Google announced that it will end cookie tracking by 2022. This means a lot for all businesses. Advertisers and companies rely on cookie tracking. Based on the information they gather from the cookies, which are crumbs that a user leaves all over the internet, advertisers and businesses can come up with marketing strategies to target specific demographics. This is essential for a cost-effective marketing campaign.
The behemoth shift into a no-cookie future is causing drastic changes in the world of SEO in digital marketing. This means that advertisers can no longer rely on information shared with them by Google. User privacy concerns have become more critical in recent years, which pushed Google into such desperate measures. What businesses and advertisers must do, however, is to start implementing a first-party data or zero-party data gathering.
Zero-party data is fast becoming businesses’ go-to solution. Sure, it means putting in extra effort to convince consumers to share their insights with your company, but it works even better than the cookies. Zero-party data gathering refers to surveys, gamification, and consumer interaction via social media. Any of these will provide the data that your business needs to understand its consumers better.
Organize Online Events
The best way to engage consumers right now and maintain that engagement is through online events such as webinars, seminars, and product launches. The formats of these online events are similar to their face-to-face counterparts. They are great ways to raise awareness about your brand and introduce your brand to those who haven’t heard about them yet.
Brands can use these events to gather information about the participants. They can ask questions via an online survey or questionnaire. They can let the participants answer these questions while the events are ongoing. You need not do these things in the past with cookies in existence. But in a few months from now, these online events will be the only way for you to gather information about your audience.
Personalize Your Message
When you personalize your message, you let the audience into your process. You make your brand personal for them, too. With over six million companies using Facebook and 500 million tweets being sent out every day, it’s hard for any business to rise above that noise. Because cookies will no longer be available starting early 2022, you have to be creative with your marketing strategy.
The best way to own your audience is to make your campaign about them. One example is to send a personalized message to your audience. Of course, it is impossible to write an individual email to your consumers. You have to segment your audience and create personalized messages for each segment. You can achieve more by reaching out to your consumers through campaigns that reflect their personalities.
Build a Strong Image
In this world, everything is about the image that you create. If you want to look rich, use an iPhone and drive an SUV. If you want to look cool, hang out with your friends in a bar, even if you cannot wait to get home and snuggle under the covers. The world is filled with such stereotypes, but they are stereotypes precisely because they work. With marketing, it is even more essential to understand how images can impact your end goal—to earn.
Look into creating a strong brand image organically. You can produce a video tutorial or podcast every week. How about a frequently asked questions (FAQ) segment via Facebook Live? These are examples of how to increase brand awareness and thus, create a strong image for your brand.
Focus on Yourself
Who are you, what you do, and how you connect to your audience are essential in marketing, especially without third-party cookies to help you. Brands can’t rely alone on what their audiences want to share with them. They have to go out there and attract consumers with their personalities. This way, you can gain more audience and create a different kind of clientele.
One way to do this is by becoming a thought leader. If people consider you an expert in the field, they will eventually consider buying from your business and becoming loyal consumers. Educating your consumers is one way of attracting them organically. People are already immune to hard-selling, so the best way to market right now is to “wait” for them to come to you, and they will if they see you worthy of their time and money.
Without cookies, businesses have to be more creative and imaginative. Digital marketing will change in various ways next year, so your business needs to adjust accordingly. Knowing how and when to pivot is critical to your business’ capacity to succeed in a post-cookie digital world.
