Why Marketers Should Learn About Data Privacy
A product must reach a broad audience base through effective marketing to compete in any market. And online advertising is a massive asset in a world that’s becoming increasingly digital.
However, product marketers should already see an opportunity revealing itself. Data privacy and respect for users’ information are becoming increasingly vital. Thus, while a product can be filled with convenient features, it should also satisfy users’ need for privacy online. See why marketers should showcase digital privacy and security in their products.
What Does Data Privacy Entail?
Data privacy denotes the confidentiality of a data set that can be utilized to personally identify an individual or gain control of their online assets. A few noteworthy examples include name, date of birth, bank account credentials, address, phone numbers, private emails, social media profiles, and IDs.
Why It’s Essential
If an organization discloses any of the details mentioned above to the public or third parties without the owner’s consent, they are breaching the data privacy of its audience/customers. If you read the privacy policies of the biggest companies, you will find several things. For one, they will claim not to sell user data. However, selling is not the only thing consumers should worry about.
How is Data Critical for Marketers
Since collecting data from their leads is essential for marketers, let’s observe where they use that data.
Advertising
First and foremost, marketers utilize user data to create marketing campaigns that target specific audiences. For instance, Ford may collect data on people interested in buying their new mid-size sedan. Their marketers can initialize a campaign with content that such prospects find appealing and launch a campaign using Google or Facebook ads to reach them.
Customer Experience
Marketers often use data from customer forms and website behavior to understand their interests. Cookies are a massive part of the process. If a company tracks that you’re not long enough on a website to complete a purchase, they ensure to include designs that keep you engaged for longer.
Feedback and Optimization
Marketers use feedback and order forms to gain feedback on their practices, ensuring that they optimize their campaigns for maximum effectiveness to reach as many promising leads as possible.
Developing AI and ML Tools
The increased utilization of AI and machine learning tools can only remain viable if you feed them proven data. Those models can only adapt to an effective action plan if they have valuable data. Therefore, marketers feed user data to such models to make them more efficient for future campaigns.
How Can Marketers Ensure Data Privacy?
Marketers ensuring data privacy for their audience can adopt the following methods.
Understanding Regulations in Detail
The data privacy regulations differ with each country. Therefore, marketers must understand the risks of possible legal action, such as violating GDPR regulations within the EU. Usually, digital privacy laws contain a checklist for avoiding any possible breaches which can be accessed from the official government website.
Using Secure Cloud-Based Servers
Data stored on company servers is often the target of hackers and other malicious individuals. Thus, it helps to store it off-site on encrypted servers, only available to a few authorized employees using the cloud. It also pays to have multi-factor authentication to log the history of all check-ins.
Decentralizing Data
Marketers can store the relevant data set with the necessary aspects while removing any personally identifiable information. The process is called decentralization, making it useless for any hacker who might access the data despite the various security measures.
Methods Customers Can Adopt to Ensure Data Privacy
Of course, you can’t rely on marketers to fulfill the promise of data privacy alone. Users can take a few measures to ensure it on their end. Additionally, marketers should be aware of the new privacy-focused strategies that call for new marketing techniques.
Install a Reliable Antivirus
It helps to have an active antivirus that tracks all data packets sent to your system in real-time. Those may include possible trojans or trackers disguised as third-party cookies.
Use a VPN
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) diverts your system’s IP address through encrypted servers around the globe. That stops web entities from seeing your true location. Since many ads rely on your location, it makes sense to hide this identifier. So, connect to a VPN for Windows to ensure that your home location remains a secret. The best part is that you can choose a specific area for your new IP address to pinpoint.
Remain Anonymous on Public Forums
You don’t need to share your details to complete strangers online. When using social media, exercise restraint on personal information and use creative names for your user profiles. Keep your password private and complex, and never share any media that can provide your location information.
Short Summary
While marketers have been privy to plenty of sensitive information, the Web 3.0 revolution makes them more accountable. There is still a long way to enforce necessary regulations, so we hope this guide on why marketers should learn about data privacy can help you till then.
