How Will Changing Privacy Laws Impact Your 2024 Digital Marketing Strategy?

The regulatory landscape surrounding the collection of consumer data is in the midst of profound change. This volatility, driven by increasingly stringent but asymmetrical global privacy laws, poses direct and immediate challenges to brands and digital marketers. What can organizations do to evolve their digital marketing efforts, stay ahead of the competition and build a truly bespoke brand experience for consumers?

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law set a new benchmark for consumer protections when it went into effect in 2018 and has greatly impacted the development and direction of privacy laws globally in the years since. Some of the most significant outcomes pertain to the collection of third-party cookies, which Google is now in the process of phasing out from its popular Chrome internet browser, due in part to regulatory pressure as well as increased consumer awareness and advocacy around the issue.

Stricter laws demand that organizations evolve beyond traditional digital marketing techniques. Alternative strategies for data acquisition—such as tracking behavior-based interactions at multiple touchpoints throughout the customer journey—provide an opportunity to enhance personalization, increase conversions and build both revenue and brand loyalty, all while maintaining consumer privacy.

Unlike broader demographics-based analytics, behavior-based interactions provide personalized insights that enable brands to predict future behavior based on demonstrated past behavior at every step of the customer journey. This is a profound point of difference since no demographic group acts as a monolith; age, ethnicity and interests provide at best an educated guess when it comes to marketing your product, solution or service.

Conversely, behavior-based tracking delivers empirical and—more importantly—actionable information about potential customers. Understanding a user’s purchasing journey through trackable digital touchpoints eliminates demographic guesswork and empowers brands to produce stronger, more targeted communications to better reach and deliver against the needs of these consumers in the future. Thus, the quality of the customer journey increases and the user’s privacy is protected, as no personally identifiable information is collected as part of this process.