Wearable Devices: A New Frontier in Marketing Opportunity

Though the Apple Watch has only been available to the public for a few short months, make no mistake: wearable technology is here to stay. Not only are these devices a bold, new way to impact the lives of consumers in terms of both productivity and monitoring their health, it also represents an incredible, new marketing opportunity that cannot be ignored.

Behavioral Data

One of the key benefits of wearable devices to consumers is the huge amount of behavioral data that they're designed to collect - even more so than a traditional smart phone. Location data has been a huge emphasis of devices like the Apple Watch, for example, as this information is typically leveraged to help people keep track of the number of steps that they're taking in a day, the number of calories that they're burning, and more.

On the marketing side of the equation, this means that you can now use a customer's location to your benefit in ways that weren't possible just a few, short years ago. You could literally send a message to customers automatically when they enter a certain radius of your physical business, for example. Automatically sending a coupon whenever someone gets within three blocks of your store is a great way to entice them to come inside and look around, even if they weren't necessarily planning to do so.

Unfettered Access

Another one of the major benefits of wearable devices from the consumer side of things is that people now have a device that they essentially have instant access to at all times. They no longer have to take their cell phone out of their pocket or purse to check their e-mail, read a new text message, or more - they can have instant access to that content just by simply raising their wrist.

From a marketing perspective, this means that your audience will also no longer need to take their cell phone out of their pocket in order to see your marketing materials. As a result, the content that you're putting out into the world becomes that much harder to ignore - for better or for worse.

If a consumer both knows they've just received a marketing message from your brand, and is then reading it in seconds, the benefit of this is that you're now connecting with that individual in a way that is more direct than ever before.

The potential downside is that because these types of e-mails are no longer as easy to ignore as they once were, it could become easy for a consumer to feel jaded about the whole process. If you send too many messages and a customer begins to feel overwhelmed by the amount of contact that you're trying to make, you're suddenly that much closer to losing a potential lead who feels you're being too direct. A certain degree of caution will need to be practiced and restraint will need to be emphasized for the best possible results.

As is true with any new type of technology, using wearables for the purpose of marketing is something that will certainly require a degree of trial and error moving forward. Even though these devices are essentially designed to collect as much information about a consumer as possible, privacy concerns regarding how and where that information is used will still need to be addressed moving forward. If you're able to properly use that data in a comfortable, engaging and organic way, however, you'll find a new avenue through which to connect to your target market unlike one that you've ever had before.