What can IoT do for marketing? Or a better question: How can marketing’s use of IoT better serve customers and business goals? IoT allows marketers to create vastly different experiences, connecting the digital and physical worlds, of course, if they dare to think outside the box and go beyond the sheer aspects of personalized messaging. In this post, we take it a step further, especially since marketing is not just a data-driven marketing environment for IoT, because there are more opportunities than just changing the traditional product relationship with smart devices and wearables. Today, most IoT projects are about optimizing and automating processes and goals that are only indirectly related to customers. However, in some industries, such as retail, there are stronger external and customer-facing components that focus more on customer experience and retention.
Industrial IoT for Customer Engagement
When it comes to customer experience or customer loyalty, “soft” IIoT applications (Industrial IoT) come into play. For example, in the areas of smart metering (utilities) and insurance (IoT even for price models), to name a few. Obviously, once you start adding devices, the “connected consumer” becomes hyper-connected, as happens in the Internet of Things, and is a great source of marketing data. In the retail purchasing environment, marketers are increasingly turning to IoT. Conversely, leveraging IoT in marketing also enables marketers to provide consumers with highly contextualized and tailored information, such as incorporating digital signage in brick-and-mortar environments such as stores, or digital interactions via mobile or other devices. Research shows that customers are often the key to the retail IoT business case. According to credible research, customer engagement and wealth control are even at the heart of the IoT retail business case, as the research suggests in a study looking at retail IoT spending announced in late 2015.
Power Of Iot in Marketing
Whether in retail or other industries, the key benefits of IoT in marketing are related to an important part of IoT: data and data analysis. Marketing is very data-driven these days, and the gold mine of IoT data is very attractive to marketers. However, since the data used for IoT marketing purposes is often private, this is one of the areas where we need to pay special attention. How are marketers using IoT? Important here are new regulations, such as the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). We’ve given some examples, but there’s more here. How can IoT be used for marketing?
Understanding The Importance of Customer Experience
Well, marketers need to understand the fact that customer experience is end-to-end, and they need to work with other departments to stay relevant. For example, beacons help customers purchase products based on their preferences and online/offline buying behavior. IoT is inherently optimized for the use of social media. Social media can be a great platform for generating new leads. It builds the relationship between the brand and the customer. Smart digital marketers need to convert these leads into potential buyers. The Internet of Things can help achieve this better. Digital marketers can bombard customers with personal ads and promotions based on their personal preferences. Various community and social media groups can quickly become potential buyers of the product. With widespread adoption of IoT in several core business areas, we can expect increased employment opportunities. The world’s leading IT countries, including the US, India, EU and China, are most likely to see IoT-related jobs. Trends point to a surge in e-commerce in Asia’s sprawling economies. There is an abundance of online jobs popping up in all areas of digital marketing. This growth is driven by digital marketing. Data from the Internet of Things is so useful that digital marketers want to collect data not only from traditional hard points like laptops, smartphones, and tablets, but also from car dashboards or refrigerator shelves. Hence, digital marketing professionals can look forward to success in their careers. However, analyzing so much data presents a new set of challenges for digital marketers. Accessing so much sensitive data also entails greater responsibility. There will be strict privacy and security regulations to protect consumer and business data.
The Road Ahead
In the future, more digital devices and platforms will be created to collect more data. New technologies are being developed to support authentication and encryption techniques to prevent any data leakage. This will have both positive and negative effects on digital marketers.
