3 Steps for Marketers to Overcome Data Privacy Challenges
Data privacy is on everyone’s mind.
Today, consumers are more aware about how their data is collected, stored, and shared, and they want more control. For marketers, this presents a unique set of challenges because data collection has guided personalised advertisement approaches and more targeted promotions powering exponential growth in e-commerce businesses. With such heavy dependency on data collection, marketers are struggling to enhance the modern shopping experience that consumers have become so accustomed to and quite frankly, enjoy.
Among Apple’s many new powerful privacy protection features introduced this year, one that is particularly a pain point for marketers is the masking of IP addresses. This prevents the tracking of user activity across websites and building a unique profile for each customer. In order to march forward and continue making informed decisions, marketers need to innovate and adapt. The challenge will be to develop new strategies to capitalise on every customer’s unique value. To help you get started, here are three initial steps to take in order to find and reach customers in the age of data protection.
Take a minute to know your customers
Cookies are now stale. The heavy reliance on third-party data collection has lost its appeal because privacy laws are on the rise. With changing data regulations, marketers will have to get to know customers differently and at a deeper level.
Brands and marketers must look beyond data points such as general demographics or the amount of time users spend on a page and actually understand the specific interests and objectives of their customers. The future of marketing will be built on this conscious brand-to-consumer relationship where collaboration in the form of sharing data and incentives will drive purchasing power.
Loyal consumers want relationships with select brands so if companies can pick up on this and foster a deeper bond with consumers, they will continue to flourish.
Pursue personalisation to target all consumers
While users want privacy from big corporations, they also want a personalised online shopping experience with products and offers that suit their individual needs. Without third-party data, marketers will struggle to reach customers but that should not translate into a lack of targeted recommendations and discounts.
The solution for this is personalisation. Marketers should work on formulating new personalisation strategies for brands to help put the purchasing power back into the hands of consumers. The outcome of this is consumers will have more control over which marketing initiatives they see or don’t see based upon how they interact with a brand.
Alternative data collection methods for targeted insights is also possible with first-party data (which encompasses an individual’s site-wide, app-wide, and on-page behaviours) and zero-party data (which a consumer intentionally shares with a brand). To obtain these marketers need to take more initiative.
Use data intelligently and employ technology
As consumer data becomes more difficult to obtain, and marketing technology more expensive to use, marketers must employ new technological tools to obtain accurate, real-time data on consumers and then spend time analysing this data. Direct communication with the consumer is key here, whether that’s through an AI-based platform or straightforward quizzes or surveys.
In the modern world, data is your greatest asset and consumers want to know that it will be used responsibly.
