Improve your Real-time marketing with our hub page

Use our hub pages as a reference to get up-to-speed on all the main digital marketing techniques. They will help you quickly understand how to make the most of the technique through definitions and recommendations on our member resources and blog articles covering strategy, best practices and the latest statistics.

Real-time marketing is marketing that links into current events that are relevant to an audience in order to engage them with a brand. Today social media means that brands that can tap into current consumer interest in a topic have the opportunity to reach a large audience rapidly, potentially at a lower cost than broadcast advertising.

What is real-time marketing?

The term was defined by PR specialist David Meerman Scott who defines real-time marketing as

"Real-time means news breaks over minutes, not days. It means ideas percolate, then suddenly and unpredictably go viral to a global audience. It’s when companies develop (or refine) products or services instantly, based on feedback from customers or events in the marketplace. And it’s when businesses see an opportunity and are the first to act on it".

Newsjacking is a related approach where brands seek to inject their ideas into a breaking news story to generate media coverage and social media sharing.

Real-time marketing is also used as a term to describe providing contextual relevance in online communications through web and email personalisation. But it's most commonly used in reference to online PR.

Key techniques for Real-time marketing

These are the related techniques which we recommend as important for managing Real-time marketing effectively. View these hub pages giving details on best practices, statistics and examples for these techniques:

View all blog articles on Real-time marketing