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Navigating the Cookie Crumble: A Guide for DSP Users

In the digital world, ‘cookies’ refers to a small piece of data sent from a website and stored on the user’s computer. Cookies are made to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember useful information and record the user’s browsing activity. In the past, advertisers utilizing Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) relied heavily on cookies to target relevant users and one of the several pieces of data science that make up the digital landscape. But that’s all changing.

What Is the Cookie Crumble?

Privacy is a growing concern for users across the web. Major web browsers are responding, as Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox are now phasing out third-party cookies. In turn, audience-targeting methods based on browsing history are becoming less effective. So what can DSP users do now that cookies are crumbling?

How the Phasing Out of Cookies Impacts DSPs

In the dynamic world of paid media, the cookie crumble is one of the greatest shifts. Advertisers who rely heavily on DSPs are seeking new solutions in the evolving digital landscape. The first step is to identify how cookies have been utilized, along with the impact of losing those capabilities.

• Tracking: DSP users can’t target audiences based on browsing history.
• Attribution: DSP users can’t see where conversions are coming from.
• User Preferences: DSP users can’t personalize ads with a high degree of confidence.

It can be overwhelming for a DSP user to navigate these obstacles. But there are workarounds. It’s up to advertisers to adapt and develop new ways of targeting users and measuring performance. Let’s discuss a few ideas.

Adaptive Marketing Strategies for DSP Users

Despite the challenges faced in the cookie-less void, there are several tactics DSP users can utilize:

1. Take Advantage of First-Party Data: Leveraging first-party data (collected directly from users through owned channels) becomes increasingly valuable. DSP users should prioritize building and enriching first-party data assets to fuel their advertising efforts. First-party data can range from customer-retention lists (CRMs), website conversion data, or creative engagement. DSP users can also create lookalike (LAL) segments to expand targeting without using cookie data.
2. Explore Targeting Options: DSP users can harness the power of contextual targeting by focusing on content or keywords instead of users. Ads are placed based on the content of the web page rather than user behaviors, allowing advertisers to reach relevant audiences without relying on cookie tracking. Additionally, DSP users can apply negative keywords and layer on brand safety to avoid exposure to unfavorable content.
3. Identity Solutions: Several DSPs have already been proactive in creating identity solutions. Unified ID 2.0, or UID2, has been developed by the Trade Desk and relies on hashed and encrypted email addresses voluntarily provided by users, allowing advertisers to target and measure campaigns without compromising privacy.?
4. Diversify Measurement: Incorporating a mix of different measurements like brand lift studies, surveys, or multi-touch attribution models allows the advertiser to evaluate campaign performance across different metrics beyond cookie-based tracking. In turn, DSP users gain a more comprehensive understanding of their campaign’s effectiveness.
5. Collaborate With SSPs and Publishers: Partnering with publishers and supply-side platforms (SSPs) gives advertisers access to more first-party data and proprietary contextual targeting. This provides valuable insight into audience demographics and interests, enabling a more relevant campaign. DSP users should also implement supply path optimizations during campaign flights.?

Conclusion

Navigating the cookie crumble is a daunting task. However, with proper research and strategy, advertisers can develop innovative strategies for targeting relevant audiences within DSPs while adhering to user privacy. The key is to adapt and grow alongside the evolving digital marketplace.

Want to ask a question or learn more? Get in touch with us today.

Healthcare Marketing Series Part 1: Understanding Lead Quality in Healthcare

Lead quality is foundational to the success of a business and a vital part of campaign optimizations. In layman’s terms, how can we grow our business unless we determine whether we have reached the right audience? This is even more evident in the healthcare space where there is a sense of urgency for patients who need personalized care.

As we embark on this journey to learn more about lead quality for healthcare, let us start by reviewing the basics of how lead generation works.

What are leads??

In marketing, we look at leads as a vital conversion point on the user funnel that suggests intent and interest in acquiring more information. In more basic terms, leads are signals sent to marketers and companies that a user is interested in their products and services. Some examples of this can include submitting a contact form on the website to request more information or scheduling a meeting to speak with a professional. Leads are not restricted to digital experiences, phone call leads are generated when a user calls in and is routed to a call center or medical office.

Why are leads so important in healthcare??

Healthcare sits on a three-legged stool for individuals who juggle their careers and family. As such, it is a vital component in everyday life, with people searching for flexibility and minimal wait times to see a physician. According to Medical Economics (2022), 69% of patients consider switching their medical provider if they find another one with more attractive services – a glaring reminder that healthcare organizations need to continually innovate and be in tune with the needs and wants of their patients. Leads work as an organization’s front door, inviting patients in and assessing whether they are qualified for their services. In digital marketing, leads are an important element of branding and promoting the product or services of a healthcare provider. It also works as a screening process to target the most relevant audience groups most likely to convert and join the healthcare organization.

How do healthcare providers generate qualified leads?

For any healthcare provider to thrive and build a sustainable relationship with patients, it is important to continually nurture leads and understand what the primary need or objective of the patient is. In the age of technology and artificial intelligence, many companies need to adapt to reach a select target audience based on a list of specific criteria.

Often the most common pain points that patients encounter are physicians who are unable to see them on the same day or the next day, or medical practices that are not in a convenient location. Building personalized content layered with geo-targeting that helps patients find a suitable doctor nearby is one way companies can overcome these obstacles. Leveraging patient testimonials is another key tactic that helps foster trust and build positive word of mouth. Having an efficient media mix encapsulating email, paid search, and social media campaigns can ensure that companies achieve adequate market reach and gain an edge over their competitors.

Concluding Thoughts

In a nutshell, leads help to position a company more prominently in its industry and gradually build a patient base over time. As with all digital marketing efforts, there are regulations put in place to protect patient privacy and offer them a right to opt out of data collection. In the next series on lead quality in healthcare, we will dive into the specific attributes that can be used to layer on user targeting while taking into consideration HIPAA standards and compliance.

Want to ask a question or learn more? Get in touch with us today.

Financial Services Marketing Series: Finding Your Best Customers With Google Ads?

Part 1: Setting the Foundation for Success in Marketing Financial Products & Services on Google

To pay or not to pay for marketing traffic — that is the question. Will customers find you if you don’t pay for traffic from Google? Will you lose customers to larger competitors? Worse, will you lose them to an upstart who’s more aggressive?

Implementing Google Ads as a financial services company means you have to follow certain processes and guidelines while other advertisers, well, don’t.

You have a compliance department where other companies do not.?

You are in a category that cannot personalize ads based on certain criteria, while other categories do not have this restriction.

There are rules that prevent you from implementing certain tactics within Google Ads, but it should still be one of your top performing media channels. At Mindgruve, we recognize the effectiveness of Google Ads for financial services companies, so we’re dedicating a three-part blog series to examining how to make sure your advertising on Google Ads is productive and profitable.

Which Products Are Your Best Products

If you are just getting started with Google Ads for your financial institution, we recommend first identifying your best products.

For example, we work with a regional bank in Southern California. When they were getting started we did not run Google Ads for all of their financial products. Instead, we took a more selective approach. Coordinating with their marketing and business teams, we evaluated which of the bank’s products we should advertise — that is, which ones performed the best with their audience and aligned with their top-level business priorities.

Out of that effort, we determined that we could start with a small subset of their products along with branded phrases where the desire of the future customer was not yet known. (“First Horizon,” one of our clients, is a branded phrase, as is “First Horizon Checking” — phrases containing the name of the company or a product. A non-branded phrase is more general, such as “finance company” or “regional bank.” Paid search teams often incorporate branded and non-branded phrases in their campaigns.)

Which Products Do Your Customers Love (It may not align with your best products from your view)

You may have a product that customers love. When we say “love,” we are talking about the product that customers love to have even if a more competitive product exists in the market.?

We once worked with a financial services company with a mortgage offering that customers loved. But it wasn’t because of a lower rate. The rate was competitive, but other banks had lower interest rates.

Apparently, customers loved having a mortgage from this institution because they serviced the loans themselves. It was a local bank and customers had a sense of pride that their mortgage was with a business they knew and felt comfortable with.

This type of information allowed us to develop a Google Ads program where customers of the bank were made aware of the mortgage product and our client did not have to directly compete against large national banks for keywords like “home loan.”

Who Are Your Best Customers

When you know who your best customers are, you can build your Google Ads program to find more of them.

For our financial clients, the best customers tend to share a few common themes:

• They have more than one product with the bank.

• They have been with the financial institution for a while.

• Most of the time, the financial institution, our client, is the customer’s primary bank (either business or personal).

Your paid search team will want to know which customers are the best so they can build keywords and audiences around finding more of these customers.

What is a Customer Worth (Short Term & Lifetime Value)

Paid search teams love a goal and having a number to target. As the Google Ads platform has evolved over the years, the more information you can feed into it, the better you are going to perform.

For financial institutions, looking at what a customer is worth can get complicated. To provide your paid search team with the correct information, determine the average worth of a client by product type.?

You might know that a checking account client is worth $700 over the lifetime of the account and $200 in the first year. Those two numbers represent how much a client is worth in the long term ($700), and how much a client is worth in the short term ($200). A paid search team can craft campaigns depending on your ROI goals — that is, whether to make your money back earlier, or whether to wait longer and earn more as the customer’s lifetime value goes up.?

Let’s return to the example above. If you know that a customer is worth $700 after two years, you might offer a $400 bonus and still net $300 whenever a customer opens a new checking account.?

But whatever the numbers are, because products have varying values, we recommend working with the business leaders within your company to determine what a customer is worth.

Understanding customer value helps you determine how much you should pay for a lead.?

All of this information is critical for any marketing team, especially a paid search team, to determine what they should set as targets for bid strategies, max CPC values, and methods to measure success.

Who Gets The Final Say & The Source of Truth

A great performing Google Ads account can be measured. If you can’t measure the performance of a Google Ads account, especially as a financial institution, the CMO won’t be able to convince the CFO to provide additional funds.

We encourage you to visit the analytics section of our blog and read more about how our teams build analytics frameworks for clients of all industries.

Connecting Your Google Ads To Banking Systems

This is our ultimate analytics and Google Ads dream for financial services clients: Helping you connect a click, a keyword, and a moment in time to a new customer who opens a checking account with you. When you have 100% online control, such as providing an online account opening option, establishing an accurate analytics framework becomes easier.?

Connecting all of the touchpoints along the user’s journey — digital and brick-and-mortar — should open up opportunities for you to track and measure consumer behavior when they stop into local branches, dial into call centers, or fill out forms online.

That’s the first installment of our three-part blog series. Look out for Part 2 next month, where we cover:

• Part 2: Building Out Your First Set of Google Financial Marketing Campaigns

• Part 3: Making Sure Your Financial Services Google Ads & Messaging Are In Compliance

Want to ask a question or learn more? Get in touch with us today.

Mindgruve Named 2024 Google Premier Partner for Fourth Consecutive Year

Mindgruve, one of the fastest-growing digital marketing agencies in the U.S., has achieved 2024 Premier Partner status in the Google Partners program for the fourth consecutive year. This accomplishment represents the highest level attainable for agencies, granting Mindgruve clients exclusive access to prime business growth opportunities across Google services.

“Mindgruve’s close partnership with Google has led to incredible growth for our clients,” said Chad Robley, CEO of Mindgruve. “This recognition underscores our commitment to mastering Google’s full suite of cutting-edge tools and insights to drive meaningful growth for our clients. Together, we’re setting new benchmarks for success in our industry.”?

The Google Partners program empowers agencies with essential training, support, and tools for client success, making them more competitive. Premier Partners, like Mindgruve, represent the top 3% in the country, benefiting from advanced Google resources, including early product access, tailored training, and expert support, enhancing their service quality and innovation.

“We are incredibly proud of our digital marketing team for this significant demonstration of their Google ads expertise,” said Joey Bridges, Group Media Director at Mindgruve. “This honor enables us to continue providing our clients with unparalleled access to growth opportunities across Google’s services, ensuring their success in today’s competitive market.” In addition to the Google Premier Partner recognition, Mindgruve was recently awarded the highest honor at the AVA Digital Awards. To learn how Mindgruve can help your business grow on Google, get in touch.