With the technology rapidly improving and new IoT solutions emerging everyday, organisations are taking advantage of the various capabilities that smart gadgets now have. Making use of these smart solutions can have crucial effects on the success and growth of a business, while ignoring the latest technological trends can lead to outdated processes and, therefore, loss of clientele. So, how do you keep your business agile and leverage the smart IoT capabilities available? Let’s find out.
New customer touch points
Your customer touch points are essentially the ways in which your customers come across your business and engage with it. Generally, these will be your digital marketing activities, such as social media or email campaigns, guerilla marketing, your web page and word of mouth.
With the new smart gadgets entering the lives of people, new possibilities to connect with them and gain new customers are also getting created. Such devices may include smart watches, cars, speakers, and even everyday appliances like fridges or weighing scales. Finding a way to integrate your business into as many IoT gadgets as possible will create new touchpoints for potential customers and always keep your business in the loop with the latest trends and technologies.
Improved data analytics
Collecting and analysing customer data is one of the most important parts of any company’s digital strategies. It can tell you a lot about your customer’s preferences and behaviours as well as allow you to communicate with them more effectively. Leveraging the different IoT technologies for your data analysis will give you a much deeper and more meaningful insight into your customer’s behaviours. Such gadgets as smart watches or smart speakers tend to be used by people on a daily basis and stay close to them at all times, thus generating insightful data.
Depending on what type of industry you are in, some companies may benefit more than the others – for instance, the health-related data generated by smart watches may be much more helpful to a healthcare business. Nonetheless, every organisation should take advantage of the high-quality data analysis available with IoT technologies.
Personalised marketing opportunities
As mentioned above, the data produced by IoT devices will allow you to communicate with your customers in a much more effective and smooth way. Not only that, you will be able to personalise your marketing activities to a very specific level. The data from smart gadgets will provide you with such information as age, job, lifestyle, income, hobbies, typical internet queries, taste in music or food and much more. Based on that, you can optimise your marketing efforts to come out at the best time and as relevant as possible to that specific customer. This can not only improve the performance of your advertising but also the overall ROI of your marketing.
Scope for new business activities
While this may not apply to absolutely every business, there are many ways in which companies can use IoT solutions as a reason to introduce new digital services. For instance, a company that works in the health and lifestyle sector could create a suitable app for a smart fridge, with helpful nutrition and dietary tips for the customers. Another example could be a company specialising in outdoor activities, such as hiking and camping. In addition to selling physical compases and maps, they could create apps suitable for smart watches.
Such opportunities for digital business activities leveraging IoT solutions can not only introduce new and diversified streams of revenue, but also increase brand awareness among the customers.
