The world of marketing has dramatically changed over the past few decades. What once relied on traditional methods such as billboards and print, radio, and television ads has transitioned into the massive world of digital marketing, where customers can be targeted and communicated with through avenues such as social media, affiliate marketing strategies, email marketing, cross-platform campaigns, and more.
While these advancements have been spectacular, it isn’t the end of the road for digital marketing. Current trends have it that more growth is to come, particularly growth that far exceeds what we have already seen. This advancement of digital marketing is expected from a concept known as the Internet of Things (IoT).
What Is IoT?
The Internet of Things is made up of the digital devices that are connected with one another through the internet, sharing massive amounts of data across networks. Devices that are connected throughout IoT are any devices with processing chips that have an internet connection, including:
- Smartphones
- Computer and laptops
- Streaming devices
- Video game consoles
- Tablets
- Smart home devices
- Home security systems
- Smart kitchen appliances (fridges, coffee makers, etc.)
- Alarm clocks
- Modern vehicles
- App-controlled lighting systems
The list is vast, and the way IoT works is that devices communicate and share data to streamline everyone’s lived experience.
For instance, consider the Amazon Dash Buttons feature: Found on your desktop, your Echo Show device, or as part of your Samsung Family Hub smart refrigerator or other smart in-home appliance, these are instantaneous buttons provided by Amazon that allow you to instantaneously re-purchase a product when you run out. Open your fridge and see that you’re out of a protein powder you use each morning? Just push a button and it will be shipped to you shortly.
How Will IoT Affect Marketing?
The world of digital marketing is going to undergo a massive amount of growth, thanks to the technological connectivity provided by IoT. With more than 75.44 billion devices connected to IoT by 2025, sharing more than 79 Zettabytes (1×1012 Gigabytes) of information among themselves, marketers will have an endless trove of customer data to influence and guide future marketing strategies.
Businesses will benefit greatly from the amount of data produced at this time, helping marketers to identify customer lifestyles and trajectories through the sales funnel, all of which can be used to fine-tune marketing initiatives while narrowing the focus of the content, messaging, products, and more.
Furthermore, this data is expected to save marketers massive amounts of time, as instantaneous analyses and reports—thanks to machine learning algorithms and programming—will provide real-time results that will remove any human error by simply removing human work, thus giving marketers time to work on more important, customer-focused content and strategies.
How to Add IoT to Your Marketing Strategy
The massive aggregation of data from IoT connectivity can and should be utilized by marketers to its full advantage. The ways in which IoT marketing strategies can be implemented are vast, but it’s the endless diversity of choices and actions that makes them invaluable.
At its core, IoT strategies can be introduced to your marketing efforts for the following reasons:
- Connecting all facets of your marketing initiatives
- Increasing brand engagement through omnichannel approaches
- Tracking and evaluating your customers’ lifestyles and choices in relation to the sales funnel
- Instantaneous reporting of data and predictive analyses related to strategic trends
- Improving internal workflow, saving you time to focus on creating stronger campaigns and more customer-centric content
While these are all great outcomes, what are some of the ways that IoT can be implemented in your marketing strategies?
Marketing data collected thanks to IoT can be turned around and personalized to target your brand audience through crafted content, timed posts, and more. This is done based on the type of data you collect from the connected devices your customers use, which can include:
- Past purchases from your store and competitors’ stores
- Purchases made based on events listed in their calendars and holidays
- Their physical location in relation to you, particularly if you have a storefront
- The current season and what their past spending habits look like during that time of year
- What social media apps they regularly use
- What types of social media posts they most often engage with
- What podcasts and content they consume on a daily basis
The avenues from which you can derive your data are endless, and all of them offer your business great insight into what a day in the life looks like for your ideal customer.
This can be used to your advantage to create targeted ads directed at specific customers of yours. Even after you’ve identified the niche community that your business resides in, IoT makes it far easier to begin dividing that niche into smaller sub-communities that can be targeted with specially crafted content and messaging based on customer data and lifestyles.
For instance, this could involve collecting data from their in-home Alexa, determining what podcasts they most often listen to around the house; with this you can look into placing personal ads on more popular podcasts, marketing directly to these people. Moreover, you could utilize this data to identify interests within the sub-communities of your niche, finding influencers who align with such interests, and it could be utilized as a part of your company’s affiliate marketing strategy.
Stay Ahead of the Curve
Whatever choices you make with the data collected from IoT, the fact of the matter is that developments are coming to the world of digital marketing. As the way in which we evaluate customers increases, marketers will have to work to stay ahead of the curve, ensuring they don’t fall behind while their competition makes gains through leaps and bounds. Consider reading up on the advantages and approaches to harnessing IoT today, preparing your business for the future soon to come.
