Google Cookies Crumble, Entrepreneurs What Now?

If you currently track your customers who click on your website, dropping cookies so that you can tailor make offers to suit them based on the analysis of their search history on the web, well unfortunately Google is going the same way that Safari and Firefox went back in 2013.

So just to be clear, you will still be able to analyse the visits to your website. That is ‘1st party cookie data,’ will still be available. It is the ‘3rd party cookie data’ that will no longer be available.

This is when you ‘re-market’ to users no matter where they travel on the internet, so you will need to pay a lot more to increase your advertising frequency to potential customers.

Re-marketing is where someone visits your website and then your adverts (can be a single execution or different executions) follow them around the web and they continue to see your adverts, making it look like your adverts are everywhere. (This could also annoy some browsers, but is invaluable if they are in that consideration stage of whether to buy your product or service.)

This is also detrimental if you were using 3rd party cookie data to grow your target market, what I mean is to target like-minded individuals to the ones you were tracking. You can no longer grow your market with this rather invasive strategy.

Regulations tightening up

Privacy regulations and laws internationally are tightening up. Google stated recently that users are asking for more privacy and control over how tech companies use their data, and with fiascos like Facebook being hacked in 2019, and the users' data, including phone numbers, being leaked to hackers, the regulations are tightening.

The Facebook hack was fertile ground for the new privacy regulations and web browsers requesting more control of their own data.

I quote from topline stories of the Facebook hack.

‘…… includes phone numbers, full names, locations, email addresses, and biographical information.

Security researchers say hackers could use the data to impersonate people and commit fraud.

The exposed data includes the personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India. It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and, in some cases, email addresses.’

source: Business Insider

But Google won’t stop tracking people entirely even though you may have more privacy as an individual. Google will still assign you to a group through technology that Google has, and this is all to enhance Google’s sale of ‘consumer clusters’ for want of a better description. So they will cluster users with common interests to the benefit of Google. I can see how this will be a powerful marketing tool for Google, to sell clustered users.

The good thing about all this is that it will cut down hopefully on ‘pop up spam’ advertising when you are browsing but it signifies a death blow to those digital agencies and businesses like start-ups that utilised this as part of their marketing and selling strategy.

There have been several large online websites internationally that have seen their web traffic drop significantly, but as always is the rule in any business, do not become too reliant on a single marketing vehicle or distribution channel.

Spread the Risk

Spread the risk. Earlier on in my corporate career, I worked for a company that would literally weaken their strongest customer and strengthen weaker customers through with holding stock, detrimental to their sales short term, but beneficial to their strategy long term. The company had a policy of reducing the power of the most powerful distributors, so as not to be too reliant on them.

So What? What do Entrepreneurs do about these changes?

Entrepreneurs do what they have always done, they get innovative; they search out websites that target similar consumer profiles and utilise similar search terms and tags to the interests of their customer base, in their SEO strategies. They create an email subscription to their content, and look at purchasing robust email services and lists targeting clustered users they identify, and of course they make their content the best experience ever for browsers, from graphics to written content, make the customers you attract love your stuff and pass it on.

Another strategy is to incorporate influencers. However, you will pay them for their service, bloggers and Instagram personalities that align with your product or brand image. There is a risk here if the personality suddenly goes rogue, and does something that denigrates your brand, but I usually set up contracts to cover us, if this is the case. The contract usually keeps the influencer on track.

I hope everyone can pivot and navigate these changes. Please comment if you have other suggestions, I am always open to ideas… Thanks for reading if you got to this point.