Marketing Home Automation to Consumers: A Brief Guide

Home automation is a trending topic for everything from home comfort systems to security and lighting. With the advent of voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and a slew of interconnected home devices, this new category of technology is practically unavoidable.

Now is the perfect time for your home services company to gain a foothold in this industry. When it comes to successfully marketing home automation technology to consumers, however, the devil is in the details. Read on to learn how to create a comprehensive home automation marketing strategy for your business.

Finding Your Place in the Home Automation Market

Home automation is a rapidly growing market with fresh products coming out at an astonishing speed. Consumers have access both to do-it-yourself systems like Iris from Lowe’s and installer-based systems such as Time Warner Cable’s IntelligentHome. Many of these can be combined with point solutions like smart locks, thermostats, light bulbs, and plugs. It’s a dizzying landscape for consumers, and one that you can easily help them to navigate.

The home automation market is still relatively small, with just 16 percent of Americans currently owning a smart home device. However, it’s expected to grow rapidly. Sixty-eight percent of Americans believe that the smart home will be as common as the smartphone within the coming decade.

With this in mind, there are significant opportunities on the table for businesses that are willing to take the leap. Your marketing plan should seek to establish your business as a thought leader in the area of home automation, and build an extensive collection of useful resources for consumers.

Developing a Multi-Channel Marketing Approach

The best way to establish yourself as a top contender for home automation is to take a multi-channel marketing approach. This will allow you to connect with a varied customer base. Some examples include:

• Crafting engaging digital content that will help potential customers identify a need for home automation. Highlight the functionality, ease of use, and energy efficiency perks of these systems in a series of highly targeted blogs, articles, or white papers.
• Connecting with shoppers on social media channels and address their needs, concerns, and questions. Use retargeting ads to dedicated landing pages that will provide a personalized experience for those seeking more information.
• Highlighting special offers on your website for new home automation systems that will push readers further down the purchasing funnel.
• Offering instructional “How To” videos on YouTube that walk consumers through the necessary steps to properly install, program, and utilize a home automation system.
• Leveraging offline channels like direct mail and radio to broaden your reach and raise your frequency of messaging.

When it comes to a well-executed multi-channel marketing campaign, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Engage your customers every step of the way to foster loyalty with your brand and ensure efficient movement through the sales funnel.

Marketing Home Automation: Putting Your Plan into Action

You can get great results by focusing your next marketing campaign on home automation. However, it’s important that your efforts are highly coordinated, no matter which channels you choose to utilize. This can be challenging if you’re trying to do this with limited inhouse resources. And getting multiple vendors onto the same page can be equally labor-intensive and frustrating.

Fortunately, Mediagistic can help. We design custom, multi-channel advertising and marketing campaigns to target your specific geolocation and audience. Our holistic approach to marketing and advertising campaigns keeps the work under one roof, so you can avoid the disjointed results that come from coordinating with different vendors.

Jessica Sandoe is a key account manager at Mediagistic. Connect with her on Linkedin