Capturing B2B Audiences on Valentine’s Day Using #RealTimeMarketing

On February 14th, it’s hard to keep your mind focused on work. If you’re like me, you were wondering if the flowers, candy, and teddy bear you ordered would get delivered to your wife on time, or if the butcher would have any steaks left by the time you made it to the market after work. Frankly the last thing on my mind was the possibilities enabled when we connect people, processes, data and things, also known as the Internet of Everything (#IoE).

This Valentine’s Day, Cisco’s Social Media Marketing team leveraged a broadly engaging topic that very few people would associate with the Internet of Everything through real-time marketing.

The hypothesis was simple: Could we capture the attention of influencers of the Internet of Things (#IoT) and the Internet of Everything (#IoE), and raise awareness of Cisco’s brand campaign and recent blog post of our IoE thought leader and Chief Futurist, Dave Evans?

We leveraged our Social Media Listening Center to identify a small target group of influencers talking about IoT or IoE, and used a creative piece of marketing content to capture their attention. The result was 50% engagement with identified opportunities, reaching over 20,000 potential Twitter followers of Internet of Everything thought leaders.

In addition to a return on engagement of 50% with influencers, we shared our Valentine with fans of some of Cisco’s top Facebook pages. Different teams posted the content at varied times throughout the day, and one thing became clear. People liked it, they liked it so much they wanted their friends to like it!

Another observation was on major events like Valentine’s Day, Facebook is the best channel to share images, and early morning is the best time. This is when people are waking up, checking their social network, and looking for some way to express their interest the day’s hottest topic. The other interesting observation brought to my attention by friend and colleague Julia Routhier, is the possible favoring of Facebook’s algorithm, known as EdgeRank, of posts that were preceded by successfully engaging posts.

Holiday’s are great opportunities to engage thought leaders and your Facebook fans with great content. I recommend posting the content early in the morning, and the content should suggest or out right request people to share or engage in some way. Another aspect of real-time marketing on Facebook is to consider the intricacies behind the ever-changing EdgeRank algorithm. If you want your content to reach as many people as possible, precede your post with strategically placed engaging content. This may result in higher volume of organic impressions and a more successful real-time marketing campaign.

So how is your brand using social media listening, data analytics, or real-time content generation to meet your marketing objectives? Are you considering implementing a real-time marketing program?