How Marketers Should Leverage Powerful IoT Products
Michael Georgiou
Co-Founder @ Imaginovation | Our Mission is to build Software that Fuels Meaningful Change for Companies | Tech Entrepreneur
In the movie, “Minority Report,” advertisements target specific people as they walk down a busy street, calling to them by name based on retinal scans. While that level of marketing interaction hasn’t quite arrived, marketers, sales teams, and account managers can and should leverage IoT to help connect with current and potential customers.
In the past, marketing was a lot of educated guesses, throwing darts at a board to see what worked. Today, marketers can tap into mounds of data to analyze what people need.
Analysts estimate in just a few years, consumers will have between 13 billion and 1 trillion IoT connected devices. IoT will take that data, smoothly analyzing it, so teams can respond to issues quickly and adjust strategy. By using objects that can “see” and “listen,” marketers in both B2B and B2C businesses can find ways to keep their name top of mind while learning more about their customer.
Data Collection and Analysis
Check out these examples of ways marketers can use data collected by IoT.
Sales Data
Know who is buying your products where along with how and why. Devices can gather the data and send it back to you, informing your marketing strategy and giving you customer feedback.
Better CRM
Many sales teams use a CRM (customer relationship management software) to organize contacts. IoT can take that to a new level. Instead of just gathering and organizing the data, you can analyze it to determine where the buyer is in the sales funnel so you can make sure to provide them the right level of contact.
Higher CTRs
With all our devices connected, your marketing team can create more relevant advertising. Forget those popup ads that net about 20 percent click-through-rate. Instead, you can employ IoT to help guide your advertising efforts to the right audience based on interests, behaviors, and past purchases.
Other IoT for Marketers
While gathering data is all well and good, what if your product could advertise itself? IoT increases convenience, something most consumers have come to expect. Check out these examples of how this convenience can improve retention rates.
Business Cards - Business cards seem to be here to stay. But more people are using apps to scan business cards, avoiding that massive jumble shoved into your second desk drawer. What if when someone scans the card, they see a video first? But then the second time they scan it, they see something else? The message could change based on a previous action.
A Product that Advertises Itself - The Fitbit allows users to share their ribbon-worthy achievements on social media. What if all your products did that, from the local bottle of craft beer you just opened to the new video game you bought? Products could connect with your smartphone’s social media apps and draft a status update to announce that you’re trying a new beer or ready for Zelda: Breath of the Wild. One company tried this with a vending machine powered by Tweets.
A Product that Locks You In - Similar to the above, laundry detergent company Tide worked with Amazon to create buttons for ordering when supplies are low. Now, Amazon offers dozens of these Dash buttons in conjunction with brands from Bounty to Burt’s Bees. Stick it somewhere useful, such as on your washing machine. Now, when your laundry detergent is low, you press the button and boom! — You have just placed an Amazon order for more Tide. This button locks you in; you won’t stray down the aisle and choose another brand because it’s on sale. And now you’ve made yet another Amazon purchase.
Devices that Fix Themselves - IoT will improve many of our electronic devices to the point where they can self-diagnose, perform their own maintenance, and even order a new one if the end is near. Consumers will no doubt prefer to buy the brand that fixes itself, and if it orders for you, you won’t be considering competitor’s products.
Conclusion
An article in Forbes predicts even larger involvement in our lives, “If a consumer presses the same button fives times on her coffee maker, gets no coffee, angrily tweets about the experience, and slams the door on her way out, IoT marketers can analyze that behavior, address the consumer’s dissatisfaction, order a replacement, and talk to product development.”
As IoT becomes so immersed in our lives, marketers won’t have to think outside the box; they can merely look inside a device.
Contact Imaginovation to set up IoT for your business.
This article was originally published on the Imaginovation blog.