IoT connects numerous kinds of devices in our daily lives and the amount of data generated by these devices will only surge. The marketers can leverage this data to create impactful insights, identify patterns to capture customer interactions, and predict customer behavior and lifestyle. This further helps to envision customer preferences and link it to purchase intent.
Let us check out how IoT will impact digital marketing strategy:
1. Personalization
IoT has the capability to unlock customer’s lifestyles for you. From alarm clocks to coffee-makers, booking a cab for office, scheduling your appointments, to your fitness trackers, all these devices can provide a staggering amount of data, which is not only deep but broad as well. This data can help marketers extract valuable information to provide rich customer experiences. There are endless possibilities of using this data to deliver contextual messages in real-time.
Example – A fitness enthusiast can be offered a discounted membership at a nearby gym after his office hours.
2. Instant Service
Today’s connected millennials are always in need for instant gratification – easy access to product/service/information when they want and wherever they want. Today’s customers expect services instantly, and even a tiny delay can mean the loss of opportunity.
Consider a working professional whose refrigerator is running out of milk. In future, IoT will make the connected fridge order the ‘regular order’ of milk from her master’s favorite store, to be delivered at a time she returns from office.
All you would need is to simply connect your devices to the internet, and these devices would be able to exchange information and build a shopping cart for you. You just have to click a button and you are sorted.
3. Advertising opportunities
Being able to connect any device to the internet offers a plethora of advertising opportunities, and almost any object can be used as a channel to engage customers. For instance, your washing machine could advertise for a compatible detergent powder.
’ is already being adopted by many companies; with IoT, PPC campaigns will see a shift to mobile best practice. Marketers will need to focus on a mix of devices like tabs, in-car entertainment systems, smart appliances etc.
4. Analytics and Attribution
Massive data generated by IoT will help feed machine learning algorithms, which will augment the capabilities of predictive analytics. IoT means having more touch points to acquire data, gathering a variety of information by tracking customers, which would enable marketing analytics to identify the types of campaigns that customers are most responsive to, and what conditions and trends impact a purchase decision of the customer. We can now integrate attribution analytics with information from customer’s digital footprint, device usage and interactions to understand how a customer reacts to different marketing engagements. IoT offers the capability to follow the complete conversion path, across all touchpoints and optimize outcomes in real time.
5. Smart Platforms
An astronomical amount of data will be produced by IoT devices, but it must be completely harnessed to its full potential, to prove its usefulness. There will be a need to invest more in developing intelligent technology stacks, which can handle a vast amount of data, deliver right messages and infer and learn from results.
Sophisticated digital marketing platforms will be able to ingest, analyze and act on vast data at scale, and process, interpret and evaluate data sets in real-time.
IoT will also influence IoT app development that interweaves sensors, connected devices, networking, cloud, and analytics. IoT apps will become an integral part of mobile phones and could be used as a marketing and advertising platform.
All said, a major challenge, would be to develop personalized and relevant experiences for the customers without being intrusive. Marketers will have more responsibility to design campaigns without compromising on the privacy of their consumers. Informing customers about the selective use of their data, device authentication, strong encryption and other security mechanisms will need to be employed to prevent IoT devices from being compromised.
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