Marketing of Things

From Cus­tomer Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment (CRM) to Prod­uct Rela­tion­ship Mar­ket­ing (PRM)

The term “Inter­net of Things” (IoT) marks a new era in mar­ket­ing and in com­mu­ni­ca­tions specif­i­cal­ly. Lap­tops and PCs are increas­ing­ly being replaced or sup­ple­ment­ed by con­nect­ed devices. Today there is a vari­ety of devices and appli­ca­tions avail­able and used already. In addi­tion to the well-known smart­phones and tablets there are for exam­ple wear­ables (like the Apple Watch), in-car com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems, as well as house­hold appli­ances with smart func­tions in use. This results in com­plete­ly new com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels and touch­points for mar­keters. The new con­di­tions can be sum­ma­rized as “Mar­ket­ing of Things” or Prod­uct Rela­tion­ship Mar­ket­ing (source EVRYTHNG).

The impor­tance of these inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies is also reflect­ed in the fact that more than two third of con­sumers are plan­ning to add con­nect­ed devices to their home by 2019. In addi­tion, by 2020, an esti­mat­ed 90 per cent of all cars will be con­nect­ed to the Inter­net. Cur­rent­ly, the IoT tech­nol­o­gy is main­ly used suc­cess­ful­ly in B2B sec­tors, for exam­ple in man­u­fac­tur­ing or health care. How­ev­er, there are first com­pa­nies that suc­cess­ful­ly use Prod­uct Rela­tion­ship Mar­ke­timg (PRM) in B2C as well. There­fore, where the con­nect­ed con­sumer and IoT tech­nolo­gies cross paths, the world of mar­ket­ing of things begins.

**Things start to communicate
**Things (Phys­i­cal Objects) are no longer dead objects in IoT. Through intel­li­gent func­tions, they are not only able to col­lect data, but also analyse and exchange them with oth­er devices and solu­tions via the cloud. The data col­lect­ed is espe­cial­ly used for mon­i­tor­ing, man­age­ment, opti­mi­sa­tion and automa­tion accord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Michael Porter. New touch­points in the Inter­net of Things, also mean new oppor­tu­ni­ties for mar­keters to con­nect and engage with cus­tomers. And this of course results in new ways to do bet­ter cross- and upsell. In 2020, each sec­ond 57,000 new “things” ie. devices and con­nect­ed objects will be added to the Inter­net of Things. This not only means we are liv­ing in a con­nect­ed, but also in a hyper-per­son­alised world. We are just at the dawn of a rev­o­lu­tion. But mar­keters need to get famil­iar with new tech­nolo­gies, chan­nels and devices today, to stay in touch with their cus­tomers tomor­row and keep up with the enor­mous pace of inno­va­tion. The per­son­alised approach in a con­nect­ed world is a pre­req­ui­site for the mar­ket­ing of things.

Mar­ket­ing of things — new oppor­tu­ni­ties in cus­tomer communicationsIn a con­nect­ed world, in which things are linked to peo­ple, the Inter­net of Every­thing emerges and touch­points inevitably mul­ti­ply. New touch­points mean new oppor­tu­ni­ties for mar­keters. Focus­ing on the cus­tomer life­cy­cle and main­tain­ing con­sis­ten­cy will result in bet­ter expe­ri­ences through­out the whole cus­tomer jour­ney, thanks to per­son­al­i­sa­tion, con­tex­tu­al mes­sag­ing and real-time mar­ket­ing. For exam­ple, rel­e­vant and tai­lored offers will be sent to a cus­tomer in real time through their Smart­Watch based on their cur­rent location.

Abso­lut Vod­ka — The “Con­nect­ed Cocktail”
Some com­pa­nies have start­ed lever­ag­ing IoT with­in their Mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives: Pern­od Ricard is about to speed up the dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion. For their largest brand Abso­lut Vod­ka, the com­pa­ny is mak­ing the tran­si­tion from a sta­t­ic glass bot­tle to a prod­uct that inter­acts with the con­sumer. Through exchange of data, the com­pa­ny wants to learn which ser­vices per­fect­ly fit their respec­tive con­sumers, in order to pro­vide them with per­son­alised offers. For exam­ple, these can be cock­tail recipes adapt­ed to the per­son­al pref­er­ences, or even a taxi ser­vice which is offered after a long night of par­ty­ing. This aims at strength­en­ing cus­tomer rela­tion­ships and build up new busi­ness mod­els and services.

Renault — The per­fect link to customers
To cre­ate expe­ri­ences across all touch­points in a con­nect­ed world, com­pa­nies need cam­paign man­age­ment sys­tems that give them a 360-degree view of their cus­tomers. These solu­tions also have to ensure con­sis­ten­cy in terms of con­tent, chan­nels and exe­cu­tion. With Adobe Cam­paign, Renault cen­tralised exist­ing mar­ket­ing chan­nels like direct mail, email, online, and SMS. The cam­paign man­age­ment solu­tion also sup­ports the dis­trib­uted mar­ket­ing mod­el of the French car man­u­fac­tur­er. With a sin­gle man­age­ment solu­tion and improved inte­gra­tion with its cen­tral cus­tomer data­base, the com­pa­ny can bet­ter track indi­vid­ual cus­tomer jour­neys. In the near future, these jour­neys will also include touch­points out of the Inter­net of Things. Renault plans to inte­grate Adobe Cam­paign with its con­nect­ed car system—called R‑link—to pro­vide ser­vice reminders to cus­tomers. Today the brand achieves a bet­ter under­stand­ing of each cus­tomer on each touch­point and in each geography.

So Mar­ket­ing of Things offers new oppor­tu­ni­ties to engage with cus­tomers and to con­nect prod­ucts with ser­vices and expe­ri­ences. These expe­ri­ences need to be per­son­al, rel­e­vant and in real-time. But as stat­ed before mar­keters need to gain knowl­edge to keep up with the pace. The per­son­alised approach in a con­nect­ed world is a pre­req­ui­site for the mar­ket­ing of things. Do you have what it takes to cre­ate expe­ri­ences in a con­nect­ed word?