How the Internet of Things Will Help Us, Marketers

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As marketers, our main responsibility is to recognize the trends before they become trends, to adapt on the go and to offer our current or potential clients what they wish, for before they know themselves what it is that they desire. The word that makes the difference here is Data. IoT Data.

ABI Research estimates that over 30 billion devices will be wirelessly connected to IoT by 2020.

Up until a few years ago, we were trying to get insights with the help of conventional methods: surveys and focus groups. Now however, due to the Internet of Things, we can clearly see how, for example, a consumer uses an app, and ultimately, a product, or what kind of interaction they have with certain features. Also, we can identify consumer’s user experience issues in real time, having thus the possibility to improve our products right away.

Manufacturers can see how, when, and where their clients use a product. This type of Data can later be used by us, marketers. Imagine the analytics dashboard behind a Social Media page: there, we can see the times that our page followers are online and, based on this, we can make a Digital Marketing decision. Now, imagine that, in the near future, we will have such Data regarding a product. Moreover, we will be able to introduce, in our Digital funnel, data relating to what could impact the sale of our products, and based on this Data, we can build an even better Digital Marketing strategy.

A step forward for us, marketers, as well as for the other professional categories – like engineers, would be to join forces. Let’s start synchronizing our efforts: on the one hand, the manufacturing ones, and on the other hand, the Marketing ones. For example, let’s take a product, namely one equipped with performance-monitoring sensors, which can ultimately schedule repairs. Unavoidably, there will be some damage in the life cycle of the product: after how much time would repairs or improvements be required? Such Data is essential not only to us, marketers, but especially to manufacturers. The latter will be able to improve the product, while us, marketers— in turn, will be able to find the right way to convey the improvements brought to the product to our audience.

And all of this can happen in real time. But how? For example, let’s take the company KONE, one of the world leaders in the lift and escalator industry, with which IBM started collaborating. This is what the future looks like: besides a single ride in the elevator, people will able to see personalized ads based on the current weather, or based on real-time news broadcasts. If it rains, then they will probably see an umbrella ad; if there is a heat wave instead, they might see an ad featuring a sun protection body lotion. Not to mention the emotional impact of breaking news which, as inappropriate as it may sound, marketers can take advantage of in real time, through ads.

This is what I believe to be the future of Data and implicitly – it’s Digital Marketing. And it looks promising. Not to mention that, according to the predictions made by Forrester Research for 2018, roles with more customer involvement will have faster growth in new project spending.

An estimation would be that the marketing’s technology budget will grow by double digits this year, showing the fastest growth at 14% as marketing technology, automation and commerce capabilities will get their due. Also, among all C-Level executives with fast-growing new project spending, the CMOs will tend the most to take the lead in tech buying as stated in the same predictions made by Forrester.

Based on these, I also believe, and can estimate, that in the near future, as marketers, we will join forces with engineers for example, and within companies— an essential part here is to be played by CMOs, as well as by CIOs or CTOs. The increased role of the CMOs across the organization, in collaboration with some other essential roles, is also backed by our latest IBM C-Suite Study, according to which CMOs will start using — or already using — more collaborative business models. While trying to make their organizations more digitally literate, CMOs will extend their reach and range, and ultimately produce more value collectively than they can individually.