Traditional marketing has lost its charm due to the lack of availability and usability of customer data. Generic digital marketing approaches mitigate the issue to an extent, but it often fails to generate a return on investment (RoI) that’s underwhelming at best. 

The optimization of digital marketing strategies often comes down to the availability of data. Only if there was a way that the companies could access user data directly from their devices, would they be able to maximize their digital marketing efforts. 

IoT devices offer just that. The long interconnected chain of IoT devices influences the digital marketing strategies of companies in a way that’s both effective and profitable.

What is IoT

IoT or the internet of things, a term that was coined in 1999, refers to a chain of physical devices that are connected to each other with RFID tags. The devices talk to each other and are remotely controllable.

 Here are 6 ways IoT influences digital marketing strategies. 

1. New Product Development

Companies thrive on the development of new products and building a sustainable business advantage through them. With the ever-dynamic market behavior, it’s critical that companies keep up with their product addition and deletion to sustain and grow their business. 

The products may be physical, digital, or a service. But the development process always starts with idea generation and ends with the product launch. And in every step of the way, data and marketing play vital roles. Before idea generation, the digital marketing teams are expected to gather data through surveys, and before product launch, they are responsible for maximum engagement. 

But for the steps to be effective, data is an essential element. Coffee makers, smartwatches, and smart houses are examples of smart devices. These devices gather a lot of data from the users. Whenever you operate these devices, they send the usage pattern to the servers, where the data is analyzed and organized. 

Smartwatches send health data, activity reports, and app usage data to servers. 

For digital marketers, these data are like gold mines fuelling new product development. Most often, the new-to-the-world products fail due to the lack of data. But, with the data generated from IoT devices, the likelihood of these products being successful increases exponentially. 

In many cases, customers are unaware of the products that they might need. Smart devices and the data harvested through them help firms invest in products that fulfill customer needs. The innovative resources are invested in places that matter the most with data gathered through IoT. 

1. Proactive Product Support

The key to better customer support is its effectiveness. Customers, especially Millennials, expect proactive customer support that caters to their needs even before the issue arises. Food delivery services calling you for a delay is an example of proactive customer support. 

However, the customer support aspects of businesses often go beyond calling for a presumed delay. But without extensive data available on customers, offering efficient support is impossible and lacks the modern touch that Millennials seek. 

With data sourced from IoT devices, companies can analyze the usage pattern for each customer and offer instructions to handle the product correctly without them ever stumbling upon issues that may arise due to mishandling. 

From a digital marketing perspective, this opens up possibilities to interact with the customers on a more personal level. By engaging customers, the marketers can harvest more data on their purchase patterns and predict future sales. For a B2B marketing agency, the availability of data proves to be a game-changer. The marketing agencies employ resources that can extract relevant information from the heterogeneous data. 

1. Providing Personalized Experience

Personalization, in 2022, is quite essential for digital marketers. And what could be more personal than the devices that you use on a daily basis! 

In contrast to the normal disconnected devices, smart devices offer a great deal of personalization, which is the element of focus for digital marketers. 

Your smart devices, like your smartphone, keep sending user data to the apps that you use about your usage pattern and time. These companies analyze the data and send you alerts on the products that you may like and you may purchase. In most cases, the personalized notifications work as a trigger for you to purchase the items faster. 

General electric aviation (GEA), through IoT, directly connects to its customers by eliminating retailers and distributors. The sensors used in their flight engines send data to them directly. Which they use to monitor the performance of their engines.

If any underperformance occurs, the company knows it before the users. With the data, they can offer product improvements or product revisions. This personalized interaction strengthens business relationships through IoT devices. 

1. Customer Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis, in a literal sense, is the practice of analyzing natural language and concluding the sentiments behind every review, tweet or comment about a product. The availability of data through IoT can be categorized and analyzed for decoding the hidden sentiment behind a customer’s behavior. 

Since the data available through smart devices are huge, it has the potential to replace market research surveys. Furthermore, customer profiling is employed for sentiment analysis. The customer preference, utility pattern, time of usage, demographic, and everything is collected through the IoT devices for predicting the future customer behavior. 

If a product usage time is declining throughout, it can be assumed that the customer requirements are unfulfilled. The company can take effective proactive measures to fix that without losing the customer base. 

 In digital marketing approaches, these direct data points are absent. Which, understandably, limits the campaigns to a certain level. With IoT and additional data points, sentiment analysis and designing better campaigns become a lot easier and more effective. 

1. Targeted Marketing Approach

Millennial purchase power is expected to reach $8.1 Trillion by 2025. And as millennium behavior suggests, they are more prone to invest their hard-earned money in technology and non-essential items like smart cars. 

It’s expected that the smart gadgets used by Millennials are fitted with IoT features that promote data harvesting and targeted marketing. 

Traditional marketing approaches like TV and radio ads don’t influence Millennials as they had the previous generations. Only 1% of the population is influenced by the ads. The rest believe the ads to be “unauthentic”. Thus a targeted approach, appropriate for the largest generation, is considered by digital marketers. 

A well-researched Millennial trait is an experience. The latest generations believe in experiencing the lifestyle rather than owning it. Even if they are reluctant to buy houses, they are open to co-renting and sharing the experience. 

Furthermore, they are more easily convinced by targeted marketing approaches that consider their likings and preferences. IoT devices send data regularly to digital marketers about the bias of each individual, making it convenient for them to design ads that lure customers in. 

Since Millennials are inclined to purchase IoT gadgets with their disposable income, data points available to them are far greater than their previous generations. With more data available on them, they can be subjected to targeted marketing more effectively than the rest. And as they are the largest population category, developing products and targeting the marketing by keeping them in mind is a viable approach. 

1. Purchase Predictions

Data collected through IoT can be analyzed to predict the future purchases that a customer may have. If a customer has bought a smart car, their usage pattern may trigger the marketing teams to suggest a smart audio system for their home. 

Most often, personalized content is designed for each of the customer segments to recommend products that they may take a liking to. 

The Bottom Line

Smart devices work in harmony. In addition to offering the latest automation features, they collect user data and send it to you. This huge data can be used to facilitate new product development, provide customer support, and offer users a personalized experience. Furthermore, targeted marketing and purchase prediction can be achieved by using the same pool of data.