The Internet of Things is now. But does it feature in your marketing strategy? OLIVER Digital Strategist Mark Fitzgerald discusses five ways in which the Internet of Things will influence marketing.
Imagine a world where your alarm wakes you up at 7 am, having already signalled your coffee machine to start making your morning brew. Imagine you are walking down the aisle of your local supermarket near the dairy section and your shopping basket vibrates. The screen mounted on the basket displays a message: “You have no butter at home. Would you like to purchase this item?” It may sound like the realm of science fiction but the Internet of Things is already making these scenarios a reality.
What is the Internet of Things?
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of everyday, physical objects that are embedded with software and electronics, allowing for the exchange of data via the Internet. The IoT has the ability to connect everything – for example it allows your fitness tracking bracelet to transmit data to your phone or your wireless printer to receive instructions from your laptop.
It’s not hard to see why connected devices are popular as our lives grow busier and increasingly on-the-go. The IoT is offering consumers an easier, interconnected life where all their devices ‘talk’ to one another. Predictions from Morgan Stanley say that by 2020 there will be 75 billion connected devices on the internet.
The IoT is not only benefitting consumers, it is also offering marketers new opportunities in understanding buyers and creating innovative services. It’s allowing marketers to tailor their services to what consumers really want. Keeping this in mind, it’s difficult to see how any industry, whether B2B or B2C, could ignore the ever-growing trend of connected devices.
Five ways the Internet of Things will affect marketing
Predictive marketing: Using data to predict when consumers may need their next product is just one of the ways marketers may take advantage of the IoT. Nowadays we’re used to getting push notifications from our phones – our earlier example of the push notification shopping basket example may not be far off. Only a month ago Amazon launched the Dash button, where by clicking a button placed e.g. near your washing machine, you can conveniently order a new supply of your preferred washing powder brand. Now this is only the first version but imagine potential future versions: smart packaging that could send notifications to your phone or maybe even re-purchase itself when you’re running low.
Improved customer service: Wouldn’t it be great if you could avoid sitting on hold for 30 minutes when your Internet connection breaks down? What if you had no idea your Internet had malfunctioned – the issue had been diagnosed and fixed all while you were at work. Sound too good to be true? Digital devices are constantly emitting all types of data, from behavioural to maintenance to productivity metrics. When devices fail, they could report back to the company to log the issue, so it can either be fixed immediately or improved for future versions. Just imagine the decline in volume of social media complaints about your brand.
Hyper-personalisation: Consumers are increasingly choosing personalised experiences over mass-produced/one-size-fits-all products and services. The IoT presents a big opportunity to collect, measure and analyse a large variety of behavioural and contextual data. With this data, marketers can work towards providing consumers with a hyper-personal experience, targeted around what is known about their preferences.
More relevant advertising: The IoT is set to change the face of advertising forever. The era of interruptive marketing will be replaced by contextual and relevant advertising to really engage consumers. Due to the vast amounts of real-time data that will increasingly be available to marketers about consumer behaviours, contextualised offers will be possible and even necessary to truly stand out from the noise.
A smarter CRM System: The IoT will allow you not only to collect and organise customer data, but also efficiently analyse the data and provide you with real-time insights. Integrated with a CRM system, this can help streamline the buying process by serving real-time information on where your prospect is in their journey. With this knowledge, marketers can easily resolve any issues during the process, serve prospects with the right information at the right time and properly nurture until they ultimately buy your product or service.
The Internet of Things is Now
With only 5 years to go until 75 billion devices are connected to the IoT, don’t let interconnected devices slip by your marketing strategy. Some of the most prominent devices to reach a large consumer audience so far have been fitness, activity and health monitors such as the Nike FuelBand, FitBit and Google Glass. There are many more to come.
How can your marketing leverage smart devices to help consumers with their day-to-day lives? A good place to start is by thinking about how you are currently interacting with your products and apps. One thing you don’t want to do is ignore the growing importance of connected devices for too long.