Those of us who still remember the slow speed of dialup Internet probably never imagined that technology would evolve to the degree it has. Today, physical and cloud devices that connect to the Internet (and feature an IP address) can easily talk to each other to send and receive data. These devices link to advanced programs, work remotely, process huge amounts of data, and deliver us what we want and need in a matter of seconds. This movement to connect devices and advance these technologies has been dubbed the “Internet of Things.”
More simply put, if a device has an on-off switch and can be connected to the Internet, it’s considered a part of the Internet of Things. The realm includes devices like coffee machines, the Amazon Echo, smart phones, refrigerators, washing machines, and many more. The industrial sector, for example, uses IoT for electricity monitoring, oil rig operations, and jet engine controls. The possibilities for adaptations are endless — and also a bit mind-boggling.
Aside from the changes and convenience the Internet of Things presents in our everyday lives and in various industries, it has special potential in the world of marketing. Today’s marketers have access to a wide range of customer data and the technology to help them launch more targeted and impactful campaigns at scale. The only obstacle is knowing how technology can help you and what you can do to successfully deploy these efforts.
We know that with technology being ever changing, it can be hard to keep up with new trends and adapt your marketing strategy accordingly. But when you know what to do, the possibilities of how you can evolve your marketing are endless and come with measurable rewards like more leads and better ROI.
To remove some of the mystery associated with new marketing technology, we’ve compiled a few ways you can easily leverage the Internet of Things to transform your marketing strategy and achieve better results than ever before.
Optimize the Customer Journey and Deliver Customers What They Want, When They Want It
One of the biggest perks about the Internet of Things is that it enables you to integrate your marketing technology and connect your efforts. This not only makes deploying your marketing efforts much easier, it enables you to easily collect and consolidate engagement and behavior data. While our customer personas used to be based on assumptions and mass market research, these new insights grant us the ability to understand our customers much better than we ever have before.
For marketers, this presents an opportunity to leverage this data to enhance the customer journey and deliver customers what they want when they want it. Insights such as pages viewed and forms filled, as well as capabilities such as lead scoring and segmentation, enable us to understand our customers and know exactly where they are in the customer journey. As marketers, we can leverage this information to deliver messages that resonate with their specific interests and needs –– encouraging our customers to progress through the customer journey and driving conversions along the way.
Attract New Customers by Taking Advantage of Micro-Moments
In a world where mobile devices are abundant and the answers to our most pressing questions are only a Google search away, many of us have become accustomed to immediately finding what we need. Therefore, companies that can quickly answer a customer’s question, or, to be more accurate, come up higher up in the search rankings, usually reign supreme.
Catering to the many needs of our target customers can be anxiety-inducing for those of us who are simply trying to keep up with our everyday marketing tasks. Accomplishing this, however, is much easier than it seems thanks to the Internet of things. As previously mentioned, marketers today have access to more data than they ever have had before. While it’s intuitive to use it to cater to our current customers, many of us don’t realize that we can also leverage this information to be proactive and create useful and targeted content that helps us attract new leads.
Creating assets like explainer pages, which address the type of questions that your target audience is often searching for, do more than just help you rank higher in search results; they also help you start off on the right foot with new prospects by introducing yourself as a subject matter expert. Furthermore, curated landing pages allow you to offer new leads with a wide variety of content and information that address their current questions and ignite further curiosity about what you do.
Drive Engagement Through Personalized Content Recommendations
Websites continue to be one of the most important and effective marketing tools at our disposal. Your website is where most of your customers first become acquainted with your brand and business, learn about what you do, sign up to receive further communications, and eventually become known leads. It’s also where you can track user behavior and collect important customer insights that will inform the rest of your marketing efforts.
All this is only possible, however, if you can present your visitors with a personalized and intuitive user journey that motivates them to keep moving from one phase of the sales cycle to the next. While delivering each website user with a unique experience used to involve a lot of time and manual effort, that is no longer the case. Today’s technology has advanced significantly, allowing marketers to automatically deliver targeted content that improves engagement without lifting a finger.
Website personalization solutions like Act-On’s Adaptive Web allow you to automatically adapt to each user’s behavior to provide intelligent content recommendations that encourage more time on site and improve conversions. These recommendations become more targeted as you learn more about your customer, empowering you to never miss an opportunity to reach out and engage.
Improve Your Marketing ROI (and Your Ability to Measure It)
When all the pieces of your marketing technology stack integrate with and talk to each other, you improve your ability to measure your impact and attribute ROI to your marketing efforts. For example, you can link a scheduled sales call to a specific email campaign, and you can easily know which content pieces are helping you secure qualified leads.
Why is this important? Being able to see how different efforts are performing improves your ability to identify what’s resonating with your audience and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly for even better results. More importantly, it allows you to show your leadership team how your efforts contribute to your organization’s bottom line, helping you make your case for more resources and support in the future.
In short, the sky’s the limit when you have the proper insights to help you grow.
Invest in a Solution That Allows You to Produce Marketing Efforts at Scale
Many of us think of the various components supporting our marketing and sales strategies as being disconnected, but that doesn’t have to be the case thanks to the Internet of things. After all, why should you have to use one tool for email sending and another for social media when you can invest in a solution that allows you to do it all?
Marketing automation platforms like Act-On help you perform every marketing task you need — at scale and all in one place. This convenience improves your ability to take advantage of the benefits listed above while freeing up time and resources to improve the creativity and quality of your campaigns.
Interested in learning more about how we can help you take advantage of the Internet of things to launch better and more impactful marketing efforts? Fill out this form to talk to one of our experts today.