The third-party cookie era is rapidly coming to an end. While this means that marketers will have to make some significant changes to adapt to a world without cookies, it also has the potential to usher in a new era of coherent and compelling customer insights based on consumer research.
According to a recent KPMG report “Corporate Data Responsibility: Bridging the Consumer Trust Gap”, 86 percent of US citizens think data privacy is a growing concern for them, with 40% saying they don’t trust businesses to use their data ethically. What’s the takeaway? The sooner brands break their ties with third-party cookies, the greater their chances of retaining and gaining consumer trust are.
The wheels are already set in motion, with third-party cookies being phased out of Safari and Firefox. Another big player, Google Chrome, is not far behind, with plans to disable all third-party cookies by 2023. It’s never been more important for marketers to offer up new lines of communication in light of this race to win consumers and respond to their desire for a more private digital experience.
The demise of cookies does not mean the end of marketing as the world know it. It’s an opportunity for brands to adopt a fresh approach to learning about their target audience’s behavior. More importantly, now is the time to stop relying on third-party data and take the necessary efforts to obtain first-party data.
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Consumer research is the answer. It’s a tried-and-true method for getting closer to customers, and it’s one of the best ways to gather relevant first-party data. It’s a non-intrusive way of determining customer behavior, buyer personas, and sentiment. There’s no reason for marketers not to integrate a solution directly into their marketing stack, especially now that there are more savvy digital providers on the market than ever before.
Here are some of the benefits:
Connecting with the target audience
The importance of engaging with the target audience cannot be overstated. Consumers are critical to the brand’s short- and long-term success. They are what will propel the company forward. Instead of reaching out to customers once or twice a year, organizations should seek out ways to make interaction with them a continuous, on-going process.
The goal should be to elicit feedback from the target consumer on every business decision made by brands, whether it’s about particular products and services or larger projects. Ensuring consumers have all of the information they need to make a purchasing decision; creating the most compelling advertising messages; determining which new product lines and services should be added to the offering — all of these things and more are achievable if brands take the right approach with consumer research.
Knowing where to spend the advertising budget
Marketers are all too familiar with the digital advertising boom that is now sweeping the world. There are a million ways to connect with the target audience, from social media influencers to web ads to podcasts. While cookies have traditionally helped marketing teams in determining where their ad spend should be allocated, this is going to come to an end.
With on-demand customer research, brands can connect directly with the customers and understand where they like to be “sold to”. For example, a brand is ready to kick-off one of the most expensive digital campaigns of the year. Rather than assuming where their customers are digitally, businesses can conduct a poll to determine their media consumption patterns. Marketers can then allocate their funding to the outlets that matter most to their buyer personas based on the representative data they collect.
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Transparent future with consumer research
As the industry moves toward a cookieless world, consumer research is more crucial than ever. With third-party data on the decline, marketers need to find new ways to communicate with customers that aren’t limited to tracking their data. However, there is no need to rely on inefficient and costly processes, or to place their faith in inefficient and inaccurate systems.
Marketers and insights experts who want to grow should make sure they have access to tools that allows them to have constant dialogue with their customers. The death of the cookie is a boon for data privacy-conscious consumers; with the appropriate strategy, it may also be a boon for businesses.
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