How to seize the moment and leverage trigger-based marketing

Life is full of unpredictable moments; this is a reality for both consumers and brands. In an noisy digital arena, what sets marketers apart is the ability to harness the power of the moment to activate relevant content to an engaged audience.

With the growth of marketers’ data sets, generated by the increasing number of devices the average consumer has, the advancements in machine learning and data science, and the use of specific digital marketing applications, marketers have unbridled access to data from across the digital ecosystem. These new data sets can reveal real-time, relevant insights that can accurately predict consumer behaviour around anticipated events.

The ability to expose a consumer to a marketing message or an entire campaign when it matters most goes beyond what is accepted as ‘real-time marketing’. What I’m talking about is trigger-based marketing, which is about being hyper-relevant to an individual based on multiple data dimensions. 

To be prepared with targeted messages that resonate with consumers as they experience these moments is how marketers drive results. By defining the constructs of a trigger based on specific activity for instance when the brand’s celebrity spokesperson’s sentiment surpasses a certain score or when the weather dips below a specific threshold to drive tourism to a warmer climate, brands are essentially living these moments with their consumers. It doesn’t get much more personal than that. 

This marketing strategy can even be applied to a national brand that wants to have a local presence. By targeting campaigns in specific DMAs around trending content that matters to that specific location, the brand can shift perception as being in tune with the status quo and increase awareness.

And while you can’t predict the winner of the X Factor, a brand can be prepared for either contestant to win with approved creative ready to launch during and after the show. You could even execute on a more personalised, local level by triggering campaigns based on weather patterns. When the weather is cold or rainy in certain areas, you can target offers like flights or destinations with warmer climates or the trendiest new pair of rain boots.

Thanks to technology, brands and advertisers have the ability to align with a consumer’s real life moments and experience them like they do. By leveraging trigger-based marketing, brands can be prepared for any large or small-scale event and activate media around them immediately through the intelligent use of real-time data. 

Relevance expands beyond the local consumer activity to the external environment and mindset that the consumer is in. Those elements, environment and mindset, play just as big a role in what drives consumer decisions and indicates when brands should connect and communicate. For an emotional connection to form between a brand and consumer, brands must be in tune to what intrinsically drives consumer actions at the given moments when an individual is in the optimal mindset to engage.

We should aspire to be much more dynamic. At any time, brands can tap into multiple types of data to gain insight into their customers’ day-to-day life, the environment they live in, and their emotional disposition to reach the right audience at the optimal state of mind with a relevant message.

Actionable data and innovation made in deep learning technology has given way to brands and marketers using tools to understand consumer engagement on an individual and macro audience level. Brands should identify how they can create an ongoing, personal dialogue through digital marketing.

On a brand-specific level, digital advertising and trigger-based marketing has given brands the opportunity to test against moments and understand which moments are brand drivers. They are able to measure correlation between these moments or events and their impact on consumers to determine whether or not a specific moment drives conversions.

Don’t just wish you could have seized the moment. Be confident that you’ll be right with consumers as it happens with individually relevant messaging that will resonate and create a lasting impact.