we’ve talked about, from real-time audiences and segmentation to live-blogging solutions and more.