Simply put, situational marketing is when businesses use popular social occasions to draw attention to an offering or brand and sell it in the process while they promote their own brand in the background. These events range widely from a major movie release such as Star Wars, a major cultural event like the Oscars, or even a popular music festival like Bon Jovi’s concerts in the U.S. In fact, you may have noticed more of these types of marketing at various types of events as they become more prevalent. However, many businesses are not aware of the many benefits these events can provide to their company.
What Does It Mean To Go Viral
Perhaps the most popular use of situational marketing involves the idea of “viral marketing”. This is essentially a marketing technique that allows something to go viral, in the form of an article, video, or picture that spreads quickly across the internet, or some other medium. In this case, the offering in question is often offered by an individual brand that can be associated with the event it is featured in. For example, someone might create an Oscar award wallpaper to go along with the buzz created by the recent Academy Awards.
Depending on the nature of the situation, there may be many different ways that this viral marketing can work for your company. Viral marketing helps with distribution as well, whether direct or indirect. To define direct distribution, it is a retail term describing the distribution of products directly to the consumer without the need of a middleman. Viral marketing helps increase direct distribution.
Here are a few other ways that viral marketing can help a business. For example, you may want to use it in order to keep your audience updated on what is happening within your industry. For example, if you are in the mortgage industry, you would want to keep everyone up-to-date on any and all changes that may come about with the mortgage market. With so much going on in the financial world on a daily basis, you may want to highlight any positive or negative trends that are developing. If consumers feel better about making large purchases, then chances are they will pass this information along to others, driving up demand for your products or services. As a result, you will have more profits and less financial losses.
Taking Advantage Of The News
Another example of situational marketing occurs when an issue or concern in your industry is in the news. As most people are well aware, news events are often very controversial, both for those who are involved in the reporting, as well as those who are merely watching them unfold. For this reason, you want to highlight any positive or negative new developments as they occur so that you can engage potential customers. By providing factual information, as well as data and statistics, you can build brand loyalty and ensure that your brand remains a hot topic even after any news events are over.
Social Media
You can also make use of situational marketing by using the social media aspect to drive traffic to your site. One of the best tools for doing this is Twitter. Since this platform allows you to post short messages that receive immediate replies, you can effectively engage your audience and drive massive amounts of targeted traffic to your website. In essence, you can use Twitter to brand yourself as an expert in your field and drive traffic to your site. From here, you can then update readers about any upcoming events, blog posts, or specials that you may be promoting.
Another great example of situational marketing uses the old standby of email. While many people still associate email with spam, sending out occasional sales or promotional announcements through email can be a powerful way to build a relationship with your subscribers and drive traffic back to your site. For example, if you have an upcoming webinar, you can send out an email promoting the event. As many people know, the first thing that pops up in their inbox is a sales pitch, so this can be a great example of how to use email to promote your business.
Current Events
Lastly, one of the best aspects of a situational marketing strategy is that it can take advantage of current events to bring you more customers. As most people are well aware, current events often lead to controversy and often change the way things will happen in the future. If you can get involved in the news, it is easy to create a buzz about your website and gain more traffic as a result.
Final Advice
Google Trends is an excellent tool to use when looking for ways to get involved in the news. Basically, Google Trends will tell you what are the top keyword searches related to your niche over the last three months. You can then try to create a situation where people are talking about the very topics you are going to talk about on your website. By monitoring the trending of key terms, you can find where people are talking about the things you’re talking about and try to create a situational marketing campaign around them. This is just an example of a great situational marketing campaign.
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