Real-time marketing is marketing that happens as real-time events occur, with the basis being the real-time event and the goal being to gain awareness, build your email list, or drive sales of a specific product or service. While it’s not technically planned, you have to invest in the technology and potential services needed to perform real-time marketing that gets results.

Use Facebook, Twitter, forums and even comments on blog posts, as well as other social media to gather the information that you need to conduct real-time marketing information regarding your industry on your target audience. All of these can be very helpful to your business and increase your bottom line exponentially.

* Engage Your Audience – Using real-time marketing efforts and listening to social media for conversations your audience is having will help you engage better with your audience in real time.

* Improve Understanding of Your Customers – By monitoring the chatter among your customers within a forum or group, you can get a deeper understanding of what your customers need.

* Deliver More Relevant Content – The understanding you develop can help you improve the type of content you create overall, not just in real time but planned content too.

* Connect Better with Customers – This understanding helps you connect better with customers in a way that makes them feel important and understood.

* Create Innovative New Products – Your new understanding of your customers and the audience will enable you to create better products and services truly designed just for your target market.

* Get More Leads – Deploying real-time marketing efforts will help you get more leads because you will find ways to get your products or services to relate to what is happening right now.

* Improve Conversions – When your audience feels as if you really know them and share their values, they will be more likely to make a purchase from you.

* Grow Your Business – All of these activities will ultimately help you grow your business faster than you may have thought possible. Any one of your real-time marketing campaigns can become viral.

Using what you know about your audience, the current news in the industry and the daily happenings around the world, and how it can relate to your audience will help your business grow faster. The result is that not only will you make more sales, but you will also create more products that are extraordinarily relevant to your audience.

This happens because with real-time marketing you always have your ear to the ground and are monitoring the mood of the audience as well as the news of the times and how it can relate to your products and services. You not only send out information that connects your products and services with what is happening today, but you can actually create new products and services based on the information that you gather. It’s a win-win for your business and your customers.

Creating buzz about your business means that you do something to get people talking about you and your business. Today, creating buzz about your business is important, especially as there are so many people to compete with. But, if you can set yourself apart in this way, you’ll win a lot of new customers. Here are nine ways to do that.

1. Send Out a Press Release – Press releases are still viable and important ways to get buzz about your business, even in this day of social media and blogging. Press releases should be sent out to your contacts every time you have something newsworthy to share.

2. Create and Share an Infographic – Infographics are long, pictorial graphics that tell a story about the data and information that you have. These are great ways to encourage sharing, especially if you include data that is relevant for your audience that they’ll enjoy.

3. Release a Free eBook on Kindle – Having a book launch with a free Kindle book is a great way to create buzz. Ask the people who download the book free to give you a review and feedback, which will help move your book up on the list that Kindle recommends to people.

4. Create Viral Videos – While you might not be able to just willfully create a viral video, if you create regular videos that are of interest to your audience then one of them is bound to resonate enough to go viral. Videos get shared more often than text, so you’re off to the right start when you create videos.

5. Have a Facebook Contest – Contests are great way to create buzz about your business. You can have them on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, your blog… however you want. Just follow the rules of the platform and make sure your prizes are relevant to your audience.

6. Conduct a Blog Tour – A blog tour is where you plan to place a guest post that is original to the place where you put it, and which is about something you’re promoting. The way to set that up is to contact people to join the tour and allow you to post your information on their blog.

7. Host a Webinar or Teleseminar – These are great ways to build your email list and get buzz about your business. A good way to do it is to ask other people to do them with you. That way you all promote to your own email lists too.

8. Start a YouTube Channel – A YouTube channel can be almost as good as having a television show if you plan out the content you want to do, post content on a consistent basis, and try to be as professional as possible.

9. Connect to a Charity – You don’t want to do charitable things just because you want to create buzz. But, if there is a charity that you like, you can donate a percentage of proceeds all the time to it, or you can have yearly sales where all proceeds go to the fundraiser.

If you want to create buzz about your business, using social media is a great way to do it. Try these different ways and see what reactions you get. Keep doing new things as often as you can to keep the buzz going.

Marketing your business online inexpensively is a real possibility. You can practically market your business for free if you know what to do. That’s why online marketing is so completely awesome and fun. The barriers to entry are low, and even the learning curve is small. So before you know it, you will bring your business to profit with free or cheap marketing.

1. Content Marketing

This is one of your most important marketing weapons in your arsenal. In fact, you’ll use content for all types of marketing including every inexpensive way mentioned below. Content is needed that sells, educates, engages, informs and excites. You need content for all aspects of marketing – up to and including customer relations.

2. Use Social Media

Social media like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ all have a place in your online marketing endeavors. Well, they might. You have to determine which social media networks will work for you and it will depend on your niche and your audience. Where do they hang out? Be there.

3. Blog Often

Blogging is a big source of traffic, and in some instances the only source of traffic for many website owners. It’s a great way to get the message out to your audience while not spending much money. You can write the posts yourself or you can outsource. Most people write them themselves when starting out. It can take time to get used to doing it, but writing a post a day can help gain momentum. But you also want to consider doing longer blog posts, less often, to get results.

4. Remember SEO

If you are not familiar with SEO (search engine optimization), it’s important to learn. SEO changes constantly and is how you optimize your website for search engines. There is both on-page and off-page SEO that you can do for your business. Learn all you can about it.

5. Send Out a Press Release

The good, old-fashioned press release is still a thing, believe it or not. You can still get a lot of value out of sending out free press rereleases if you know how to do it. The trick is to have contacts to which you send the press release directly and not just out to never-never land.

6. Perfect Your Website

Your website is your store front, and even if you have a bricks and mortar store front, your website is the store front your customers will likely see first. If it doesn’t look great, why would anyone purchase from you?

7. Join Relevant Communities

Communities are a great way to get your name out there. There are communities you can join on Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as self-hosted and owned “inner circles” and mastermind clubs that you can join. They can help you get known as an expert, as well as help you get more links to your website.

8. Get Listed

There are directories that are free or inexpensive that you can join to help market your business. Ensure that the directory is niche oriented, and that it is run by a reputable person so that you are listed with other reputable business owners. You don’t want to be on a list that is associated with spam. Your local chamber of commerce is one such list that you can get on for the price of your membership.

Finding inexpensive ways to market your business online is a great way to get started. But even after you have a great business, you’ll want to keep using these inexpensive ways to market your business.

Anytime you create copy it’s important to consider who your audience is. You’re always going to have new people, middle-of-the-road and advanced users. As you write various types of copy you will need to address the needs of these different levels of users based on their awareness of your products.

Newbies

When writing copy for someone who has no idea about you, your products or services, the copy has to educate, inform, engage and inspire. The types of copy you may want to write for a newbie are informative and educational like white papers and how-to articles. You want to tell a story that weaves in your why with your audience’s why, while at the same time educating them. Because remember – it’s all about them.

Intermediates

Other people you will have to write copy for within your niche are those who know about you and your products (as well as why they need them) but who haven’t actually purchased from you yet. They’ve done their research, understand their needs and what will solve them, and now are trying to decide who will fill their needs. If you want to be that person they buy from, you’ll need to explain why you are the right one for the job.

Advanced Users

Finally, you’ll also need to write copy for those who have already purchased from you. If you want to increase the lifetime income of each customer, this type of copy is very important too. The type of content you will write for these prospects makes assumptions about the knowledge they have about how great your products are, as well as the next thing they will need. It assumes they trust you due to the prior purchase, and it assumes they know their problems and that you have the solutions. You simply need to offer it to them.

Types of Content

You can write content in all its forms for any stage of prospect awareness, but the words that you use will be different.

* Newbies – You’ll need to word everything from a teaching mode without being condescending. A great way is to use testimonials, how-to videos, and educational emails and e-courses to help your newbie prospects learn about the problems they share with others, the solutions that exist and why yours is better.

* Intermediate – These prospects need to receive reassurance, as well as proof that you have the solution that they seek. They know that they have a problem, they know about all the solutions that exist, so now you have to show them how your solution is the best. You can do this via testimonials and stories that demonstrate your product’s effectiveness.

* Advanced – This copywriting is all about getting current customers to buy from you again. You can accomplish this by sending them information about new products that you offer. But you can also engage with them about how they use the product they purchased. This will not only remind them of how well made and perfect your product is, it will also instill trust about other products and services.

Creating copy for people at any stage of awareness takes an understanding of your audience as a whole, as well as your products in general and in particular. You’ll need to be able to create regular content for each stage of awareness, and then be able to break it down clearly for anyone at any stage.

When you have prospects and customers, it’s important to stay in touch as often as possible. Get them on your email lists, segmented according to where they are in the buying cycle so that you can target your messages accordingly.

* Tell Them What to Expect – When someone buys from you or signs up for one of your email lists, send a thank you note with an explanation of what to expect from you in the future. How often will they hear from you? What about? Make some promises and assurances to them.

* Do What You Say You’ll Do – It’s very important that you do whatever you said you’d do. For example if you say you will send them a newsletter every Friday, send them a newsletter every single Friday. If you skip days or switch the days, they may be confused. A lot of people actually forget they signed up for a list and when you don’t stay active they will report you for spamming them.

* Remind Them of What You Said – Periodically, within other messages, be sure to remind your prospects and customers about your previous promises and assurances. This will help them remember who you are, and what you said. It will build more trust.

* Let Them Know When You Follow Through – When you do something you said you would do, tell them. “I told you I would send you an update on my xyz product, as promised, here it is.” This again, reinforces the point that you stick to your word and can be trusted.

* Ask Them for Input and Opinions – Once in a while invite your prospects and customers to submit their ideas and input. If you have a new product idea, tell them about it. Ask them what they think. Ask them what they’d pay for such a product or service. Ask them if they would like to see something from you that you’ve not delivered.

* Tease Them about New Products – Never pass up an opportunity to give them some hints and small bits of information about a new product, service or event. As you hint about it, make them really want it by explaining what’s in it for them.

* Thank Them for Buying – When someone buys something from you (or answers any call to action), be sure to thank them. The thank you is always a nice thing to do, plus it gives you just that little bit more real estate to give them more information about you and your products and/or services.

* Follow Up Regularly – Even after someone has purchased, and you’ve thanked them, it’s not over. It costs a lot less to create a repeat buyer than to turn a lead into a buyer. Cultivate your relationship with buyers even more consistently than you do leads and prospects.

Using the pattern of telling them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them will do wonders for all your marketing. Most people need to hear things multiple times before it sinks in. The more you stick to your word and the more value you can provide your audience, the more they’ll look forward to whatever you offer them.

Generating topics for videos is something you will need to do if you’re going to produce regular videos for your audience. The best way to accomplish this is to ask your audience for ideas about the types of videos and what subjects they want you to cover. There are different ways you can ask or find out what your audience wants to see.

* Warm Them Up – Most audiences are used to the one-way communication that most people provide to them. They get emails, they sit and watch a presentation, and they read blog posts. But they aren’t used to real engagement. You need to start small, warming them up by always ending every blog post, every social media post and so forth with a short question.

* Encourage Interaction – Reward people who engage with you by thanking them, and by acting excited about their contribution. Give them a prize or a percent off coupon for coming up with such a great idea or question.

* Send an Email – Use your email list to your advantage. When you are trying to come up with ideas, shoot them an email to ask for their input. Make it fun for them to respond by inviting them to a free Facebook brainstorming group, or offering points toward products and services for good ideas.

* Stalk Discussion Groups – Remember that your audience lives in other places besides only on your lists, your groups, and your discussion boards. Go to other places where they like to hang out and read the discussions. Any question they ask can become fodder for a new video.

* Conduct a Survey – A really good way to ask questions of your audience is to send a survey. With a short survey you can also get a little extra information about the group, plus input into what types of videos they’d like to see. Make it worth their while by promising and delivering a surprise at the end of the survey.

* Ask on Social Media – Go straight to your social media accounts to ask questions of your audience. You can also send a poll via social media, or you can post an infographic with information and a question such as: “What is the next video you’d like me to make?” If you can give them a couple of choices to choose from, you’ll be more likely to get more answers.

* Have a Contest – Let the audience pick the topic by giving five topics you want to talk about, then let them vote on which one they’d like to see most. The winning topic gets made, and the ones who voted on the winning topic get invite to submit more questions and maybe ask a question live at the event.

* Frame the Question Right – You want to lead the choices in a certain direction so that you know you can make a video about the topic. For example, maybe you are confused about two different options; post only those two options. Or maybe you know the topic, but you want to know what they need to know about the topic; approach it that way instead.

Asking your audience directly is one of the best ways to choose a topic for your next video. Don’t be afraid to ask them. It doesn’t mean you don’t know anything, but it does mean that you care about what your audience needs. They’ll appreciate being included.