Europe is saying "NO" to Cookies - What's Next?

Whenever marketers were looking for customer data, they turned to tracking third-party cookies. However, with more and more tech companies restricting their usage and a growing number of users rejecting them, important data is missing. Data that marketeers use for contacting customers, improving a product, or making the online experience more enjoyable for users. What can save the day? - Conversational Marketing

Third-party cookies have long been “the glue that holds the independent marketing world together.” Far surpassing their original purpose of giving “memory” to websites, these cookies are heavily relied upon by marketers to analyze and track online users. Indeed, cookie-based targeted advertisements are the reason why websites can sustain their “free” business models and why you are not constantly having to click through offers of starting a premium account. But what’s good for the industry has not been good for user privacy—and the tide is starting to turn. For instance, the original draft from the EU Council in 2021 makes cookie walls a possibility, and it would also allow users to whitelist cookie providers at the browser level to reduce the number of consent pop-ups. But with that in mind and in the trending atmosphere of conversation, there's also a new approach underway.

What is Conversational Marketing?

With the demise of third-party cookies on the horizon and the rise of video, some advertisers have found a solution in conversational marketing.

Conversational Marketing is a method of engaging with website visitors and converting leads via dialogue-driven activities. This style of inbound marketing puts a focus on interactions with the consumer, not simply one-way transmission by the brand. Conversational Marketing aims to create relationships with the consumer by building trust through conversations and by making the buying experience as smooth and easy as possible.

What does this mean for your PPC campaign?

This approach doesn’t mean stopping your PPC and converting everything – this is just a new tool available to marketers and a slightly different way of thinking about the objectives. Essentially, it is all about connecting your marketing activities directly with the sales team, ideally through one platform, so the user has a smooth journey down the funnel. This stand for both your B2B and B2C marketing strategies, let's look at the numbers:

• 27% more B2B buyers expressed frustration with old school forms in 2021 than in 2020.
• Email usage has dropped by 25% since 2020.
• The demand for immediacy has grown by an average of 64% year-over-year.

The need to make business actually feel personal again

The B2B buying process has become cold, impersonal, and way vaguer for the buyer than it needs to be. Does this mean that all the money that you've spent on the old way of doing things needs to disappear? Of course not, implementing conversational marketing means mending things where they need to be mended. Look at it more as turning on a new lead generation channel that complements your existing marketing efforts. It's a way to humanize your client's or customer's experience and in that way also humanize your brand and make it a part of their schedule in a natural and non-invasive way.

Want to upgrade your marketing? Start the Conversation!

About EuroDev

By developing a digital marketing strategy tailored to Europe, we enable you to gain a foothold in the European market. We are the experts in Europe, you are the expert in your business. Together we will achieve success. We are convinced that digital marketing is not an "afterthought", but a crucial investment needed to get a foothold in an increasingly complex sales landscape. That's what we believe in. 

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