Timing is everything...or is it?

I tweeted today that my mom called and said, "I forgot to invite you to your cousin's wedding. Ok bye!" She does that a lot and usually I don't mind because by then I've already made plans. You know my brother does the same thing but he'll text me, "Come over for crawfish almost done eating forgot to tell you" which I'll reply, "You suck! can't go."

Timing is everything. Isn't it so true with everything else, especially with advertising? Would you have run any marketing campaigns before North Carolina played Michigan Monday night for the NCAA championships? Maybe, if it made sense and your message didn't claim one as "the last one standing". But would you be running those same campaigns next week? Probably not since most people will be talking about the NBA play offs or the baseball season which just started. Most of the chatter would be today, tomorrow and then a little bit the rest of the week.

When's the right time? It depends. What are you selling or trying to promote? When are people thinking about buying that product? Are you there when the consumer is there? Did you tweet in time to be seen by your followers or did you tweet too early and it got lost in the stream? Does your facebook status update come up right when your friends or your fans sign on or did they get pushed down because you updated too soon? Do you know when you should actively update depending on when your followers/friends sign on? Does it matter because maybe those followers/friends look for your updates?

Or it doesn't matter because the more you get in people's faces the more they remember you and eventually when they need you, when they're searching for a product/service you provide they'll either remember you or hopefully see you on Google or even better they'll ask a friend and the friend will tell them to do business with you.

And of course there is the alternative option of doing something really outrageous to get as much attention as you possibly can as fast as you can for that... are you ready for it? wait for it, it's a good word... VIRAL campaign.

But here's some good advice "Never bank on media coverage and never, ever bank on viral," says Barak Kassar, president of Rassak Experience from Michael Estrin's How 5 brands scored free marketing.

Timing is everything...or is it? If you don't tell people what you have timing doesn't matter because they'll never know and they definitely won't try to find something they don't know exists.