It’s often repeated in the world of digital marketing that data is king. What exactly does this mean? Well, to market the right products to the right people, you must be able to use data points to find your audience.
In today’s digital landscape, billions of data points about consumers and their digital media usage build a digital footprint for almost every single human that uses the internet — from what celebrities or influencers we’re following, to where we’re accessing the internet, to our interests or recent searches. Data collection has become so complete and so universal that it is now possible for organisations and brands to target consumers down to the individual level, something that would never have been possible even twenty years ago, when companies were still relying on TV and billboards.
However, a spate of high-profile incidents over the last ten years involving social media companies collecting and monetising private user data, as well as general increased public awareness about data harvesting and concerns for personal privacy, means that data collection can no longer be viewed as a given for marketers. While social media companies, which are usually free to use and rely on advertising dollars to thrive, will always have the incentive to collect and monetise user data, there are also an increasing number of companies that produce hardware — such as Apple — that are prioritising protecting consumer data and making that a selling point of their tech ecosystems.
In navigating a new world of ethical data management, marketers must be ready to explore new ways of finding and targeting sales audiences, while maintaining ethical standards and legal compliance.
What is data privacy?
Data privacy refers to the idea that individuals should have some level of control over how their online data is collected, stored and managed. This online data can range from things that seem innocuous, like whether someone has an interest in dog videos, to things that are obviously and highly confidential, like someone’s personal health or financial information. While there are some clear legal issues around sharing personal information that may be used by malicious actors like hackers, the laws are more unclear about things like someone’s personal interests or general internet usage.
Why is data privacy important for marketers?
This is where data privacy becomes important for marketers. Marketers are typically not interested in accessing someone’s personal credit card details — that’s more the work of scammers or hackers. They are, however, interested in knowing who, for instance, might have an interest in dog videos, if they are looking to sell cute plush toys of dogs. In these cases, whether you’re a marketing manager or analyst with a Master of Business Analytics online, data is a crucial part of the marketing landscape.
From a legal perspective, consumers typically sign away their right to privacy in matters like these, when they tick the box that allows them to use an app or social media platform in the first place. Having access to and being able to use a consumer’s browsing activity data is also what allows most social media websites to curate an individualised and entertaining feed of content.
However, from a branding perspective, more and more consumers are turning to data privacy as something that they come to expect — consumers don’t want to feel spied on, or that they are being “sold” by tech companies as products. The heavy narrative advertising from companies like Apple around the importance they place on privacy has also influenced public opinion, not to mention the lingering aftermath of huge scandals such as the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which saw a UK-based firm use data marketing to target and influence the 2016 elections, supporting Republican politicians Ted Cuz and Donald Trump in their presidential campaigns.
Regardless of your political leanings, a trillion-dollar company selling the data of private American citizens to a foreign firm, enabling it to have a direct and tangible impact on American politics, is certainly going to be a cause for concern, and indeed in 2019, Facebook was handed a $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission for its privacy violations.
How do marketers market ethically and comply with data privacy?
At the end of the day, as a marketer, you are not responsible for the legal compliance of the tech platforms you use to reach your audience. For example, if you place targeted advertisements on Facebook, that falls under Facebook’s responsibility to ensure that the company follows the right rules and laws. For example, offering consumers the right to opt out of target advertising and ensuring that consumer data is protected and not sold without their consent.
If you are, however, managing consumer data yourself, or using data to create marketing campaigns, the ethical question you ask yourself must be something along the lines of: “How am I improving outcomes for the consumer?”
For example, Spotify uses the data of its consumers to create its yearly Wrapped campaigns, but these individualised summaries of a user’s data give them valuable insight into their music consumption trends and habits and also give them content that they can share on their own social media pages. There are also data safeguards, including the option to essentially opt out of including data in a user’s Wrapped through the use of a private listening toggle. Similarly, using consumer data to reward a customer on a specific event like their birthday makes them feel seen and can be a nice personalised surprise for your consumers.
However, marketers must work with their data teams to ensure that any collected consumer data is secure and protected against hackers. Recent high-profile breaches, such as the breach of telecommunications company Optus in 2022 that exposed the personal data of 10 million Australians, including government ID cards and home addresses, have left consumers feeling distrusting and suspicious of companies when it comes to data privacy and data safety.
To sum up
Marketers are always walking a fine line between offering consumers what they want and need, and overstepping boundaries with annoying advertisements. In a modern age of data privacy, consumers don’t want to feel overly targeted, and they want to know that their data, both personal and behavioural, is protected and kept confidential. To create effective marketing campaigns while prioritising ethical data management, marketers will need to work closely with their tech and data departments and keep the consumer at the front of their minds from start to finish.
