You Can’t Always Get What You Want, But If You Try Sometimes You Might Find Technology Gives You What You Need

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Whether the retail industry realises it or not, it stands at the forefront of the technology revolution.

One only needs to go to an industry show these days to see that the sheer number of tech firms in attendance trying to sell into that market is staggering. These tech firms, however, are all offering to do the same thing, provide data analytics to retailers about their customers.

This is all aimed at ensuring that people are exposed to more targeted and more effective adverts depending on past behaviour, preferences and what consumers may be interested in buying next. In effect, we have a multitude of companies who I assume make a profit as they still exist, serving up to retailers the answer to the question: “what do my customers want to buy next?”

This is in an attempt to reach what many consider the Holy Grail of retail – to know exactly what an individual wants. Leaving aside the dangers and ethical issues in collating such a huge amount of personal data on people, is this really the right direction for the tech industry to be going?

Retailers naturally want to sell. That is why they exist. On the surface, the collection of data on their customers makes perfect sense: The ability to know what the people they are targeting want should dramatically improve sales.

However, there is something wrong about the basic concept of data collection that is leading retail to a dead-end and, by extension, much of technological development. If all the focus is on giving people what they want today, is there any place for innovation? In other words – looking at what they will need tomorrow.

As Henry Ford said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

From the iPhone (more than 516 million sold) and iPad (more than 68 million sold) to the Rubik’s Cube (more than 350 million sold) and the Ford Model T (more than 15 million sold) the great success stories of retail came from innovation. It is what Peter Thiel called the “zero to one” moment, the creation of something that fulfils a need we didn’t know we had.

It is the fulfilment of need, not chasing wants that should be driving technology in this sector and all others. Technological development in this area is woefully lacking across all areas.

Take the example of selling ‘smart’ technology to the hotel industry. There is a multitude of companies offering smart doors, smart blinds, smart everything. All built around the idea of ‘isn’t this tech cool’ while seemingly all offering basically the same thing. Except one firm I have come across.

This company started from a customer-centric approach and considered what the hotels they targeted actually needed. The answer was to end one of the biggest costs for hotels the world over, with just $5 of technology. Their solution, an IoT system with motion sensors, timers and the like, stops the flow of water from hotel taps. This may sound like something small, but when a cup dropping into a sink and blocking the drain can lead to flooding that destroys 13 floors and costs millions to repair – as happened at one hotel – and flooding is the biggest damage cost to hotels the world over – it is a solution hotels need. Not shiny, not ‘exciting’, but needed.

This all poses the question, how do we get out of this blind alley of finding out wants, and get back to servicing needs?

The answer is to bring the person back in. People are not a collection of data points, no matter how much some may wish they were so. They are individuals who possess, as shown by Abraham Maslow, a hierarchy of needs. Rather than finding new and better ways to collect data on their customers, thereby allowing for them to be pushed more things they might want, retailers should find new and better ways to make their customers happy by fulfilling their actual needs.

One example comes immediately to mind: I was recently shopping for a new buggy for my daughter. As any parent will know, there is a monumental amount of choice in this area, with different qualities and price points. However, I only really ever considered one company, John Lewis. While at the more costly end for the type of buggy I wanted, I was happy to spend the extra. From start to finish in buying something and beyond the transaction itself, John Lewis cares about keeping its customers happy. To them, I am an individual that is treated as such, not just a set of data points to sell to.

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Giphy CEO: We Own Happy Birthday On Google. Next Day They Get Hit

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A Fast Company story on October 3rd profiling Giphy, the popular GIF search engine, ended off with the cofounder and CEO of Giphy, Alex Chung saying “Yeah, we own happy birthday now [on Google].” Then on October 4th, Giphy got hit and they are now on page two for the search term, [happy birthday].

Here is that snippet at the end of the article:

“Forget that,” Leibsohn replies. “You search ‘Happy birthday,’ we’re No. 1.” (This is true!)

“Yeah, we own happy birthday now,” Chung says.

If you can’t make money from owning happy birthday, well, there are 1,716 GIFs tagged “face palm” to send Chung and Leibsohn.

Do you think Google smacked them because of the article?

Here is Glenn Gabe showing how they got hit in search the day after the story:

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When Will We Accept That Smartphones Are Addictive?

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If you fail a university course or lose your job because you are so distracted by your smartphone then is the phone manufacturer to blame? Is addiction the problem?

It sounds like a stupid question, but think about it slightly differently. The tobacco and alcohol industries both invest heavily in programmes designed to prevent and treat addiction – likewise with the gambling industry. Any industry selling a product that could potentially be addictive is forced to take measures to prevent addiction, such as funding awareness programmes or treatment charities.

You can argue that the measures are not enough. Gambling companies want to encourage gambling, not stop their customers logging in and placing bets, but most organisations are responsible. The gambling companies don’t want a wave of online poker addicts meaning their entire industry is more heavily regulated or closed completely. The drinks companies want you enjoy a good night out, but not to the extent that you rely on drinking their products every night and sleeping rough. Addictive products have a place in society when they are used responsibly.

But are we ignoring the addictive nature of smartphones? Try taking away someone’s phone today and see how long they can cope without it. Look around on a train or bus and see how many people are lost to the real world, gazing blankly into their phone. Phone separation, or battery status, is now a genuine source of anxiety for many people.

The Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive recently said that constant use of an iPhone is actually misuse. He uses an Apple Watch to filter the number of notifications he personally has to interact with. What he is implying is that most people are constantly distracted by their phone. The product is being misused and this is the man who designed the iPhone.

When Tim Cook was asked if the iPhone creates poor social behaviour he dodged the question, but now we are a decade into the smartphone era the data is starting to arrive. The Wall Street Journal recently published research indicating that college students who left their phone outside the lecture theatre – and therefore were more focused on the class – scored a full grade higher. Academics believe that the intellectual reliance on smartphones is having a seriously adverse effect on our mental skills, such as problem solving and creativity.

Apple and Samsung do all they can to encourage us to use our phones even more. Researchers suggest that the average American interacts with their phone at least 80 times a day. When the Financial Times profiled how British teenagers relate to their phones, they found that 13-year-olds feel a closer relationship to their phone than to other family members. The phone has become a family member. What happens when we move beyond smartphones to wearables and implants?

I’ve talked for several years to corporate leaders about how they need to change the way they talk to customers because the way that customers talk to each other has changed. It’s obvious really. When is the last time you called a family member for a catch-up? In fact when is the last time you called anyone or answered a call from a number that isn’t in your contact list? Voice calls feel disruptive today when compared to texting. It’s a lot to expect the recipient of a call to drop everything they are doing so they can focus on a conversation with you.

Conversation is now largely through text and social networking platforms. Families are held together by Facebook. Kids share activities from their day via Snapchat. I’m not an anthropologist, but I can see that in just ten years there has been a complete revolution in how humans interact and communicate. There must surely be an effect on how we process information and learn – we just don’t know what will change at this point. It’s still too early and change is coming so fast.

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Busting The Myths About Technology For Seniors

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There is a sobering thought from telecoms giant Ericsson: “Technology will never move as slowly as it does today”.

This is good news for companies which want to sell faster internet connections, devices which can do more things and be more connected, but what about those people who are left behind?

It’s often thought that almost no-one is. Talk to social workers who look after the homeless and drug addicted and you’ll learn that even those who have nothing, have a mobile phone. But there are some people who are locked out by technology.

They are those for whom technology has passed them by. It’s important to remember that they are old, not stupid. It doesn’t help that many of the devices designed for older people are labelled “simple” with the negative connotation that the word might have when you think of a person being simple.

The two big myths about technology for older people are that the products need to be “simple” and that the customers need to be taught to use technology.

The thing which is missing here is familiarity. It’s not technology which is intrinsically difficult, it’s how you understand it. I collect typewriters and took my 1930s Imperial over to my mother so that she could teach me how to set the tab stops and margins. Hand a twelve year old a cassette recorder or millennial a slide projector and they will struggle.

What older people need is technology they feel comfortable with. It’s easy to think that double-tapping and swiping are “natural” but they are not. They are a learned behaviour. Indeed someone used to a mechanical world will press harder on a screen when an icon fails to react because they are used to having to force metal contacts together to make a connection. Pressing harder used to work.

There is a vicious circle of not making products older people can understand, because older people don’t buy them and so the customers get left further and further behind. The chip manufacturer MediaTek produces reference designs: recipes for how to use its chips so that phone manufacturers can make products with minimal research and design. The reference design for its ‘old people’ phones is appalling, but the majority of Chinese factories unfortunately follow the recipe to the letter.

It is not worth most manufacturers’ time in doing the raw research and developing the right solutions because the phones sell in comparatively small volumes and at very low prices. It’s worth making your £200 Android phone better and different when you will sell tens of thousands, but the low volume senior phones get unwanted and confusing features like microSD card slots and dual SIM, when deeply concave buttons would be of more use to a customer with shaky fingers.

A fantastic guru on accessible technology is Ian Hosking, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge’s department of engineering. He’s done a lot of work on the design and technology curriculum for A level students, for mobile phone companies and the National Health Service. He says that a familiar way of providing technology for older people is through providing an operator style system they can call. There are now services available which do this and he described them to me as “spot on as everyone knows what an operator is”.

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3 Ways You Can Use Sales Automation to Convert More Leads into Meetings

this is an essay on 3 Ways You Can Use Sales Automation to Convert More Leads into Meetings.

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Salespeople are at their most valuable when interacting with customers one-on-one. They are highly trained, highly paid professionals who want to convert as many leads into sales as possible. In fact, 80% of sales people think the phone (where they can sell one on one) is the best channel for closing a deal.

The problem is that setting up a meeting with a lead requires a lot of tedious and repetitive work which humans don’t do well. Automation helps a lot but doesn’t replace the sales person. Instead, it takes care of the necessary tasks that don’t require a human touch, freeing up your salespeople to have as much one on one selling time as possible.

Adopting automation doesn’t even mean upending your sales process. Here are three simple ways of harnessing automation which will unlock your sales reps’ ability to make conversions.

1. Stick to Email For as Many Interactions as Possible

One on one interactions are essential for closing but it is difficult to scale them. Where somebody talking on the phone might be able to make 8 calls an hour, you can prepare and send 200 personalized email campaigns in half that time.

Because email doesn’t require a person to communicate in real time, it allows human input to be focused on creating personalized content. Repetitive content and delivery scheduling can be handed over to your sales automation software.

Let me give you an example. Most of the words in an email can be repeated. This means that you can create a template with spaces left for the sections you want to personalize. If you use an email outreach automator like Growbots, Yesware, or Outreach, all your sales rep has to do is create personalized information to feed into the template, saving them from having to write a completely new message every time.

That really comes in handy when you consider that with cold outreach only half of the responses you get come after your first email. We did a study of over 600,000 cold email campaigns sent on our platform to find out what percentage of positive responses come after each email in your outreach sequence. What we found was to get 97% of your potential responses, you need to send at least four emails.

Graph showing the percentage of positive responses that come after each email in your sequence.

It takes only a few minutes to set up a sequence of messages to be scheduled automatically to hundreds of email addresses. Not only that but most decision makers check their own email. Over the phone, that many touch points would take over three days. Even then your sales reps are more often than not likely to reach their lead’s secretaries or some other gatekeeper that they will need to work past.

It is easy to test and optimize different aspects of your delivery and messaging. Your templates can be easily A/B tested to see which subject line, format, and sequence works best. Even optimizing the time of delivery can have a big effect on the response rate. Different targets have different habits when it comes to positively responding to your emails. Take the example of this prospect:

You can double your conversion rate. (Image Source)

Automation means you can schedule your emails to be delivered at the right time, pretty much doubling your conversion rate over less desirable times.

2. Collect and Reuse Content That Works

You will find that certain responses to questions and objections work better than others. These can be loaded into an email accelerator like Cirrus Insight or Mixmax. They sit in your inbox and provide you with a previously prepared response you can send out immediately. You can also share these responses with new members of the team so that they don’t need extensive onboarding before they can begin fielding queries from leads.

When a lead needs more convincing or stops responding, they are not lost. An email automator like followup.cc, rebump, or vocus, lets you set up a sequence of automated messages that you can customize to address the specific pain points the lead has. Your sales rep can use a combination of responses that have previously been effective and then set them to deliver automatically. This way they can keep in contact with this lead without having to take the time to continually check in with them.

3. Don’t Leave Meeting Scheduling to Chance

After your sales rep has done all of the work to get a one on one meeting, they don’t want to lose the lead in the time between agreeing to meet and holding the meeting. Despite the fact that your sales rep’s lead has signaled that they want to meet, they can still lose them if your sales rep isn’t careful.

The ensuing back and forth that comes from agreeing to a time to meet loses a surprising number of leads. An automated meeting scheduler allows your lead to pick a time when both of you are available. There is no back and forth and no chance for the meeting to be broken.

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Bing Ads launches automated bid strategy to ‘Maximize Clicks’

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Bing Ads has announced the rollout of an automated bid strategy aimed at maximizing the number of clicks advertisers can receive within their budgets.

In August 2016, Bing Ads added the Enhanced CPC bid strategy, which automatically adjusts bids up or down based on the determined likelihood that a click will convert.

How to use Maximize Clicks

At the campaign level, the option to Maximize Clicks can be selected under the “Bid Strategy type” drop-down shown below or in campaign Settings.

In Settings, advertisers can set a max bid ceiling that will apply to all bids in the campaign.

Advertisers can also selectively maintain manual bid controls for certain ad groups and/or keywords in a campaign set to Maximize Clicks. At the ad group or keyword level, choose “Use My Bid” from the Bid Strategy drop-down menu:

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SearchCap: Google short videos, AdWords scripts & IoT for local search

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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • Submit your SEO questions to Google for upcoming short Q&A videos
    Oct 9, 2017 by Barry Schwartz

    Google hasn’t produced short-form SEO video answers for three years, but now they’re looking to start it back up again.

  • Answer engine JustAnswer now uses bots to route questions to human experts
    Oct 9, 2017 by Greg Sterling

    The use of bots to qualify questions or leads, which are then handed off to experts or reps, may be the optimal chatbot use case.

  • 6 ways IoT will make local search for SMBs scalable
    Oct 9, 2017 by Wesley Young

    Don’t turn your attention away from the Internet of Things just yet. Contributor Wesley Young contends that the data provided by connected devices could help smaller players better compete with the big guys.

  • 4 (not so) ordinary conversion elements you may be abusing
    Oct 9, 2017 by Stoney deGeyter

    Contributor Stoney DeGeyter argues that you should optimize with an eye toward conversions and let the rankings take care of themselves.

  • AdWords Scripts now available in new AdWords interface
    Oct 6, 2017 by Frederick Vallaeys

    AdWords Scripts have received some new capabilities in the new AdWords interface. Contributor Frederick Vallaeys walks us through what to expect.

  • Pick up the phone: Your best customer is on the line.
    Oct 9, 2017 by Digital Marketing Depot

    Marketers cannot ignore offline channels. Customers no longer see a difference between digital and physical. In fact, in this age of digital connectivity, inbound phone calls are on the rise. And it is often these customers who call directly to a business are a marketer’s most valuable asset. In May 2017, Marchex commissioned Forrester Consulting […]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Industry

Local & Maps

Link Building

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Danny Sullivan Joins Google Today: Will It Help The Search Community?

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While I was offline, my search mentor, Danny Sullivan announced he has accepted a job offer to work at Google. I’ll be 100% honest, I did not see that coming, in fact, I don’t think most of those who worked with him saw that coming and I don’t think Danny expected it either.

He said he will “serve as a sort of public liaison for search.” He wrote:

My title is still being determined, but the position will be to serve as a sort of public liaison for search. The goal is to increase the connection between those at Google who work hard on search each day and the public that depends on Google for answers. I’ll be educating the public about how search works. I’ll be exploring and explaining issues that may arise. I’ll be looking at ways to take in feedback and work for solutions to improve search going forward.

So it seems like a two fold position:

(1) Teach people how to use Google, somewhat like a guy named Dan Russell at Google.

(2) Bridging the gap between the webmaster community (us) and Google. Like a John Mueller, Gary Illyes and their team there.

He left the search industry just about a few months ago, only to return right back to it for the other side. Today will be his first day at Google. Which means a week of orientation and then a ton of training. He wrote:

I’ll share more about my new role with the search team in the coming weeks. It’s going to take time for me to come up-to-speed on the many ways Google already communicates with the public, deals with issues, and for me to learn more about how search works from a behind-the-scenes perspective. After that, there will be a better sense of how the new position will help contribute.

People have been asking me all weekend what my thoughts are about this. So here you go, in no specific order, without editing (of course):

  • I was shocked by the news

  • I had no idea it was coming

  • I’ve worked with Danny for 12 years

  • I have huge respect for him

  • He would not have taken on the role if he didn’t think he can help both Google and the search community

  • I wonder if he will be able to help

  • I suspect he will be able to help in different ways than Gary or John

  • I am sure at times it will be awkward for me and him

  • I certainly hope Google becomes more transparent

  • I am cautiously optimistic about this

I think that sums up my feelings overall – but I really think this is going to be a let’s wait and see thing. And there will be a lot of waiting and seeing.

A lot of people are calling this as Danny is taking on Matt Cutts role. But Matt was an engineer, Danny is not a coder. Danny, I doubt, will be making search quality decisions and decisions at launch meetings. But that being said, I found Matt Cutts, who is no longer at Google, to share some of the more revealing tweets about what to expect from this news:

Matt Cutts also wrote on Google+ that “Google needs this” and he is happy to see Danny join Google.

Some in the industry are saying Danny has sold out by going to work at Google. He has been advocating for the search industry for 20 plus years from the search community side and now to join Google, to some, feel like a back stabbing of some sorts. But like I said before, I don’t think Danny would have taken the job if it meant him stabbing the community he help found in the back. He really must feel he can help the community, above and beyond.

I do hope I get to interview Danny Sullivan one day on the stage at SMX, it should be a ton of fun:

But we will see.

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Answer engine JustAnswer now uses bots to route questions to human experts

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JustAnswer is one of the survivors of the “answer engine” or Q&A craze that was prevalent a number of years ago. The venerable (or ancient) Yahoo Answers is still around, and so is Quora, but various efforts from Google, Facebook, Amazon and a range of startups are gone.

The most recent entrant, Biz Stone’s Jelly, was acquired by Pinterest earlier this year.

The pitch is compelling: Humans are better than algorithms at answering complex questions, and users want “answers not links.” Yet almost nobody has been able to get the formula right (quality + scale + a business model) — and that includes Yahoo and Quora. But JustAnswer has managed to make it work.

Founded in 2003, JustAnswer adopted the paid-advice model that was also used by the original Google Answers. Each user who connects with one of 12,000 experts on the site pays on average $30 for a consultation. There are no ads. Most of JustAnswer’s traffic comes from SEO.

Last week, the site introduced “Pearl,” a virtual assistant intended to answer simple questions and qualify leads for the site’s roster of experts. The tool has been in beta testing for three years and has the advantage of being trained on 16 million questions and answers in the company’s database.

“This is a killer app for the chatbot era,” says Andy Kurtzig, JustAnswer’s founder and CEO. Kurtzig says Pearl adds significant efficiency to the process, eliminating the need for the experts to spend as much time determining the nature of a consumer’s problem or question before responding. Pearl can operate as an intelligent routing engine.

The bot can recognize more than 100,000 variables in conversation and ask context-specific follow-up questions. For example, if there’s a pet problem, the assistant would seek to diagnose the problem generally and then forward that information to the veterinarian-expert before the consultation. Users are asked during the conversation if they want to talk to an expert.

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6 ways IoT will make local search for SMBs scalable

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In an age of artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) may seem like yesterday’s news, but, of all the technologies currently developing, it has the greatest potential for near-term changes that affect local search.

While it remains murky how AI will benefit agencies, IoT is reaching a critical point in adoption and maturing to a stage where it provides actionable data. Or, as Brian Buntz with the Internet of Things Institute stated, “The IoT is about to shift into ludicrous mode.”

The growth of the IoT is spurred by decreasing costs of hardware, such as sensors, together with the ease and availability of wireless connectivity. IoT devices already outnumber smartphones by about four times, and growth is expected to accelerate further with Cisco estimates topping 50 billion devices by 2020. The amount of data generated by these devices is enormous.

Growth in the Internet of Things

Source: Cisco

Annual global IP traffic already exceeds 1 zettabyte of data and will double by 2019, Cisco forecasts. What is a zettabyte? It’s 1 billion terabytes. Or 1,000 exabytes. One exabyte amounts to 36,000 years of HD video, the company says. And Cisco adds, if a small (or a tall, for you Starbucks drinkers) coffee represented 1GB, a zettabyte would equate to a volume of coffee the size of the Great Wall of China. That’s a lot of data.

Back in 2014, Cisco’s CEO pegged the IoT as a $19 trillion market opportunity that will almost certainly change the way consumers do pretty much everything, from working to driving to shopping to exercising, and many other things.

And a subset of IoT, the location of things market — which enables connected devices to monitor and communicate their geographic location — is expected to reach $72 billion by 2025, according to Grand View Research. With location being the heart of local search, IoT will impact local search and search marketing in profound ways. But it goes beyond location.

According to Goldman Sachs, there are five main IoT verticals of adoption: wearables, connected cars, connected homes, connected cities and industrial internet. The first three are those most relevant to search, as they are related to consumer intent and behavior.

ey verticals of adoption - IOT

Source: Goldman Sachs

The SMB scale issue

Servicing local businesses with small budgets has always been a challenge for agencies. It’s too much work for too little money. It’s also expensive for SMBs who don’t enjoy the scale that larger businesses benefit from when purchasing search advertising or other marketing services. Both of which lead to the high churn rates at agencies that service SMBs.

Even though search boasts the ability to know the intent of users through keyword searches and display relevant advertising in response, it still has inefficiencies that are magnified for SMBs. Understanding user intent is largely dependent on how accurately the user can express his or her needs in typical keywords.

Let me illustrate with a personal example. I recently replaced an electric cooktop in my kitchen with a gas one. But the electric cooktop used a unique 50 amp plug. Instead of hiring an electrician, I wanted to see if there was an adapter that would convert that 50 amp socket into one that would fit the standard 15 amp plug that my gas cooktop used.

Gas range adapter vs RV plug adapter

What I needed (Gas Range Adapter) vs. What I got (RV Plug Adapter)

I must have conducted a dozen searches of varying terms describing what I wanted. I was repeatedly served search ads of products that seemed to be what I was looking for. But all the products advertised did just the opposite — converted a 15 amp socket for a 50 amp plug — an issue I discovered was common to RV hookups. I finally found a product conveniently called a gas range adapter. It seems obvious now, but, since I didn’t know the name for it, I wasted a lot of time, and more importantly, clicks on irrelevant search ads.

Consumers with experiences like mine may be why so many SMBs stop buying SEM services. But if search engines and advertisers had had more data about me and about my recent offline behavior, this problem might have been avoided, and I could have been served up information that was relevant to my needs.

Better data — which IoT can deliver — will both improve the consumer experience and result in better returns from marketing for SMBs. With better ROI, SMBs can better justify spending money on hiring agencies, and agencies can spend more time doing the job right. Data will also produce better results with automated processes like programmatic ad buying, reducing time and cost for agencies.

What kind of data are we talking about?

Current data use in targeting and retargeting is just the tip of the iceberg compared to how IoT will change the landscape. It appears nothing is off-limits when it comes to connectivity. Connected products being developed include mascara, contact lenses and ink for tattoos.

Simple applications would already be improvements over former or current uses. For example, location information can be enhanced by real-time data from wearables such as clothing, shoes or smart watches that indicate speed, and thus, whether the user is passing by in a vehicle or walking down the street. And, if the user is walking, it could indicate whether the person is walking for exercise, at a pace to get to a destination or at one that would indicate window shopping. Multiple location devices on a consumer are also more likely to interact with on-site location devices such as beacons and WiFi and help improve location accuracy.

Another area of significant growth for IoT is health care. Devices like contact lenses, implants, wearables or tattoo-like connected ink can track sweat composition and body chemistry, measure blood flow and glucose levels, or even determine whether you’ve taken medication. Lack of adherence to medical prescriptions is estimated to cause 125,000 deaths and at least 10 percent of hospitalizations, making such devices arguably medically necessary.

Home connected devices — including lights, appliances, thermostats, vacuums, pillows, TVs, lawnmowers, video cams, voice assistants, scales and security systems — capture behavioral data in the home as never before.

Examples of IoT devices

Examples of IoT Devices

But the potential lies in the way data from multiple devices may be integrated to tell a deeper story. Envision knowing the sleep habits of a consumer such as:

  • how soundly they sleep.
  • what body triggers occur before they wake up.
  • how many times they get up at night and turn on the lights.
  • whether they turn the TV on.
  • how that sleep varies based on the temperature of the room.
  • whether the chip-tagged cat climbing onto the bed triggers minor allergies that wake the homeowner.

The potential for insight into consumer behavior and responding with timely information is limited only by imagination. Yet the impending impact is already something agencies and SMBs can plan for. Below I take a look at six ways IoT will boost the ROI of search marketing for SMBs, making it a much broader and viable option.

6 ways that IoT will make local search scalable for SMBs

1.Boost search ads through improved targeting

Good data will make targeting the right person at the right time more accurate. Multiple GPS-connected devices per person provide additional location data for tracking users with greater accuracy and additional IoT data will provide deeper insight into needs and behavior.

For example, your wearable knows you just worked out and are hot and thirsty, based on your sweat readings. Your car knows there is a 7-Eleven two blocks ahead on your right where you can swing in quickly. And your phone can read you a notification on a 99-cent deal for a large cold slushy drink at that location which is good for 10 minutes. You pull in, and the coupon is location-triggered and automatically applied to your credit card when you pay.

2. Customer data becomes the new competitive edge

Large buyers of marketing services gain a competitive edge in scale by spreading costs over a large volume of interactions or leads. That lowers cost per lead. Smaller local businesses often don’t have that luxury, but good IoT data that improves the conversion of leads means that you can get more customers even when buying fewer leads. So the cost per customer goes down.

Ultimately, having the right customer data — rather than scale — is the new competitive edge.

3. Identify real-world offline behavior that drives online action

Knowing more about a person’s habits or preferences isn’t just about being able to target them directly. That data, when aggregated for many other individuals, reveals trends and predictability for targeting strategies. SEL’s sister publication, Marketing Land, recently published an interview with PlaceIQ CEO Duncan McCall, who explained that offline data on user location and behavior is a better indicator of intent than online signals.

In other words, knowing real-life choices, actions and behavior predicts online decisions better than clicks, search history and page views. Presumably, this is because the offline behavior is a deeper and more complete picture of the real world, at least until we live in a Matrix-like AR universe.

And that type of data is exactly what IoT devices collect and measure. The data can provide some surprising audience insights. Data from targeting platform NinthDecimal revealed that fast-food patrons were not the best targets for a quick-service restaurant campaign. Rather, DIY enthusiasts, moviegoers and leisure travelers were better targets.

4. Boost data sharing and overcome privacy concerns with services consumers want

There’s a great concern, especially with companies that have business in Europe, over evolving privacy laws. Europe’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which takes effect in May 2018, limits use of a person’s data unless express consent is given.

The way to overcome that limitation is to provide a product or service that the user values more than the information he or she is releasing. For example, a company called Mimo makes onesies for infants that measure breathing, sleep movements and other sensitive data. But concerned parents gladly turn that information over to the company in return for protection against SIDS or improved sleep routines.

Roomba, the maker of robotic vacuums, uses maps of your home to improve the overall user experience. The inside of your house seems like something most wouldn’t want to share, but consumers routinely choose convenience over privacy. If data sharing will make your vacuum perform better and get your house cleaner, many users will agree to it. Data might be shared with Amazon or Apple to link the device to your Echo or to Siri. It may link to any of a number of smart home devices made by Google (Nest), Samsung (appliances) or a flooring company or a retailer that carries Roomba-friendly furniture.

However, the GDPR prohibits making provision of a service conditional upon release of data if that data is not necessary to the service. While not law in the US, there certainly are discussions over similar privacy concerns. Yet again, providing related benefits in return for the data can solicit “freely given consent.”

For example, I recently installed a Honeywell WiFi connected thermostat in my home. Honeywell has since emailed me to offer a software upgrade that will optimize my thermostat settings to help save me money and states that customers save $71-$117 a year on their energy bills by enrolling in the program. I get customized reports with insights into my energy use, comparison to similar homes and tips to help track and improve energy efficiency. I’m sure those “tips” will include some referrals to vendors such as insulation companies, solar energy vendors and HVAC contractors. But I’ll likely opt in to save a few bucks.

5. Level the playing field in access to big data

One of the complaints about privacy regulations is that they favor the big players that have sufficient leverage to get consumers to consent to handing over their data. Not many opt out of using Google Maps because they don’t want to share their location data, whereas smaller lesser used apps are easier to say “No” to.

Apple is also limiting ad tracking and frustrating ad buyers, but since its revenue is not advertising-dependent, it doesn’t really care. Those restrictions hurt advertiser conversions, make retargeting less effective and reduce reach. Meanwhile, Google is beginning to block “annoying” ads in its Chrome browser, further demonstrating that decisions made by a few big players can have a lot of impact.

The explosion of IoT devices means a lot more players in the data supply chain that provide quality first-party data and widen the narrow funnel controlled by a few major players. With data being the new competitive edge, that’s a great thing for ad buyers.

For example, in my Honeywell thermostat example, ad buyers can target users directly through Honeywell’s communications to its customers, or Honeywell can use its customer data to match and target users within other third-party media outlets such as Facebook or Bing.

6. Overcome ad blocking

Ad blocking occurs because users are tired of being served ad content they don’t want. However, there are repeated studies that show users are receptive to targeted or relevant advertising.

Verve shared a study called “The Rise of Mobile Prodigies” at LSA’s Place Conference that demonstrated that young consumers want ads to be tailored to their interests, hobbies, habits and location. Forty-six percent of them even saved ads they found innovative to revisit at a later time.

InMarket shared a case study at the same event showing a 2.3x lift in purchase intent, as well as 100 percent positive social media reaction to ads they created for ProYo, a protein-rich ice cream product.

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