Real-time marketing effects on brand in social media

Abstract: Purpose: The purpose of this research is to investigate whether RTM-advertising is a more effective and attractive way of creating social media content compared to traditional social media marketing, and if so, provide insights on what makes it successful. The objective is also to get a greater understanding if such real-time marketing may affect the consumers’ perception of a brand due to the lack of time to consider the content of the marketing message. Further we wish to research if and what kind of impact events have on the real-time marketing effectiveness. Lastly we provide recommendations on how to, according to us, best practice RTM-advertising on social media today. Theoretical framework: The theoretical framework consists of the essentials of brand equity and the importance of having a strong brand, as well as the emerging of a digital marketing platform and how it affect how companies perform marketing activities today. Further the theoretical framework covers the basic of social media and development of RTM. Considering RTM being a new phenomenon, previous scientific theories on the subjects are limited. Method: The research is based on a triangulation, a combination of both qualitative and quantitative research methods. This was made to get a broad perspective on the subject with viewpoints from both experts and consumers. The qualitative part consisted of five interviews with experts in the field of marketing as well as online observations of real-time marketing activities. The quantitative part consisted of a survey with 296 responses. Conclusions: The conclusions made in this research is that RTM is an effective and attractive way of creating social media marketing if made according to the following guidelines: 1) Build content on up-to-date news, so called newsjacking, 2) Be selective on what events to work on to make sure they are in alignment with your brand personality, 3) Use weather related happenings to build real-time content that is relevant and geographically on target, and 4) Interact with other brands and start a two way conversation. However, advertising in real-time may jeopardize how the brand is perceived by its consumers, since it may 1) Confuse the consumers, a luxury brand may for example come off as too mainstream, 2) Be misunderstood, considering the lack of time to plan and reconsider, and 3) Have the brand come out as Page 3 of 76 unauthentic, if the real-time content fail to reach high engagement, making it look dull and unattractive. Lastly, events have shown to have an impact on the effectiveness of the real-time advertisement, since 1) It provides brand with a short-cut to creating content that people are talking about, 2) Events are easy to plan beforehand, and 3) Events often open up to unpredicted happenings that consumers want to talk about, creating a so called opportunistic real-time opportunity.