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Scooped by Martin (Marty) Smith
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Customer Service in the Age of the Internet of Things

Customer Service in the Age of the Internet of Things | BI Revolution | Scoop.it
Say goodbye to the user manual.
Martin (Marty) Smith's insight:

When Things Can Talk
When your refrigerator speaks will anyone be there to listen? In an "Internet of things" where everything that makes our lives easier, better or cooler is online chirping their needs (real and imagined) will we listen?

Before selling my house to help the Story of Cancer Foundation I had a fancy refrigerator that needed a "filter change" about every six weeks. I can imagine that meeting. The meeting where the fridge team said, "Eureka we can create ongoing revenue from FILTERS". 

I wasn't as up to speed on buying filters, as I should have been for two reasons:

* Lot of friction in the buying funnel. 
* Wasn't convinced of the need. 

It wasn't easy to buy those filters, but what if my fridge has a webpage with my credit card and filter frequency. Wouldn't I just say YES to a subscription that would assure I had filters just before the old one died? If the price was right why not. 

And the price should be right since if I sign up for a subscription that is projected money in the bank. As part of that subscription why not charge me to update the fridge's operating system every so often. By doing an upgrade across the web my fridge gets more efficient as it sits there without me doing anything other than saying YES. 

If this sounds like manufacturers are about to enter our world of Internet marketing you are correct! I've longed stated that the most important communication about any product is online. Now the most important customer satisfaction and ongoing revenue potential will come from any manufacturer's installed base. 

If that sounds like a revolution in manufacturing you are also correct. Manufacturers, somewhat insulated from the web now by distributor networks, are going to need to learn social media, email marketing and web design on their own (and fast). 

BTW, it isn't just, "An Internet of things," it is a MOBILE Internet of things so manufactures need to skip right over all the lessons they missed and move past GO to land on the Boardwalk of MOBILE Internet marketing.  

 

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Rescooped by Martin (Marty) Smith from MarketingHits
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New Facebook Lookalike Audiences = Segments With Reach

New Facebook Lookalike Audiences = Segments With Reach | BI Revolution | Scoop.it

Facebook lists five ways advertising to similar customers can benefit businesses: fan acquisition, site registration, off-Facebook purchases, coupon claims, and brand awareness. The company says it has been testing lookalike targeting with select businesses for a few weeks now, and the new tool “worked well” both online and offline.


Once businesses get access, they can choose to optimize any type of Facebook ad for “Similarity” or “Greater reach”:


Via Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com
Martin (Marty) Smith's insight:

Segments Plus

We Internet marketers work hard to create personas and segments. I think of personas as ABOUT THEM and segments as ABOUT US. Personas classify customers into banded archetypes. Segments group based on internal metric similarity such as "VIPs", "Multi-Buyers" and Recency Frequency and Monetary groups.

If those segments sound like direct marketing it is because DMers are masters of segmenting. The seesaw is to balance personas or how to talk to THEM in relevant ways with segments or how to make sure the way you speak to THEM is also profitable for YOU.

Segments are internal ideas. You can't segment customers who don't visit your website become a customer (in some way). UNTIL NOW, Facebook's new tool says EXTEND your segments into our data. Cool idea since chances of converting are increased significantly if you already KNOW the segment.

This is because not all segments are equal. If Facbook can identify those potential customers most likely to become multi-buyers that information is VALUABLE.

The value of extending a winning message, offer or design to potential customers who should be positively disposed to any of those things is similar to the way catalog merchants cross index lists. Cool that Facebook has created "lookalike audiences" and should be worth a few bucks to marketers who can extend their segments into the great unknown that seems less unknowable now.

Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com's curator insight, March 19, 2013 9:13 PM

Narrowing down that targeted buyers will save businesses $ in ad spend and make Facebook tons of $$$ as they sell your information. What do you get in return, family photos and a deal on a new pair of shoes.