The Internet of Things (IoT)will affect marketing strategies.
Marketers attending the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) were warned that the IoT means a need to understand where their customers are, both geographically and in the purchasing cycle, and reconsider traditional methods of advertising.
The 'Internet of Things' has become the 'buzzphrase' to define the ability to identify unique, individual computing devices and their interconnection through the internet.
"It used to be we’d just push an ad and hope to catch consumers, but now we know something about their behaviour," says John Cain, Vice President of consumer insights and analytics at SapientNitro.
"We can be there with apps and features to connect when consumers are ready and open for a conversation. That’s a massive shift from billboards and ads and circulars and building apps and smart content that gets deployed knowing when the person in ready for a kind of conversation. That’s the huge sea change that’s going on in marketing right now."
Rather than inundating customers with promotions and heavy sales, marketers were advised to add value to their customers and focus on services. Although customers can be easily reached in real time on different devices, it is important to avoid over-advertising.