As one of Brisbane’s leading digital agencies, we understand the importance of data and privacy for your visitors and customers.
Digital marketers need to ensure they are not leaving their customers at risk from the internet underworld of cybercrime. Customers need to feel safe visiting websites, and their privacy and crucially, how you store their information has integrity. Read on to find out everything you need to know about data ethics and privacy in the digital marketing world.
So we can discover in more depth the topic of data ethics and privacy in digital marketing, let’s start by finding out what ethical marketing is.
What is Ethical Marketing?
A socially responsible company promotes ethical marketing. Whether that is data collection or your customers' privacy. A core value of any marketing team that abides by ethical strategies is that although profit is important, it should not be the main driver of promotion and sales in today's climate. It’s not just a nod or a passing phase but the understanding that internal and external stakeholders create positive change with an element of giving back. It's a whole philosophy where companies genuinely practice ethical business practices within their core marketing values. We are in a current marketing climate where marketing doesn’t focus solely on the brand but on its customer's needs, desires, and pain points. The most cutting-edge companies' marketers understand that customers' security and privacy, and overall well-being are the driving nucleus of their digital advertising campaigns.
Historically a Free Internet World
In the internet’s infancy, most advertisers inhabited a pretty much free world. Where platforms, users and digital marketers were free to interact unencumbered. The content was free to be explored, and in return, their data was collected for marketing campaigns so entrepreneurs could understand them and keep up with their needs. In recent times there has been a huge move away from this unconstrained virtual ‘free-for-all’ which has left the world of digital marketing looking for ways to move forward.
Why Data Ethics and Privacy in Digital Marketing Are Important
In our ever-increasing online world, the ethics around how you store and use customers' data are becoming more and more important. Marketers collecting first-party data among other crucial customer information, need to ensure it's collected transparently and ethically.In simple terms, online marketers need to look beyond privacy and make sure any grey areas are investigated to ensure digital marketing is ‘done right.’ This is vital for the integrity of any online marketing actions and can help drive value for consumers creating an equal and transparent environment.
Honest Data Transactions
Not only do contemporary online consumers require a personalised, engaging journey with helpful content, but it is also crucial that policymakers attract leads with honest data transactions.With survey heavyweights, Statista declaring a staggering 22.13 million estimated internet users in Australia alone, online marketing is more crucial than ever before. Consumers need to feel confident that data privacy is not breached and they are not vulnerable to the dark worlds of spam and, more crucially, cybercrime.
Google Agrees
The president of Google’s Business and Operations, Matt Britten, fully agrees with today’s more ethical marketers suggesting a more transparent approach to data and privacy Game-changing marketers are looking to work for organisations that are having open conversations with their readers and visitors as to how their data is really being used.
Third-Party Cookies
Historically, the world of digital advertising was mainly based on third-party cookies, which store identifying information about the user. For the most part, to produce ads relevant to them. Google’s latest plans mean that users' identities will not be served up so easily as previously to marketers. Identifying groups of users online with similar interests will be based on its FLoC strategy, but individuals will remain off the menu and ‘in the crowd’. They are confident this new strategy will be a reasonable replacement for the previous third-party cookie and provide digital marketers with the crucial data they need. However, the plan and subsequent trials have not been that well received, as this only provides some parts of the puzzle that advertisers want to see.
So it may not now be implemented.Instead, the latest iteration trialled as a solution is Topics API. This simply shows that the whole area of cookies, privacy, and advertising is still in a state of flux in a changing environment trying to meet everyone’s needs.
Consent
The main keyword for all responsible marketers is “consent”. This is crucial to comply with GDPR, an acronym for General Data Protection Regulation. Although it is a European regulation, any Australian businesses tracking behaviour or offering goods and services to anyone from EU countries need to abide by it. According to GDPR governance, the processing of any data needs to have the user's consent for one or more specific purposes and should be handled in a transparent, lawful and fair way. So for any website entrepreneurs in Australia handling their own marketing, it’s important to make sure any plugins provide a way to export/remove any gathered visitor data.
Does the Data Collected Benefit the User?
Historically data collection didn't need to benefit anyone other than the organisation gathering it. Let your customers know how collecting their data will benefit them. For instance, making their visit more personalised, ironing out issues at the point of sale or even creating community groups. The best way to convince your customers to agree to their information capture is by outlining that their product or service journey will improve. It should be fairly obvious in some cases if you offer any kind of location, mapping or directions. Your existing customers are more likely to agree to their data collection if they see a direct benefit.
What Does the Future Hold?
With regulations over privacy and how data is collected rapidly changing, how should digital marketers make sure their future is sustainable for clients, and the industry as a whole? Customers expect brands to care and be accountable for their own staff and stakeholders and care for their welfare. Changes are pushing companies to display more corporate social responsibility that impacts communities both on and offline. Customers are showing loyalty and crucially making repeat purchases need marketers to respond ever more quickly to events around them. Online marketers need to keep up with social issues and world events as ethical marketing shape the future of how the public buys and, more importantly, who they buy from.
To Sum It Up
Anchor Digital is one of Brisbane and South East Queensland’s key digital creative and marketing agencies. Our marketing and creative gurus fully understand how important data ethics and privacy is to your business. To find out how we can help build your creative and marketing strategies with a watchful eye on ethics and all-important privacy, get in touch with our helpful team here.
