Marketing is data-centric today. Every step a marketer takes is based on the information acquired from different channels. This collection of customer data across platforms leaves users in hesitation of their security.
Data is the key to success or even for the loss. Such crucial of customers has to be secured and protected always to allow individual privacy. This year GDPR looks into these major issues of individual privacy and personalized marketing.
The new GDPR approach focuses on:
- Restructuring data privacy laws
- Protect users from data threats
- Revising the ways of marketing to ensure individual privacy
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a landmark regulation act that affected various fields.
It states that marketers or any businesses that use people’s data required to have explicit permissions and consent from the information holders before their data can be used for any marketing purposes.
This regulating act alerted all the online based marketers right from Facebook and other e-commerce businesses.
With the enforcement of GDPR, businesses should give clear notifications to users regarding the use of personal information.
With growing online businesses and advancement of technologies, GDPR acts as a perfect legal framework in safeguarding data and maintains transparency.
Users to have rights to know where and how their information is used. They can also request to remove their information.
This people friendly regulation though is a milestone in the information protection; it has affected online marketing in several ways.
It is not a secret that online marketers use extensive data to track consumer behavior and come up with strategic plans to attract people.
With strengthened consumer power and it is the priority, there has been a great transformation in the way online marketing functions.
Let us now see how GDPR affected each of the online marketing tools and platforms.
1. Facebook and GDPR
Facebook ads are the world’s most popular online advertising tools because of increasing Facebook users.
If you are a Facebook pixel user, you will have to comply with the GDPR and have a proper legal base before you can access, process use and store public data.
In the case of the Facebook custom audience, you can only use emails and other contact information of people only when you get them with their complete consent.
If you track this data from other online platforms, you are strictly prohibited from using it on Facebook and cannot advertise to them.
This means businesses must update and check their email list every time they advertise on Facebook to avoid sending advertisements to an audience who have opted out.
Apart from this, every business that uses Facebook ads services must display a cookie consent banner and a valid link to their privacy policy on their pages to avoid any kind of legal actions against them.
Hence, with the effect of GDPR, the responsibility of taking consent lies on both Facebook and business owners.
2. Google Ads
Before you read about how GDPR affected Google ads, let us look at what Google Ads really does.
It is the wide range of advertising services provided by Google. With better functional tools, it is a perfect platform to achieve maximum visibility and increased revenue.
Another advantage of using Google Ads is that strategies for your campaigns can be developed based on the demographic data.
If you are using Google AdWords, Tag Manager or Adwords remarketing, you will definitely need to comply with the GDPR rules and regulations.
Before you could send personalized advertisements, you have to take consent from the audience and users.
Though GDPR doesn’t affect Google search network advertising, you will need the consent of people if you are using demographic targeting.
Demographic targeting requires people’s personal data which again is protected under GDPR. But this is Google’s responsibility to collect consent from the users.
It also applies to Remarketing: where you use data from previous visitors and make them as a target group.
Other tools like similar audience targeting, customer match targeting also require businesses to take consent from the users.
On the other hand, Google is receiving consent faster than other smaller platforms. It seems that Google is, compared to other, is benefiting from GDPR. Because, what else can you trust more than Google?
3. Content Marketing
Today, businesses think of content marketing as one of the effective marketing tools. With growing diversity of technology and data, a creative and effective strategy of delivering quality content has become important.
Even with the availability of new tools of marketing, Content marketing still has its place in the picture. In fact, there is a substantial rise in the usage of content marketing for best SEO results.
Out of all the online marketing tools, content marketing seems to be least affected by GDPR.
But users of email marketing tool, newsletters should take consent from the users by giving them information as to where and how their data would be used.
But for companies that rely greatly on content marketing and believe in the power of content, GDPR is a boon.
By limiting the use of data by large and dominating marketers due to GDPR, small businesses have gained ground to work on quality content for their target groups.
Hence, content marketers can use creativity to produce the best content and replace data partly with it.
Businesses can attract their buyers with content and this can make them stand out in their industry. Believe that content is a key and move forward! It clearly shows that good days have arrived for content marketing.
4. SEO
Though, not completely, a little effect of GDPR on SEO can be seen. User experience accounts for a major part of SEO. If the UX is bad, you can’t help but get into the risk of losing users.
With the effect of GDPR, every site or mobile site is required to display opt-ins and pop-ups to take consent from the users.
In this case, if the notifications are distracting, it leads to an unpleasant user experience. Remember, Mobile UX is also responsible for SEO ranking.
But GDPR also seems to be paving way for a promising future for SEO. With GDPR, every site needs to have a privacy policy page.
Hence, Privacy policy pages are good for SEO because these pages are considered as more credible and standard than others.
SEO does not require any consent from users as it does not depend completely on data. It is all about giving a great user experience and generating traffic with useful keywords.
In fact, with other tools being majorly affected by GDPR, SEO stands as the right and safest marketing technique.
Though GDPR is affecting paid marketing and social media marketing, it can be seen that comparatively traditional techniques like content marketing and SEO are going to occupy a major role in the future of online marketing.
Conclusion
GDPR is restructuring the way in which multiple industries use data to obtain different results.
With Artificial Intelligence coming into the play, data has become more crucial than ever. Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and other latest technologies feed on data inputs and draw marketing strategies.
Strengthening data and privacy details of users, GDPR raises bars against using information liberally.
