Why the Internet of Things is a Perfect Date for B2B Marketers

Image Courtesy: Marketing Journal

To put it in your visual scheme of things and possibilities:

It’s imminent that IoT will present B2B marketers with plenty of opportunities in terms of optimization , business process improvement, and enhanced performance efficiency. IoT offers scalable competitive advantage - leveraging it provides marketers the ability to take CX to the next level through hyper-customization, real-time analytics, and customer view. All of this leads to highly-informed decisions.

Mike points out:

• Consider an equipment supplier you can contract with to ensure you have a certain amount of paper (or coffee, etc.) on hand at all times. You don't have to remember to order more, and you don't have to estimate and subscribe and risk running over or under. Smart containers report when you're low and order more on demand.
• Consider conferences and expos. Big payoff there. Electronic badge scanners exist, but internet-connected scanners can relay leads to sponsors immediately and allow them to react and adapt quickly; if they had a conversation, if they saw a demonstration, any and all of that. You can automatically measure attendance, attrition during presentations, add overflow rooms or schedule repeat sessions if a room fills up, send requests for feedback based on who actually showed up, and so on.

Here’re some innate benefits IoT has for B2B marketers and what makes it your perfect date:

1. Personalization to a never-seen-before summit

“Personalization won’t stop when you turn off the computer. The greater the number of connected devices, the more potential for personalization exists.”  – Optimizely

Relevancy of content throughout a buyer’s journey or sales funnel stages is what makes for successful marketing. It covers the whole gamut – from brand/product awareness to advocacy/loyalty. With IoT, the timing of the marketing content and collateral delivered goes up several notches. Targeting buyers or prospects and then tailoring the marketing and sales pitch to perfectly match their interests is what fuels conversion rates. IoT powers your sales enablement technology according to the exact situation of the sales cycle so that you’re able to offer a next level marketing experience, and that’s in a way – CX.

For instance, HVAC marketers using IoT can offer their sales teams with different pitches based on the state of buildings – number of floors, elevators, safety exits, and more.

2. The Internet of ‘real-time’ things

A common challenge that lurks over most B2B marketing and sales teams is the timing of engagement. IoT overcomes this problem by allowing you to engage not just at the ‘right’ time but at the ‘ripe’ time. A great advantage of IoT is that you can do away with those focus groups and the suspense of waiting for survey results. With IoT, your access to feedback and data is absolutely immediate . It literally translates into you having a dialogue with your prospects at every instant, but with their consent.

For context, let’s say a logistics company is functioning through your connected trucks. As a marketer, you can engage with the company before one of the trucks is about to breakdown. Also, by monitoring the truckloads, you’ll be able to reach your client when they need to add a truck to their fleet in case of an increase in delivery size.

Mike affirms:

Think about it like this: IoT reduces (or eliminates) the need for people to make manual observations and manual adjustments. That means increased speed and/or increased accuracy. IoT reduces "noise" activity. Fewer emails asking questions. Fewer trips. All this improves the quality of work; you can spend more time talking to customers, making judgements, crafting rules to be automatically carried out, etc.

3. Post-purchase tracking in a new avataar

IoT enables B2B marketers to track the complete purchase proceedings and beyond. It starts when a prospect visits your site for the first time till they buy your product/services. What sets IoT apart is that it helps you track the post-purchase journey of the buyers as well. Without it, the only way forward was collecting those endless, and sometimes futile data or asking buyers to register their product. IoT helps you to monitor how your product is being used, when it’s getting used, the frequency of usage, monitor breakdowns in real time etc. This opens up several opportunities for the B2B seller to deliver meaningful and enhanced CX.

It’s expected that in times ahead, IoT would leverage ‘intelligent data points’ to design influences that are beyond just business interactions, and would be inclusive of social interactions, market forces, and behavioral economics. Now, isn’t that fascinating for any marketer!

4. A whole new dimension to customer relationships

IoT allows you to efficiently corroborate, manage, and measure CX creating a whole new dimension for your CRM strategies. In essence, with the expanse of data you can get through IoT, is pretty much a 3D customer view . That enables your sales reps to add and generate value during every conversion as they can inculcate industry-specific insights in it.

Investments in IoT in days ahead are a given for B2Bs. However, there’re certain crucial aspects worth mulling over.

According to Mike:

• Security would be the big one. To date, IoT has been remarkably lax on this front; security settings are left at the default settings, and the options for hardening them aren't that great all too often.
• Applicability would be another one; while IoT can help with many problems, it certainly isn't for everything. Technology for technology's sake isn't really helpful. An easy way to spot opportunities for IoT is the presence of a great deal of repetitive work – especially with monitoring and customization. If everything is custom work (think management consulting), IoT is going to be of very limited value.
• Focus would be one more factor. You need to decide whether the payoff of acquiring smart devices exceeds the cost of acquiring them and switching over to them. Say you're a coffee supplier to offices in downtown Chicago; should you focus on automatic monitoring/resupplying or on the quality of the coffee itself? Which will result in more business?

Connected cars, elevators, microwaves, HVAC systems, and other such devices are only an IoT dawn. The scope of IoT in the B2B marketing scheme of things is incredibly infinite. In fact, you can safely say that this is just the beginning or the first wave of IoT. Add to all IoT possibilities the magic wands of APIs, cloud tech, and AI, and you’re left with a myriad of thoughts along with probably the most famous song ever by Lennon – ‘Imagine’.