The three major marketing methods of smart home products

Because the concept of smart home is relatively abstract and vague, so in the early stage of smart home product promotion, businesses often like to try to make more people understand their products faster and more directly through experience marketing methods.

Experiential marketing, that is, through a full stimulation and mobilization of the consumer's senses, allows consumers to obtain a certain intuitive experience through viewing, listening, sniffing, touching, using, etc., and forms a corresponding marketing method such as association, emotion and action. . Because this marketing approach can give consumers ample room for imagination, increase consumer engagement, and increase consumer awareness of the brand, it has advantages over other marketing methods.

Through experience marketing, consumers are more likely to feel the convenience brought by smart home products to their lives, and it is therefore easier to identify such products and generate impulses for purchase. In the past, smart home product merchants often conducted experiences by opening experience rooms or experience centers. Through personal experience and professional presentations and explanations, consumers do not have to struggle to figure out the abstract concepts of smart homes. And as soon as possible to learn how to operate smart home products, it has a more intuitive and in-depth understanding.

In fact, offline marketing is based on experience marketing. Experience marketing has its advantages, of course, there are deficiencies. Experiential marketing brings an intuitive experience for users, but also increases the cost burden for smart home manufacturers, such as the construction of physical stores, hire professional instructors, which are counted in the cost. In order to save costs and achieve a win-win situation, an online marketing model came into being.

Online marketing

To achieve smart home online marketing, consumers must first understand the concept of smart home, and then further understand the role and function of smart home. When consumers have a sufficient grasp of these, experience marketing is not as effective as online marketing. From the second half of 2014, many consumers began to use the online marketing model for consumption.

So far, there are three types of online marketing channels: e-commerce platforms, crowd-funding platforms, and smart home vertical website platforms.

(1) E-commerce platform

Among the domestic e-commerce platforms, the three most popular platforms for consumers are Tmall, Jingdong and Suning. Therefore, domestic smart home manufacturers also rely on these three platforms. With festival activities, the sales of goods will increase dramatically, and the number will be surprising. In the 2014 “Double 11” shopping carnival, Tmall’s turnover exceeded 57.1 billion yuan, setting a new record.

(2) Crowdfunding Platform

Crowdfunding is initiated by some creative but lacking funds. If netizens are interested in the fundraiser's creativity and return, and have the ability to support them, they can use the Internet terminal for financial assistance. As a kind of online marketing, crowdfunding platform enables both investors and fundraisers to obtain benefits.

From the actual situation, investors are still more inclined to strong companies, such as IOT Sensing, Haier, and Zhongye. Although these large companies do not lack funds, they can still build a crowdfunding platform for investors to invest in. In May 2014, the Haier Group raised crowdfunding for the “Intelligent Height Multifunctional Scale” within the company and raised funds of 50,000 yuan in just one hour. It can be seen that the crowdfunding platform is indeed a marketing channel with good development prospects for online marketing.

(3) Smart home vertical website platform

The products sold by the vertical website platform basically only focus on smart home products. The types are relatively simple, but this model also has its irreplaceable advantages. Due to the single product, the platform can achieve the ultimate in smart home products and services to users. For example, Baidu Future Store, which promotes sales of nearly one hundred smart hardware products, among which household items do not constitute a minority.

product sales

Compared with online and offline marketing, the smart home marketing channel has the biggest advantage of being able to accurately locate the needs of consumers. Therefore, as the third kind of "export" of smart homes, this kind of marketing channel will be like Google had once stated in 2014 - it will be spread over all kinds of "exotic places", such as TVs and refrigerators in users' homes. Glasses, watches, etc.

It can be seen that smart home is not only a product purchased by users, it also becomes a marketing channel and penetrates into all aspects of users' lives. Smart homes collect, analyze, and process data through IoT devices and can accurately perceive the needs of users, thus providing vendors with opportunities.

If the online and offline marketing channels are passive, then smart home marketing channels have an irreplaceable subjective strike. Perhaps in the future, consumers do not need to explain what they need, and smart homes can be paid for users at a certain time.

Of course, the grasp of "degree" is particularly important. While smart homes provide convenience for users, they should not sell products to users too much. In February 2015, Samsung’s smart TV was exposed to the fact that it would push people to the user every 20 minutes. This situation did cause headaches for consumers. Such acts as Samsung have deviated from the true value of the product, and purely for the purpose of profit, it is bound to be resented by users. Therefore, it is very important to have a good balance between marketing and protecting user privacy.