What is IoT? & Role of IoT in digital marketing

What is the Internet of Things?

"The Internet of Things is not a concept; it is a network, the true technology-enabled Network of all networks.” - – Edewede Oriwoh

Internet of things (IoT) is a network of physical devices connected with each other through the internet.

The device could be smartphones, laptops, tablets, computers, smart TVs, vehicles, smart home appliances, door locks, wearable devices like smartwatches, heart and blood pressure monitors. These devices use sensors and actuators to collect and exchange data from their environments with each other devices through the internet.

Sensors are gathering information from electronic devices and uploading it on the internet and share it with each other. This process is called Machine 2 Machine (M2M) communication. The term Internet of things was coined by Kevin Ashton of Procter & Gamble in 1999.

Some interesting stats about the Internet of things

• According to Cisco, by 2020 there will be 50 billion devices connected to the internet.
• According to IDC, the worldwide IoT market will grow $7.1 trillion by 2020.
• According to Gartner, 250k vehicles will be connected to the internet by 2020.
• By 2020, every single person will create 1.7 MB of data every second.
• According to Frost and Sullivan, by 2020 each person is likely to have an average of 5.1 connected devices.

How Internet of Things (IoT) Change our daily life?

The goal of IoT is to improve the quality of human lives. Let’s imagine, you had a long day at work and you are stressed out. Your smart Air conditioner, smartphone, car, water heater, music system, smart bulbs, all are connected through the internet, and working in coordination with each other. Now your smart wristband identifies the stress level through your heart, blood pressure rate, and it shares the information or data to the other connected devices. Your car communicates with devices at your house and indicates that you are nearby. Inside the house, your Air conditioner, lights, and water heater are already turned on for you. Your music system plays music for relaxation. These all will be ready as pre-instructed, and now you can take a warm shower with beautiful music. How do you feel about it? Amazing, Isn't It?

But how IoT impacts the digital marketing industry?

IoT devices not only help to exchange data but actually helps to gather and create a customer database, which is very important in this digital era. You have probably heard the phrase “Data is King”.

With the help of the customer database, digital marketers can get better marketing insights and create more accurate digital marketing strategies.

Before dive into the topic let’s have a look at how IoT works.

How IoT works?

4 major components of IoT,

• Sensors
• Gateway
• Cloud / Big data
• User Interface

Sensors

Gathering information is the first step of IoT workflow. Sensors are continuously collecting data from their environment or object under measurement. Mobile phones, wearables, and cars, also have lots of sensors that collect data. A sensor is able to measure a physical phenomenon like sound, heat, pressure, etc, and converts them into a digital representation.

Common sensors are,

• GPS trackers
• Temperature sensors
• Humidity sensors
• Pressure sensors
• Moisture sensors
• Smoke sensors
• Radiofrequency identification tags
• IR sensors

Modern smart devices and sensors use wireless networks like WiFi, Bluetooth, and Zig bee to stay connected.

Gateway

A Gateway is like a bridge that connects IOT devices with a cloud. The IoT gateway is a key element in the IoT ecosystem. They collect the data from IoT sensors and transmit them to the cloud, and it also receives information from the cloud and sends it to the devices.

Cloud / Big data

Internet of things generates a huge amount of data. Activities like storage and data analyzing take place in the cloud infrastructure. Cloud refers to as the brain of IoT. The analysis involves interpreting raw data to determine which is actually valuable and finally it provides useful information to the end-user. This data is valuable for a predictive analytics model.

User Interface

The final step is delivering useful information to the end-user, and that is the visible part of IoT. End-user may be an industrial user or another device, which is in M2M workflow. Raw data transform into insights, and it displays charts, metrics, and indicators. Mobile apps act as an interface to control and monitor smart devices.

Role of an Internet of things in Digital marketing

Product development

With the help of IoT, digital marketers can understand, what customers actually expect from their brands, which will help to improve their product quality.

Internet of things not only helps to increase the product quality, but it also helps to forecast the demand and plan for new products. Accessing data from IoT devices will help businesses to make better and faster with better decisions.

Analyze customer’s buying behavior

IoT helps digital marketers to understand the buying behavior of customers from start to finish, and it will give a clear view of where the customer is in their buying journey.

It also helps to analyze the needs of the consumer, purchasing pattern, what trends impact the purchasing pattern of consumer, and location that allows marketers to customize the products accordingly. IoT can provide more accurate information about consumer’s preferences.

Big Data

Smart devices allow marketers to gather lots of data about consumers which will be used for effective marketing campaigns. IoT devices can provide lots of data through sensors about consumers than traditional research. It is estimated that by 2020, approximately 44 zettabytes of data will be generated.

Big data provides more accurate insights that will help marketers to reduce risk and increase opportunities.

Related post: Role of big data in digital marketing

Customer analysis

With the help of smart devices, you can read your consumer’s mind. Smart devices provide a huge amount of data which will give deeper and key insights about customers.

Data from smart devices used to understand the everyday lifestyle of your consumers. It allows digital marketers to promote products based upon collected data.

Data tracking

Data tracking from IoT devices will help marketers to predict when a customer needs a particular product or services. It also used for timing of sales and the real-time customer insights help marketers to boost sales.

Better Personalization

Personalization is an effective way to reach, and engage your audience. IOT helps marketers to connect with their customers on a real-time basis. It helps to target the audience more accurately, and it improves the effectiveness of the marketing campaign.

IoT allows you to gather a variety of information about your customers which will help you to identify what type of campaign should engage your customers.

Based on the collected data, marketers can give the optimal message at the right moment to complete the buying journey. It used by marketers to make more relevant ads as well.

Marketing automation

Normally marketers spend lots of time, and effort to gather customer data. But IoT helps marketers to save time on gathering and analyzing data.

Customer satisfaction

In today’s digital world, everyone wants the fastest customer service, and it is of utmost importance for every marketer. With the help of real-time data, marketers can respond to their customers faster.

More connectivity

In IoT, any smart devices can be used as a channel to connect with your customers. So every smart product will help marketers to connect with their customers, and that leads to more customer engagement.

Conclusion

Internet of things makes life more comfortable, and allow us to focus on things that really matter to us. The development of IoT will dominate the digital marketing world and that allows marketers to pitch efficient marketing campaigns. It brings consumers, and marketers, close enough to meet each other's requirement.