Big Changes in Digital Marketing Are On The Way

This is the year to invest in and revise your digital marketing plan.

Why? Two big changes are coming in 2022:

1. Regulations to protect consumer privacy, including the California Consumer Privacy Act and a similar law from New York State will be enacted. Companies will require consumers’ explicit permission to share and use their data.
2. As a consequence of these acts, third-party cookies and other personal identifiers will go away. The result is that marketers will have no data directly from consumers who do not consent to its use. That means you will no longer have access to consumers’ Internet behavior in order to create and segment target audiences.

These two changes will revolutionize how we interact with consumers over email, text and on the Internet.  If you didn’t know, first take a breath. Then, download this excellent article and overview of the changes from McKinsey & Company. It will educate you fast and reframe the way you think about communicating with your customers and consumers in general.

McKinsey estimates that the publishing industry will have to replace up to $10 billion in ad revenue. Aside from advertising, if you’re sending out content and tracking your readers, you’re essentially a publisher.  McKinsey also says, “In the short term, we expect advertisers to rely more on walled gardens (such as social networks) to drive audience targeting.” There are a number of reasons why this isn’t going yield much (e.g. social networks, don’t provide followers’ emails and can’t segment by interest) and they go on to acknowledge this problem by noting, “For advertisers disconnected from the retail transaction (such as traditional consumer goods companies and low-consideration goods and services), this data will be sparse and likely ineffective.”

So what’s the solution?  Again, McKinsey’s analysis:

“After the loss of third-party cookies and identifiers, advertisers and publishers will find that the value of direct engagement with consumers will further increase. To create consumer connections, advertisers and publishers should create experiences that consumers consider worthwhile. Advertisers and publishers will also need to identify the investments and operating approaches that will help them stay connected with as many consumers as possible.”

In order to stay connected to consumers, and particularly your best customers, you’ll need some important digital tools including:

1. A contacts manager: You need an application, like a CRM, where you can store, manage and segment customers of all types.
2. A customer acquisition tool: A landing page builder will fill the bill here but one that is flexible enough for you to ask customers a few key questions (like their interests and needs) will be important.
3. An application that helps you understand customer needs:  This is not what most of us think of as market research but an application that will allow you to ask a few key questions periodically and append them to each individual file so you can segment by interests.
4. An email marketing application, but one that enables quick segmentation along with specific email options based on interests, needs, frustrations or other emotions which drive purchase.
5. Measurement tools like NPS have been around for a long time but one that tells you why your customers gave you ratings and enables you to segment them by their rating and their “why” is invaluable.

Those five tools will help you create an effective and productive digital marketing program but the key is that they’re all integrated so you can quickly and easily go from one to the other. You should not have to download any data from one application and upload it to another. Your time will be better spent on creating great content than figuring out the mechanics of getting these applications to work together.

While the end of third-party cookies and personal identifiers is going to make tracking and communicating with consumers a bit more difficult, the challenges also offer an opportunity to build more productive relationships. Acquiring the right tools is one part. Offering value to consumers in high quality content and experiences is what will make the tools work.

I’m CEO of Oomiji, which offers a platform of integrated digital marketing tools. Let's talk.