Back in college or at some point in your career, you learned about the 4Ps of marketing: place, price, product, and promotion. Though nearly 60 years old, the 4Ps still hold weight today. However, the marketing landscape has been undergoing drastic changes.
Legislation, like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), have been among the most recent changes. Brands now face challenges implementing key marketing tactics such as personalization, which relies heavily on gathering consumer data.
Today, marketers must shift even more to a permission-based data strategy to fuel their personalized marketing strategies.
The new 4Ps of marketing—privacy, permission, personalization, and performance (ROI)—are the way forward for marketers looking to earn consumer trust and loyalty.
1. Privacy: The Cookie Crumbles
Not too long ago, privacy had stopped being a top concern for most US consumers. Today, because of scandals like 2018's Cambridge Analytica debacle and one data breach after another, that attitude has changed. Trust and transparency are now top of mind for consumers, and lawmakers are taking notice.
New legislation like GDPR and CCPA forces brands to take a hard look at how they collect, use, and secure data. More often than not, they also need to make significant changes or face consequences such as heavy penalties, fines, and customer churn.
For years, the cookie served as the reigning king of digital marketing. Unfortunately, the cookie is on its way out. Google announced changes to its Chrome browser that would offer users additional insight into how they are tracked across the Web through cookies.
Marketers have long relied on cookies to track consumer interests and behavior, but we will have to find new and improved ways of collecting data in a post-cookie world.
2. Personalization Matters More
Consumers receive thousands of marketing messages per day. But because so many of those messages aren't relevant, audiences tune them out and it becomes even harder for brands to stand out.
The best way to make an impression and cut through all the noise is through the use of personalization. Messages that are customized based on consumer behavior and preference insights have a much better chance of being noticed and offer significant ROI.
Personalization improves the customer experience and increases customer engagement and loyalty. It can also reduce acquisition costs by up to 50%, increase revenues by 15%, and boost marketing spend efficiency by 30%.
3. Permission Is a Prerequisite
Third-party data is unreliable and often incomplete, and it hurts consumer trust. Striking a balance between privacy and personalization requires the implementation of a permission-based data strategy: When brands seek out advanced consent, consumers anticipate receiving information from a brand and receive marketing messages that are both personal and relevant.
Marketers must quickly and easily collect zero-party data (preference data) at speed and scale to adapt to the current regulatory landscape. However, today's consumers know their worth, and therefore, expect a tangible value exchange whereby they get something in return for their personal data.
Brands offering interactive experiences that are both engaging and entertaining have a leg up on the competition. Questionnaires, polls, quizzes, and social stories are just a few ways marketers can improve the customer experience while conducting research and collecting opt-ins.
4. Performance (ROI)—KPIs, KPIs, KPIs
Measurement is what sets successful marketers apart from the pack. Knowing how your campaigns perform and using that data to inform future marketing campaigns is the key to making progress—and revenue.
But it can be challenging to discern what key performance indicators (KPIs) matter most.
Though site traffic, click rates, and annual revenue are important, metrics that deliver actionable insights about your customers should have the most significant influence on your business decisions. These are my Top 3 marketing KPIs:
- Customer lifetime value (CLV). As a marketing KPI, nothing trumps customer lifetime value. If you're not tracking CLV, you're missing out on a critical metric. By predicting what your customers are likely to spend, CLV offers a glimpse into future profits, allowing you to target customers with the highest levels of engagement and spending potential.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS). Used to gauge the loyalty of a brand's customer relationships, the Net Promoter Score offers critical insight into your customer experience (CX) performance. Improve NPS by finding the pain points that are hampering your CX and making the changes that will be most impactful for your customers.
- Customer repeat rate. Do your customers come back again and again? This KPI informs your strategy for increasing customer loyalty and delivering a world-class customer experience worth repeating.
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Several high-profile data breaches have caused consumer trust to sink to an all-time low. Marketers must struggle to win their confidence in the wake of a new onslaught of privacy regulations. Brands that quickly evolve and embrace the new 4Ps of marketing will gain a competitive edge.
