Questions Boards Should Be Asking About Third-Party Cookie Death

Listen up, Boards: the death of third-party cookies is not just a marketing problem. For some companies, it might require changing the business model entirely.?These changes are bringing about a whole new level of consumer awareness around data, privacy and their rights – issues which Boards should be discussing - and brands such as Google and Apple are already setting a new benchmark for what consumers expect when it comes to data ethics and brand trust. So, what do Boards need to know?

It’s a huge change in mindset

The customer journey is no longer siloed – today the customer journey map is a total mess. ?t's fluid across many different screens, devices and other touchpoints, and proper attribution has always been tricky at best (no matter how many tech firms claim to solve the problem, I have yet to see an elegant solution). So the questions remain: “How do we keep track? How do we use our marketing budget most effectively? How do we segment, and really gain knowledge about who we're speaking to?”

In my experience with direct-to-consumer brands with limited funds, understanding where to place your marketing bets is everything.?Now that companies will be ‘flying blind’ yet again, not knowing ‘which half’ of their advertising is working, there are some important conversations that Boards need to be having with CEOs:

Where does the regulatory area lie?

How is the company reallocating marketing dollars?

Where do we plan to get new customers, and how are we retaining current ones?

How are we changing our practices to respect our customer’s privacy better and how are we messaging this?

How do we encourage our teams to think proactively and adopt an innovation mindset to discover new ways to reach new audiences?

It's an opportunity to create better experiences

In today’s vast online landscape, it’s estimated that the average consumer encounters between 6,000 and 10,000 ads daily. In this reality, traditional forms and methods no longer move the needle for brands in any significant way. Modern consumers do not trust impersonal or inauthentic brands.

Changes by the tech giants will re-shape what customers will come to expect when it comes to customer experience, as they provide consumers with greater control over what data is captured and how it is utilised. Forward-thinking advertisers and publishers will shift their marketing strategies away from the cookie and embrace alternative solutions. Companies like Smartology, Searchmetrics and AdTheorent are already stepping forward to drive innovative thinking and solutions for a cookie-less future.

Successful brands thrive on change and are adaptable in any situation. As a marketer with an innovative mindset, you should always be asking yourself questions like, "Are we too reliant on this technology?" or "What happens if and when our strategy gets regulated?" Innovative marketers will be able to come up with more clever alternatives and ads that identify with the masses -- aside from just hyper-targeted content or annoying pop-ups.

Tracking consumers without their permission and serving consumers ads they perceive as intrusive undermines trust and often leads to consumers receiving messages that are unwanted, frustrating, and irrelevant to their online journeys. We’ve all felt that, and it turns us off “personalised advertising” – because it feels as if the person is put last. Consumers deserve transparent experiences, and brands and marketers should think of this as an opportunity to up their game.

Cookie deprecation actually creates valuable new opportunities to create relevance, deliver personalised, effective messages, drive performance and measure impact. It might require some new tools and some strategising but eliminating the cookie can actually help to provide a more accurate view of consumers and allow brands to better understand the purchasing journey. Without cookies tracking user data throughout their journey on a particular website, companies are forced to identify new ways to reach consumers and therefore provide better experiences that drive meaningful interactions with the brand, through more video ads, relevant keyword targeting, reward programs, discount codes, AI, and personalised efforts, for example. It goes back to the basics – create content and experience that your audience wants, and they will engage directly.

What questions should Boards be asking?

1.????Have we started crafting our 1st party data strategy?

You need to consider all of the user journeys and explore opportunities to apply first-party cookies and encourage users to share more data with you directly.?

2.????Are we focusing on consent?

If we’re all being honest with ourselves, a lot of brands and marketing departments haven’t taken privacy as seriously as they should have. Moving forward, effective customer data strategies will need to be built on a foundation of consent and control – consent controlled by the consumer, not the brand.?

3.????How can we embed data collection at key customer touchpoints?

Marketers will need to consider the other appropriate touchpoints and mechanisms to build direct relationships with customers and build out profiles over time. There has to be a true value exchange; consumers need a compelling reason to share.?Give them one, and they will.?

4.????Are we thinking beyond first-party data?

It will never give you a 360-degree view of the customer. So, combine a first-party data strategy with other strategies. One possible avenue to reach and engage audiences in a targeted and personalised manner could be closer collaboration with platforms and publishers. Think about other ways to build deeper partnerships with a few publishers or other non-competing organisations, so you can share or leverage data while respecting consumers’ privacy and achieve key outcomes.?This is what’s at play every time you see a Hush ad on your Ocado order confirmation page, or a Naked Wines insert in almost every online delivery going.

5.????How can we experiment?

New options should be considered as part of a broader data driven strategy, and now is the perfect time to experiment, building on that test and learn culture we all should have by now.?Don’t ever assume that a potential partnership might or might not work without kicking the tires on it first. A million years ago, I managed partnership marketing for a magazine called Real Simple in the US. We formed a partnership with the market-leading orange juice brand at the time, and we printed magazine subscription forms on one side of the carton offering two free magazines (remember, this was before the iPhone and QR codes.?Yes, I’m that old).?We printed it on a large number of cartons and expected it to do well given the strong offer and wide reach.?It didn’t, and we learned where to better focus our efforts.?

6. How can we work with what we’ve got?

Marketing departments need to think quality, not quantity. That means not worrying about the data you don’t have and starting to work with what you do have. It means keeping contact lists refreshed, hiring people who sift through the data and optimise your business models, and considering how to automate this process.

7.????Are we reassessing our content?

When third-party cookies are gone for good, you still need your content to be searchable and valuable, to increase your odds of visitors offering you their information and ensure you have content that addresses each stage of your target audience's customer journey. Your marketers need to understand the context in which users are engaging with you, and market to them with that context clearly in mind. By gathering data now and making important changes to your site and your content (there are some great plugins like Hotjar that show you what’s getting attention), you can minimise the fallout and even gain a competitive advantage while doing so. ?Having a strong SEO game ensures your content works as hard as it needs to.

8.????How can we embrace people-based targeting and contextual advertising?

It’s about creating a customer-centric, cohesive marketing system that revolves around customers and their real-time behavioural data. This data combined with your first-party data will help you to target your desired audience in real-time (at a time that suits them) across a variety of channels.

People-based targeting means consensually obtaining behaviouristic data across devices, channelling (but not storing) data to better understand the intent of the person and help brands to target them with ads relevant to their needs and tastes only. It’s personalisation done right – when you receive an email from your favourite brand recommending a jacket to go with the dress you just bought, or when you receive a text with a discount for the pizza shop you just walked into. Marketers should consider how they can use people-based marketing to gain and leverage insights into consumers.

Contextual advertising is another older strategy ripe for revival. Think ads for spirits and mixers in a cocktail bar. It’s a way to deliver ads that are relevant to the other content on the screen, and much less creepy than a lot of other ads we have thrown at us.

Conclusion

The death of third-party cookies gives us the opportunity to redefine the future of marketing and ensure that it’s one that puts consumers first, and is built on authenticity and transparency. Brands can take this chance to springboard to a higher level of engagement and create customer experiences like we’ve never seen before.

However, Boards need to be asking the right questions and inspiring their marketing teams to re-think acquisition strategies as well as the fundamental relationship with the consumer. The more knowledgeable and proactive the Board, the earlier businesses can start to implement these changes.

The Tech Spec

Interesting tech I’ve seen this week:

• Mixpanel - allows you to understand how your customers are interacting with your product, which features do they use most often, who are your power users, and other crucial data.
• Crazyegg - its amazing heatmapping feature shows you where their website visitors often click, what pages and posts they visit, how far they scroll on a particular page, and at what point do they leave their website.
• Brand24 - an online reputation management tool that lets you monitor your business online in real-time, across social media, blogs, news, podcasts, forums, videos, and more,?and includes advanced sentiment detection.
• Screaming Frog - identifies any site errors that may be impacting SEO.
• BuzzSumo ?- a research and monitoring tool that can help identify trends around specific topics, generate blog or social media ideas, create high-performing content, monitor your brand’s performance, and identify influencers you may want to consider partnering with.
• Deskera CRM - helps you to grow your traffic, organise data, convert leads, improve ROI for inbound marketing?campaigns, shorten deal cycles, increase close rates.

Written by Gabrielle Hase.

CEO of?Soleberry Advisory ?and digital Non-Executive Director. I want to help solve the problem of the lack of appropriate female and digital skills and perspectives at the board table.?

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