We’re living in an era of seismic change for digital marketing. In addition to a migration to ecommerce that accelerated rapidly, there have been regulatory and platform privacy changes that advertisers must navigate. People should always remain at the center of digital products and marketing goals, and the power should be in their hands when it comes to how their data is used. In order to support these principles and run effective campaigns, marketers will need to adapt with a new approach.
At Facebook, we want to help marketers adapt to the changing ads ecosystem. We are rebuilding our systems and investing in a multi-year effort to build a portfolio of technologies that will limit the amount of personal information we process, all while still allowing us to show people relevant ads and helping marketers to accurately measure ad effectiveness.
We’re also counseling marketers to adopt a new perspective when it comes to advertising. The following five mindset shifts aim to equip marketers to reach and engage effectively with customers in a privacy-focused era of digital marketing.
1. From owner to steward of customer data
Marketers must see themselves as stewards of customer data, which isn’t theirs to use unfettered but rather theirs to protect and respect. Technologically speaking, part of your role as a data steward requires building your mar-tech stack to securely handle and transfer information in ways that reflect customers’ privacy choices and that offer them a high degree of control.
For example, at Facebook, we’ve introduced the Conversions API solution to enable businesses to share their marketing data directly from their servers as an alternative or complement to data shared through web browsers. Conversions API is designed to honor the privacy choices that people make using Facebook’s data controls while also making it possible for businesses to provide personalized experiences across our apps and services. The solution can help both improve your performance today and safeguard your performance as browser technologies become less effective in the future.
2. From a one-stop shop to multiple models for measurement
Measurement in marketing has long been about consolidating data into a single model or source of truth. But with data availability changing due to evolving regulations and technology policies, marketers should take exactly the opposite approach: embrace the tension between marketing models rather than reconcile them. That could mean using marketing mix modeling (MMM) or geo-experiments to gain another angle of understanding about how your campaigns are performing across channels—all while limiting the need for person-level information.
And because some of the measurement methods you’ve relied on will be impacted by recent data policy changes, it’s best to continuously experiment using the most incremental methods available to you so that you are able to better understand the true business value of your marketing. Your methods should aim to determine causality, connecting the dots on how your marketing may have led to an observed outcome.
There will be tradeoffs that your teams will need to make when determining the methods to use for measurement and optimization. For example, some measurement methods will better capture incremental results, while others may be faster or easier to execute but less indicative of incrementality or true value. By adopting a mix of measurement strategies—an approach we call 3D measurement—and moving beyond incumbent approaches, marketers can be more agile and uncover new opportunities.
3. From reading signal to communicating clear value
Now that customers are more in control of where and when they share their data with you, the old approach of passive data collection through mechanisms like cookies will no longer apply.
It is more important than ever for marketers to clearly communicate how a product or service will be highly valuable to a customer. They’ll need to show the benefits of a customer taking an action—like signing up for a newsletter or filling out a lead form. Engaging customers early on using tools like Facebook’s Polling Ads or Lead Ads can be a helpful way to learn more about what your customers most value. Think of creative as a jumping-off point for a conversation with your customers that enable you to provide more personalized and memorable experiences for them.
4. From hyper-focused to people-first
When designing creative for your campaigns, appeal to the wide variety of interests and motivations within a broader target audience rather than focusing on niche customer preferences that may have worked in the past. A campaign that houses multiple motivation-led creative assets will allow our ads delivery system to learn who responds to a particular asset, helping to increase the chances of reaching a wider variety of audiences—even brand new customer segments. We call this approach “creative diversification” and our studies have found that it drives 32% better efficiency and 9% incremental reach than the alternative.
5. From streamlining checkout to enabling an entirely frictionless journey
Without as much reliance on data about your customers’ preferences at each of these stages, your customer journey needs to be frictionless, regardless of who they are. Consider building mobile-optimized experiences that drive conversion.
Businesses that solve for checkout usability issues see a 35% increase in conversion rate, according to Baymard Institute’s “Mobile Commerce Design.” Adjustments like repositioning buttons to be closer to a person’s thumb as they hold a phone, offering guest check-out to new customers or providing a variety of payment methods can make a big difference.
Any kind of disruption can bring about uncertainty, but it can also create new opportunities to innovate and grow. Digital marketers have been ably responding to shifts in technology from the very beginning of the industry, demonstrating their remarkable creativity and ingenuity. In our new privacy-first reality, marketers can seize this moment to break through and drive meaningful connections with customers built on trust, collaboration and conversation.
