What You Need to Know About Reactive Marketing

The days of MySpace and Bebo are long gone; that, however, has not stopped social media’s rise in popularity. We now have Snapchat and Instagram to account for the loss – not to mention, Twitter.

The Internet has revolutionised what it means to be ‘social’. Thanks to social media, you now have the power to instantly relay a Facebook message to someone halfway across the globe, while sitting in bed, in your pyjamas.

With social media’s rapid rise in popularity, it’s little wonder that many brands are taking a liking to reactive marketing.

Reactive marketing is a marketing strategy whereby you find an unforeseen news/event story, and then you look for a unique way to use said story for marketing your brand.

There is, however, a right way and a wrong way to approach reactive marketing.

Rule No. 1: be quick off the mark

The golden rule of reactive marketing is to be quick off the mark. Being late defeats the purpose of reactive marketing; if you arrive too late, the story will quickly fade away into the ashes of old news by the time you react to it. You must be fast and relevant. All it takes is one week for the bustle around a trending story to die down.

The faster you can react to an event, the more impact and reach your reaction will have.

Keep a careful eye on trending stories. You may find it helpful to entrust the duty of managing social media accounts to someone in your team. That way, it will be easier for your business to stay on track with what’s relevant in the news.

Alternatively, you can set up Google Alerts, which will send you emails when it finds new results – web pages, newspaper articles, blogs and scientific research – that match your search term. That way, you can stay up to date with the latest news on your area(s) of interest.

Aldi is an excellent example of a brand that has mastered reactive marketing to a fine art. They were able to act quickly with their reply to John Lewis’ 2019 Christmas advert.

If you are a stranger to social media, then you may not understand the humour in this tweet very well. If, however, you consider yourself to be au fait with the social media lives of celebrities, you may have quickly noticed that the Aldi tweet was a reference to Mel B’s Instagram post, earlier this year.

In one of their Tesco Clubcard adverts, retail company Tesco displayed an image of Mel B without her permission. When Mel B spotted her picture on the advert, she fired out on Instagram:

With a lot of lovely wit and humour, Aldi followed suit and commented on the John Lewis advert in the same style as Mel B’s Instagram post.

Sharing the post across Twitter, Aldi was able to rack up 1,016 retweets and 5,908 quickly. Not bad for three sentences, two hashtags and a screenshotted image. To land themselves on a dozen headlines, all Aldi needed was one hilarious, but relevant tweet. And that is what reactive marketing needs to be: short, snappy and engaging.

Rule No. 2: Stay ahead of the curve:

When it comes to reactive marketing, you need to stay ahead of the curve. Plan well in advance. You might find it helpful to create a seasonal calendar. Seasonal calendars can help you to highlight all of the critical dates and events that either align with your brand and values or provide a valuable marketing opportunity for your business. Marking significant events, useful holidays, and peak sales seasons on your calendar will help you to keep a sharp eye on reactive marketing opportunities.

Contact Formation to learn more about how you can rejuvenate your social media marketing strategy!