What Is IoT And Why Should Marketers Care About It?
Oct 30 2018 | 09:45 PM | 6 Mins Read | Level - Basic | Read ModeIndrajeet Deshpande Contributor, Ziff Davis B2B
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Indrajeet is a Marketing professional with 6+ years of experience in managing different facets of Digital Marketing. After working with SpiderG - a Pune based SaaS startup, he is now ready to work as a freelance marketer with different SaaS startups helping them with marketing strategy, plan and execution. His love for old-school hard rock and metal music culminated in taking up guitar and starting www.guitargabble.com.
He’s studying Stoic philosophy, experimenting with productive habits and documenting the progress. Get in touch if you’re keen to know how you can implement pro-wrestling tactics in your marketing, community building and storytelling.
IoT holds the potential to change the way marketing is done. Let's understand why marketers should care about it.
Internet of Things has been the talk of the town in recent years, and rightfully so. IoT has fundamentally changed the way people interact with gadgets. But what is IoT? And why should marketers care about it?
In this article, we will understand the basic concept of IoT and its importance in marketing.
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DownloadWhat Is IoT?
The internet of things, or IoT, is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers (UIDs) and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.
That's a bit of a mouthful. A simplified explanation of it could be as follows.
IoT devices are embedded with sensors, actuators, computer devices, and software the allow them to transfer data.
IoT platforms and devices are being widely implemented in sectors such as energy, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, healthcare, building and home automation, metropolitan planning, and elder care.
Also Read: 5 Ways IoT is Changing Digital Marketing
Why Should Marketers Care About IoT?
Morgan Stanley has predicted that by 2020, 75 billion devices will be connected to the IoT. If you think the number is huge, imagine the data you will be able to collect and the opportunities that lie within that data.
Following are the reasons why, as a marketer, you must care about IoT:
Community Building
Social media is still a major channel for brands to build communities and interact with them. Wearable technology devices, such as fitness trackers, allow users to share posts generated by the devices on different social media platforms leading to the development of new communities centered around the users of such devices. This serves as a massive opportunity for marketers to connect with a like-minded group of people and convert them into customers further down the road.
The Rise of Conversational Commerce
According to a report by Edison Research, 43 million Americans own a smart speaker device, i.e. 18% of the adult population.
The development of chatbots, intelligent assistants, smart speakers has given rise to conversational commerce allowing users to shop online, check order status, and locate stores, restaurants, events in the vicinity through these interfaces.
This has given marketers a new touchpoint in the customer journey to stay connected with their audience. In the future, the introduction of new devices will form a mesh where everything is interconnected allowing marketers to communicate with their audience on a more granular level.
Data Availability
IoT devices generate an immense amount of data allowing marketers to collect more data points about their users. The availability of data will let marketers test out new ideas and use the results as a benchmark for their next marketing initiatives.
Personalization
Marketers are using strategies like targeted email campaigns, custom videos, product recommendations and push notifications to deliver a personalized marketing experience to prospects and customers. For this, marketers heavily rely on DMPs and CRMs to get the right data.
Also Read: , AI, and more: How 2018 will Change Marketing as we IoTKnow it
Predictive Analytics
Through IoT devices, you’ll be able to track myriad of data points which may not be easy to collect with existing marketing channels.
With the help of predictive analytics, you can measure and understand the present and past purchase patterns, attitudes, behaviors and location details of users and make suggestions based on these data inputs. This will transform your marketing into the proactive mode from the reactive mode.
Improved Engagement
All the points we've seen so far in this article take us to a key conclusion: IoT allows marketers to show extremely relevant ads to their audience. People get bombarded by ads through both online and offline channels throughout the day. Most of the ads get ignored because they are not relevant to people.
Since with IoT devices helping marketers understand their audience on a pinpoint level, marketers can target them with content that is highly targeted for them. This will lead to your content including ads getting improved engagement and probably increased sales.
In Conclusion
IoT is the next big thing. Its application in marketing is evolving at an unprecedented rate. It is no longer only about the online behavior of your audience. IoT allows you to understand how your customers interact with smart devices, home appliances, and other IoT devices. How you upgrade your marketing strategy with these rapid changes is up to you.
Also Read: 5 IoT and Mobile Trends to Watch in 2018