3 Examples of IoT Marketing Strategies You Can Implement in 2019
By 2025, the connected userbase will cross 75 billion, unlocking new avenues for marketers to engage with customers. To better understand this emerging opportunity, we discuss:
- How IoT is gradually going mainstream
- 3 IoT examples you can be inspired by
- Key considerations for marketers in an IoT-driven future
The number of smart, connected devices is growing exponentially. What started with the smartphone back in the early 2000s, has now evolved into a wide array of smart devices, from watches to home appliances, and cars to product labels. The total database of the Internet of Things (IoT) will cross 75 billion by 2025! To put this IoT statistic in perspective, we’re looking at a five-fold increase in just 10 years.
What is IoT, and why is it so important for marketers? 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.
Well, IoT creates a huge base of connected users, sharing data, exploring purchase opportunities on a singular network, and waiting to be wowed by marketers. This offers a vital opportunity for marketers to reach new users and glean deeper customer insights.
Learn More: What Is IoT And Why Should Marketers Care About It?
3 IoT Examples to Inspire Your Marketing Strategy
While it’s still early for any sustained use of IoT in marketing, industry leaders are already making inroads, eager to be early adapters. For example, IoT featured in Coca Cola’s 2018 marketing strategy, with the F&B giant launching connected coolers. These smart coolers could constantly gather customer behavioral data, optimizing sales and operations. A similar IoT example is the Amazon Go initiative – a chain of retail stores where the entire customer journey, from walk-in to checkout, is guided by connected devices.
While these IoT examples may seem futuristic, they are paving the way for future, more mainstream applications.
In its Tech Trends 2019 study, Deloitte highlighted how the deployment of 5G networks starting this year would increase adoption, and make IoT more popular in marketing. Given that the world’s first 5G networks were launched in South Korea and the US in April, widespread implementation will soon follow. So, which IoT strategies should you leverage in your marketing strategy? Here are our three picks.
Example 1: An IoT-Based Product Campaign
Taking an existing product and embedding it with sensors for IoT connectivity can be the first step. You can take this even further, allowing customers to share their own unique content/data that is relayed back to your systems for valuable insights.
While this is probably among the more investment-heavy IoT examples due to the hardware and software costs, the results are definitely unquestionable. When beverage company Diageo customized whiskey bottles (meant for gifting) to carry customer-created videos, it brought them a lot of User Generated Content (UGC), publicity and also led to a 72 percent increase in sales.
Learn More: Marketing in the Era of IoT – 4 Ideas and 2 Success Stories
Example 2: Smart Product Labels
Your existing customers are an excellent starting point for any new campaign: they are at the very bottom of the funnel, interested in your value proposition, and are likely to be open to cross-selling/upselling.
For this more cost-effective IoT example (there’s no hardware required), you can apply QR labels on products that customers can scan using their smartphones – that guides them to related products, discounts, interesting product trivia, and even in-store experiences.
The global restaurant chain Chili’s brought this IoT example to life last year, with a scannable QR code placed on the tables during a live soccer event in India. This code could download an app on visitors’ smartphones and get them into a multiplayer Augmented Reality (AR) game!
Example 3: Geofencing for Customer Targeting
Smartphones are a good way to experiment with IoT marketing, given its wide reach and popularity. Combined with geofencing (a form of location intelligence where a smartphone’s built-in GPS is used to map prospects to nearby businesses), this can help you detect mid-funnel but highly relevant customers in proximity of your store.
For example, IoT can inform you when a prospective buyer is in the vicinity and send appropriate, personalized messaging about a coupon they could redeem, a better value proposition if they are visiting a competitor or a frequent purchase they could repeat.
Last year, Burger King executed this IoT example to great success — they launched a “Whopper for a Penny” campaign. Any customer within 600 feet of their competitor McDonald’s would receive an alert on their smartphones and be directed to the nearest Burger King outlet. Ouch!
A Final Takeaway for Marketers
These IoT examples are just the beginning. With 5G connectivity slowly gaining momentum and nearly every device out there becoming ‘smart’, we predict that IoT is poised to become a marketing staple shortly.
In many ways, the revolution has already begun, with smartphones being leveraged in creative ways by brands across the world. One outcome of this is that there will be more incoming data than ever before, requiring new approaches to customer data management. While we’re looking at a flood of new exciting IoT examples and success stories in the near future, are data platforms equipped for this deluge? The jury is still out, on that question.
Learn More: Why CMOs Need to Reimagine Data Management to Compete in the IoT Future
Which IoT example could inspire your marketing strategy this year? Share your thoughts with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.
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