What is Responsive Marketing?

What is responsive marketing?

*Responsive marketing is often done through digital channels.* *Image source*

Responsive marketing aims to combine the strengths of traditional, planned marketing with real-time marketing. Responsive marketing involves planning future marketing campaigns around events expected to occur in the future, while simultaneously being attentive to current consumer trends as they change towards the selected future event.

Responsive marketing sacrifices the short-term agility of real-time marketing for long-term gains that you can attain from incorporating planning into your marketing campaigns. Content Marketing Institute, however, notes that high proficiency in responsive marketing can be a prerequisite to a successful real-time marketing campaign.

Advantages and disadvantages of responsive marketing

Here are some of the advantages of responsive marketing, including how you can maximize these advantages:

Higher quality campaign - since the campaign is developed long in advance, there is more time to gather data about the real-time context of the market. The real-time context can only shape your campaign if you have enough time formulating your marketing campaign.

Gathering a real-time context of your target market involves using an integrated system that processes the data and gives you the important metrics and KPIs. There are several sources of data that you can use:

Existing internal data in your databases, which include transaction records;
Open sources of data over the internet, which include government statistics;
Data repositories that are not fully open-source and require subscription, such as Statista; and
New data through market research.

You can learn more about it by reviewing one of our previous articles about data analysis: Data Analysis 101: Steps in Conducting Data Analysis

Fiascos are prevented or minimized - since there is more time to polish the campaign, there is also more time to ensure that it won’t be in bad taste nor run afoul of a significant portion of the population. To do so, the opinion of a diverse group of people would be helpful. However, note that if your marketing team has enough diversity, it may suffice in ensuring these fiascos are prevented or minimized.

When we say diversity, it simply refers to a diversity in perspectives. A diversity of perspectives can see what’s wrong with this hastily-prepared campaign during Hurricane Sandy:

*Imagine a company trying to entice you with a sale while trying to evacuate during a strong hurricane.* *Image source*

Longevity - planned marketing campaigns can be primed for longevity that lasts beyond the immediate target event. Real-time marketing campaigns are primed for immediate returns, so they are often designed for the target event only. Campaigns designed through responsive marketing can also be designed to “ripple” through the media after the event - whether through traditional media or through social media. It is not necessarily uncommon to see old ads resurfacing years after the event has occurred.

Responsive marketing has disadvantages:

Less flexibility - sometimes the trends and contexts guiding the success of the planned campaign suddenly change last-minute due to external circumstances. It can take some time to quickly modify the content. The opportunity may even have passed before you could adjust the content to new context and conditions.
More people involved - marketing is conducted by teams, so the typical team dynamics, which include disagreements on the ideas and details, are present. These can make the process longer.
More expensive - since there is planning involved, it can take more resources to come up with a campaign that can fully take advantage of an event.

Channels for responsive marketing

*Social media is especially powerful in growing and killing trends.* *Image source*

The digital channels used for real-time marketing are also employed for responsive marketing, as they allow quick deployment of marketing materials during a campaign. The main channel for responsive marketing is social media. There are several advantages to using social media with respect to responsive marketing. As it can include a length discussion worthy of another article, we will highlight the most important ones below:

Capacity to start and drive conversations - as social media sites allow communication between brands and customers via their official pages, businesses can use this to insert the brand into existing conversations or to create new ones.
Cheap and easy - social media sites are almost free to use. If posting content is enough, you can do so freely; the cost is often present if you want to boost it to increase your audience. This can be useful if your business does not have visibility yet.
Wide reach - as social media sites are often free to use, you could expect them to have millions of users that compose your potential customers and audience.
Trends can quickly grow - certain sites have hashtags that are being analyzed to track trends over time. Using these hashtags will maximize the reach of your campaign.