{"id":633820,"date":"2018-02-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/latest-news\/articles\/iot-new-ally-for-marketing\/"},"modified":"2019-02-06T12:43:40","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T11:43:40","slug":"iot-new-ally-for-marketing","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/articles\/iot-new-ally-for-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"IoT: A New Ally for Marketing"},"featured_media":636346,"template":"","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[]},"schools":[],"areas":[22,23,26],"subjects":[],"class_list":["post-633820","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","areas-sales-marketing","areas-smart-society","areas-technology"],"custom-fields":{"wpcf-article-leadin":["The Internet of Things (IoT) is not just the big trend of the moment; it\u2019s the seed of major technological changes poised to dominate the social scene for years to come. The steady proliferation of new connected devices opens up a wide range of possibilities in many sectors, as well as a new paradigm for marketing management and customer relations."],"wpcf-article-body":["By 2020, the total number of devices connected to the Internet will be close to 50\u00a0billion. The incessant availability of new interconnected products illustrates the magnitude of this technological<\/a> trend, which encompasses all sorts of industries, segments, and regions around the globe. Now that practically any object can be equipped with the capacity for smart<\/a> and remote communication, the possibilities are endless.\r\n\r\nThis is made possible by the conjunction of three key aspects that define IoT: 1) sensors, which transform analog reality into digital variables; 2) connectivity, which allows data to be transmitted via many types of connections, including 4G, Ethernet, Bluetooth, and RFID; and 3) processes, which transform the compiled data into valuable information and knowledge.\r\n\r\nThanks to IoT, a wide range of sectors are becoming more productive and efficient, improving their products and services, and even creating new value propositions. Marketing<\/a> and sales<\/a> may be the field where the effect of this technology<\/a> is felt most strongly. With IoT, companies can collect vast quantities of data on customers and potential customers in real time, allowing a more agile response to their needs and preferences. In the past, data and variables of this sort could only be gleaned by intuition or market analysis. Thanks to IoT and the advance and spread of new technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, we no longer need statistics to understand the market. It is now possible to reach, get to know, and interact with customers on an individual basis.\r\n\r\nCustomer service can be optimized on the basis of real-time information provided by these technologies<\/a>. For the marketing<\/a> and advertising sector, this translates into the creation of new opportunities for interaction. This approach, known as \u201cproximity marketing,\u201d helps to build brand recognition and preference. If a particular brand manages to satisfy\u2014or even anticipate\u2014a customer\u2019s needs, that brand will surely be the first one she thinks of next time around.\r\n
Organizations must stay abreast of these developments and redesign their value-creation processes around product marketing, which is the reflection of the customer within the company.<\/blockquote>\r\nCustomer experience<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAll consumer-goods brands share one important objective: carving out a place in the minds of millions of customers. To do this, a brand must have channels that allow it to maximize interaction with users.\r\n\r\nWe can therefore expect to see more and more solutions that incorporate digital signage, i.e. screens that allow rich interaction with the user. The interface will be natural so that the user is not aware of the technology<\/a> behind the solution. Besides the screen, important features include voice recognition, contextual signage, haptic interfaces (touch-based interaction, e.g. the vibration of a mobile phone), and the ability to feel or manipulate simulated objects in virtual environments.\r\n\r\nThe result is a new user experience called immersive reality<\/em> or 360\u00b0 reality,<\/em> which entails new opportunities for creating, transforming, and disrupting business models in which the data are the product.\r\n\r\nBecause of IoT, it is clear that operational marketing<\/a> will remain an essential pillar of business development, since it must lead the conversation and get the customer involved. Organizations must stay abreast of these developments and redesign their value-creation processes around product marketing, which is the reflection of the customer within the company.\r\n
Thanks to IoT, a wide range of sectors are becoming more productive and efficient, improving their products and services, and even creating new value propositions.<\/blockquote>\r\nIoT everywhere<\/strong>\r\n\r\nGiven the transformative potential of IoT, you\u2019d be hard pressed to name a sector that has not started to explore the business possibilities of this technology<\/a>. Some of the most disruptive examples are found in insurance, city planning, home furnishings, and industry 4.0.\r\n\r\nIoT offers countless possibilities. Insurance companies can calculate their policyholders\u2019 life expectancy and find out, via wearable devices, whether they have healthy lifestyles. Practically all household devices can be interconnected, creating an automated ecosystem capable of adapting to the user\u2019s behavior<\/a> in real time. Smart factories<\/a> boost productivity and efficiency by combining the physical and virtual worlds.\r\n\r\nBut city planning is where IoT truly reaches its full potential. Smart cities<\/a> such as Barcelona, Dubrovnik, and Singapore have deployed sensor networks to monitor traffic, lighting, and even public fountains. These examples reveal the scope of the possibilities of IoT and show how this technology<\/a> encourages interaction with users, leading to new value propositions, greater knowledge of customers and consumers, and the capacity to better adapt to their needs.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\u00a9 IE Insights.\r\n\r\n "],"wpcf-article-extract-enable":["1"],"wpcf-article-extract":["By Marcos Eguillor<\/strong>. The Internet of Things (IoT) is not just the big trend of the moment; it\u2019s the seed of major..."],"wpcf-article-summary-enable":["1"],"wpcf-article-summary":["The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the growing interconnectedness of devices. Through the use of sensors, it is now possible to collect, transmit, and transform data into knowledge. The marketing and sales sectors are capable of using data gathered through IoT to interact with customers on an individual basis. As for product marketing, more and more organizations are using strategies such as digital signage to provide a user experience called 360\u00b0 reality<\/em>, which allows interaction via screens. Other sectors have also adopted IoT strategies: insurance companies have used this technology to find out whether their customers have healthy lifestyles, while city planners have used it to monitor traffic and streetlights."]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/633820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"schools","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/schools?post=633820"},{"taxonomy":"areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/areas?post=633820"},{"taxonomy":"subjects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/subjects?post=633820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}