4 massive ways IOT is disrupting digital marketing.

Digital evolution has made our lives a lot easier and a lot of people have been welcoming to this present era of IOT, AI, and other such overdoses of technology as a part of their lives.

As much as we all dramatically begin to reminisce over the smell of coffee and newspapers in the mornings on our good old days, fast forward to present day and digital life is petty cool too. The globe is increasingly beginning to adapt to technology and letting go of traditional habits.

Face it: Ordering things online vs going to store or reading on a kindle vs purchasing an expensive book and a quick money transfer vs a ride to the bank has all indeed brought comfort into our lives. People like technology. People like the easy way of doing things.

In fact, this whopping stats would substantiate the power of it.

The IoT market is forecast to reach $457 billion by 2020.

As IOT is interactive and the chain of connections enable quick means and ways of making things a lot easier. IOT is not just for intelligent cars and refrigerators, it is all set to disrupt content marketing as well. As for content marketing, learning its impact means an alert for content marketers like you to become more aware and prepare yourself for what’s ahead of you. You can create content that your user wants to read to create more context and better engagement. This data is a goldmine for content creators as they can monitor behavior, understand metrics and personalize content for their readers.

So let’s get to the basics.

What’s IOT?

Wikipedia defines — The Internet of Things is the network of devices such as vehicles, and home appliances that contain electronics, software, actuators, and connectivity which allows these things to connect, interact and exchange data.

This video by HubSpot is an interesting one on how IOT is not just a flashy technology making a buzz but is soon to become an integrated piece to better customer experiences.

So how does this affect content marketing? Let’s see the 4 big ways IOT is going to disrupt marketing, in detail.

Location-based marketing

As marketers, we are all completely aware of the personalized content experience for customers. This not only helps in relevancy but also recognition and retention of customers.

Now, let’s, for instance, say Max is a registered customer on Sephora, H&M, and Uber. Max, while signing up online with these brands on her iPhone XS has shared details about her current location and has enabled location sharing while signing up on these apps. Now, this is joyous for a marketer as it is the time to be the most helpful and offer great shopping experience. So if Max stays at New York and has moved to Alaska, where the weather conditions have been recorded to be too cold. Then, through this data-driven marketing, Sephora should probably recommend lotions and lip balms to beat the skin dryness and H&M should suggest buying leather jackets while Uber should give offers on a ride back to the airport.

That’s how personalized connected devices could get.

Contextualized and data-driven marketing

Marketing has always seen data as modus operandi to base all the efforts. Content and campaigns have always been based on a thorough analysis of the buyer persona. But, with IOT, this is going to get insanely contextualized and the experience to the consumer would be outstanding.

Customers today are almost always on some of the other device- either tablets, laptops or mobiles. It is just a matter of capturing data and insights through the behavior of each and every one of them to keep your messages super-relevant and meaningful. To have recipes and other related content display on kitchen-connected devices is precisely how contextual content would work.

As Marketo rightly puts it, more connectivity leads to more data, leads to smarter data, leads to more relevant campaigns, leads to more customer engagement.

IOT is connecting devices with objects. So, with the help of technology like a beacon ( an intentionally conspicuous device designed to attract attention to a specific location — Wikipedia) location-based targetting and personalized campaigns and push notifications would reach a whole new high-level of marketing communications. But, more about that in the later part of the post. Now, another example could be that of a refrigerator.

Say, you have stored milk cartons in the refrigerator and it is almost empty. If you need a reminder, then, IOT connected devices, that is, refrigerator connected to the internet will display the message on the screen, or even allow you to re-stock the milk by enabling placing orders.

Voice-search activation

Half of all searches will be conducted via voice in 2020. There are a lot of connected devices as far as voice search is concerned.

We have smart speakers and remotes and various other devices to skim and search for content. This means marketers need to rethink the SEO side of search.

They may want to target long phrases and more of how-to’s as a part of their titles on posts to be able to produce results for a casual search culture.

Catering to better experience

Shopping has never been this easier. Connected devices can simply make the process a whole lot easier, much simpler than logging in your account and ordering products. For instance, the detergent brand tide had a brilliant tie-up with Amazon, wherein, the Amazon dash button, which is a wifi connected device. So, whenever the customer was running out of the detergent stock, all they had to do was simply push the button.

Guess what? The order would be placed upon that. As we discussed at the beginning of the post, customers want things done in the easiest way. It is the matter of who makes the whole shopping experience super-simplified. IOT in marketing would help you get right there.

Mcdonald’s by partnering with Piper, a Bluetooth beacon solution elevated customer experience at their restaurants in the most brilliant manner. The moment customers entered the store, they were greeted on their phones and were directed to content that gave away details about coupons, surveys, and other relevant content.

Wrapping up

What’s been discussed is simply not limited to applications of IOT in marketing. It is still in its teething stage, but, not long before it is going to take things by storm. Understanding the impact of it in little ways will certainly help us prepare and be futuristic.

Hope you found this post helpful, do drop a comment below on how else you think IOT is going to disrupt marketing, I’m just curious 🙂

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Originally published at digitaldyno.wordpress.com on January 20, 2019.