With Chrome, Safari, and Firefox phasing out third party cookies, the impact on the way we adapt to data collection is vital. Particularly in marketing, where you need up-to-date construction intel to open doors – and grow new business opportunities.
Understanding what is considered personal data, and how it can be used properly, is key. So, how are you planning to continue tracking and targeting customer behaviour effectively?
Here are our top five tips to combat loss of third party cookies:
| Killer Cookie Stats | |
|---|---|
| BEFORE 77% of websites and 82% of all digital ads used tracking cookies (Source: eMArketer) | AFTER 86% of browser traffic — Safari, Firefox, Mozilla and Google Chrome — to end third-party cookies by 2023 |
1) Swap Desirable for Data
You’ll find that people are happy to give you their data if they consider it worth their while, or if the product/service they receive from you is of a high enough value. This is called value exchange. As marketers, we need to get to grips with this concept.
Basically, you need to identify your customers in a digital space – and ask them to give you their consent for marketing purposes. Try offering valuable or relevant information (like reports, product reviews or whitepapers) in return for their data.
2) First Port of Call
Forget third parties, it’s all about first party data now. This is the data you acquire directly from your customers. This requires extra attention to the digital customer journey – look again for all the online touchpoints where you can gather data.
Context is king. Think about where your audience can be found and when/where more personalised interactions are possible. With the changes to privacy, ironically you need to know more about your customers than ever before to really get to know them.
One to one targeting (like retargeting) now requires you to identify yourself, you can’t hide behind automated systems. Audience targeting will become publisher-driven; because these are the only brands with a broad enough data footprint of customer engagement to meaningfully identify your targets. How? See tip 3.
3) Keep digging deeper
We talked about value exchange earlier. Look out for opportunities to gather data throughout the full customer journey – not just at the start.
Check if your customers are happy, engaged, or at risk of buying elsewhere. Is there a way to offer something in return for their feedback? It’s worth it as you get more data to gain deeper insights. Then if buyer behaviour changes, you have more chance of identifying the problem and putting your retention marketing strategies into action.
It could also help fuel, for example, insight-driven initiatives and loyalty programmes.
4) Get tooled up to stay competitive
In the cookie-less world, new tools, technologies, solutions and systems are required to turn data into insights. That’s where the marketing money is.
Businesses that take the initiative on data strategy early on – combining creative and context as effectively as possible and using real-time construction intelligence to understand audiences and competitor activity – will be in a better position to form stronger, direct customer relationships and be able to make faster decisions, drive growth and be more agile than your competitors.
| A | recent | survey | of | marketers | said… | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 41% | believe | their | biggest | challenge | will | be | their | inability | to | track | the | right | data | |||
| 44% | predict | a | need | to | increase | their | spending | by | 5–25% | to | reach | the | same | goals | as | 2021 |
| 23% | plan | on | investing | in | marketing | software | due | to | Google’s | new | policy |
Source: Getup/Hubspot
5) Go back to analogue
Don’t forget to update your database with non-digital customer information, such as completed surveys, customer feedback and other nuggets stored in your CRM database. Real life cookies, if you will.
Finally, keep connecting with Marketing Mentors for more hints and tips.
