Privacy is a rising concern for consumers today. Data leaks, cybersecurity attacks, and security breaches are more common than before. This is partly because companies are collecting more data than ever. Hackers have more ways to access private information, leading to more data leaks and breaches.
Because of this, consumers are a bit more protective of when and how they share their personal information. For brands, this can make it more challenging to know who their audiences are and how to strategically target them for their marketing campaigns. Yet advertising that is “one size fits all” is too broad and won’t be as compelling to users. Luckily, there are still ways to improve customer engagement in a privacy-first world.
Establish a Level of Trust With Your Audience
Brands have countless ways to collect data. Conducting surveys, conversing with chatbots, engaging on social media, and utilizing website tracking tools are just the tip of the iceberg. With the power of AI, brands can get to know their customers on a deep level. In addition to knowing basic demographic information such as age range, gender, and location, brands can get a glimpse of their audience’s psychographics.
Psychographic data includes a consumer’s interests, goals, and values. While it’s helpful for brands to know if a consumer who likes to play golf is also searching for vacation destinations, it can be borderline intrusive. A consumer can easily feel violated without the right parameters as a brand traces its journey online. To avoid this situation, brands need to establish a level of trust with their audience.
Be upfront with how you plan to use any collected data, such as product research or audience insights, for future campaigns. Telling users in advance shows that you care about protecting their personal information. When capturing privacy-friendly zero party data, consider using interactive quizzes and post-purchase feedback forms. These types of collections inherently have opt-in forms and put the user in control over what they would like to share. As a result, consumers place their trust and loyalty in the brand.
2. Use AI to Your Advantage
As mentioned, AI can be an advantageous tool for data collection. AI can make the process of data gathering and analyzing easier. You’ll no longer need to spend countless hours scanning through Excel customer information sheets to look for trends and patterns. Instead, AI can help easily sort large amounts of information and provide relevant audience insights. More importantly, AI can assist in making the data you’ve gathered more privacy-compliant.
First, AI can remove any personally identifiable information from data sets. You’ll still get a sense of who your consumers are, but you don’t need to know their shipping address, for example. Secondly, the power of AI lies in its ability to sift through massive amounts of data. This means it can combine or aggregate information from multiple sources, like purchase information, social media comments, and survey responses. The output will be an overview summary of the information rather than specific attributes tied to individual consumers.
AI can even detect and block cyberattacks from occurring. When some unusual behavior is detected, AI can alert the network admin. This can help mitigate risks by flagging potential threats early, reducing the likelihood of breaches, AI can go back to a previous secure endpoint to ensure consumers’ personal information is not at risk.
Communicating to your audience how you’re using AI and machine learning to keep their information safe can help them feel more at ease with these newer technologies. Some anxieties and fears are present because there is a lot still to learn about AI and its capabilities. Thus, it can be beneficial to share how you’re using AI and why you’re leaning into this method of privacy-safe data collection. Your audience may learn something or two and likely feel more comfortable and engaged with your brand.
3. Rely on Other Engaging, Targeting Tactics
Although the marketing and advertising world was bracing for the depreciation of third-party cookies in 2024, Google had a change of heart. In July 2024, the tech company decided to reverse its original plans. Instead, Google announced an updated approach that lets users make informed decisions while browsing.
Prior to this decision, marketers were looking for ways outside of third-party targeting tactics to reach and engage with their core audiences. These alternative strategies can still be helpful, especially since they are inherently more privacy-safe. Some brands invested more time and money into their first-party data collection. Others looked into predictive audiences to predict consumer behaviors based on actions rather than attributes. Contextual targeting, which looks at the content itself rather than relying on personal information, gained traction, too.
Other tactics you may want to consider include gamification and user-generated content. An interactive, high-impact media unit leveraging quizzes or mix-and-match can capture attention. Encouraging consumers to share their own content relating to your brand through user-generated content can also boost engagement.
Tips and Takeaways
Finding the balance between data privacy and marketing effectiveness is difficult. On one hand, you want to keep your customer’s information as safe as possible. A data breach doesn’t look good for any business, and it can take a long time to rebuild consumers’ trust. At the same time, you still need to collect data in order to target your core audiences effectively and efficiently. Keep the above tips in mind and recognize that as privacy protection and technology continue to evolve, your strategies will likely need to evolve as well.
Published by: Holy Minoza
