What is going to fill the void left by third party cookies? We know for sure that our reliance on data isn’t going to change. It’s the foundation of marketing. we are always going to need to know who our audience is.

Three third party cookie alternatives.

1. Use browsers history only to influence impressions. This is a very simple option that wil be easy to implement because things like google analytics pretty much already do this. But because its browser specific it could make OmniChannel marketing a challenge.
2. First party identity information. This solution creates a unique ID for your web use. This option is popular with a lot of people in the commercial industry because even though your data pool will go down, using unique ids will give a higher match rate. Meaning if one of these matched personal ids show up in your system, you’ll know for sure that they are a solid prospect.
3. Aggregated consumer data. This is somewhat of a catch all option, using consumer data from multiple sources to cross refence and match information. One advantages of this option is that marketers we be able to learn more about their consumers. Although you will know more about them as people, it’s unlikely that you will be able to actually know who they are.

So, what now? Now is the time to figure out as much as you can about your audience. It will be more of a challenge to find out who your customer base is without third party cookies. Focus on diversify into omnichannel marketing to get a clearer picture of your audience. It is also a good time to plan out a marketing strategy. Figure out what companies you are going to need relationships with going forward.

What alternatives to you think are going to fill the void left by third party cookies?

It’s so frustrating.

You heard some advice that really seemed to make so much sense, so you go for it. All in, 100%.

But then you grind and grind and nothing happens. You stay up late and hustle for every single response. It’s like you’re spinning your wheels, not getting anywhere.

What’s the problem? Does the idea even work?

Good news: marketing still works, and really well. Don’t give up. But there are a lot of popular tactics that won’t move the needle.

So why not ditch the useless ideas and start upping your game (and results) with what’s actually working? But to do this, you need to recognize these tactics that make you poor.

Here’s the first one…

Investing In That New Thing Because Everybody’s Doing It

Take AI, for example. Accenture Interactive says 80% of B2B marketers feel AI will revolutionize marketing.

Yet Andrew Stephen, writing for Forbes points out:

AI is in its infancy.

Look how easy it is to get Siri or Alexa confused – just ask the wrong question. Data quality is a huge issue. Garbage in, garbage out. If you feed poor marketing data to AI, you fail to get results.

Another big issue? Nobody agrees on the terminology yet.

Greedy sharks are throwing out fancy tech words and making big promises… But if you don’t carefully find out what they’re talking about, you’ll get sucked in. All your money gone. Nothing in return.

Slap together an audience selection tool, choose a few triggers, time a few messages and voila! A brand new “AI” thing with a big price tag. “Of course you should buy it,” they say. “Everybody’s getting into AI.”

Newsflash: it’s not really AI. And marketers have been using this simple, relatively inexpensive process (audience selection, triggers, message timing) for years.

Yes, you should innovate, disrupt and adopt new things, but… how much more profitable to ask yourself first: Where’s my business really at? What growth stage am I in?

If you’re a small business or just starting out, you definitely don’t need an advanced-stage marketing tactic with a high-dollar price tag on it. No matter how successful people say it is.

What to do instead?

Go back to the basics. Look at the marketing that’s always worked and still does: Pick up your phone and call people. Send emails. Leverage direct mail. There’s a far more predictable success rate here.

People know this, but why do so many still avoid what works?

It’s because you’re told to…

Just Do The Marketing That’s Comfortable

Maybe you hate selling face to face. Or on the phone. That’s why those supposedly enlightened gurus say, “Do what you love.” True, it helps to be excited about your work. And you should always sell yourself on what you’re doing.

But if you take these “follow your passion” phrases literally, you’re on a road that leads to…dead broke. So many of these traditional-marketing haters decide that digital is the only way to go, so they…

Hide behind the keyboard and pray to get rich quick.

And some metrics are so misleading. One Twitter influence metric can rank you in the top 2% of your industry, even if you have almost no clicks through to your website.

Other people crank out video after video on Facebook Live or Periscope. And while this works for some…

Hearts and thumbs up will not pay your bills.

What about paid advertising? Will you get the results you want with Facebook audience targeting? Let’s say you want to target everyone on Facebook with a yearly income of $50,000+ who also like boating.

But if you’re not targeting that same audience with mail and email, what are you missing?

Guaranteed, there are quite a number of middle-class boat enthusiasts who don’t really use Facebook that much. And an even larger number who might use Facebook, but they won’t get into your sales funnel this way.

Speaking of funnels, ever heard of click funnels? You can spend a truckload on these – but how much money will they really make you?

Granted, some people make a living with these things. Yet how many businesses are finding out the hard way that they aren’t what they thought.

What to do instead?

Even digital marketing experts agree: don’t sell directly on social media. The only purpose of social should be to get people onto your website and your email list. Where you can… sell them directly.

Ask yourself: What is going to get me to my audience the quickest? How do I get in front of people who will spend money? What’s the quickest way there?

Inevitably, this leads you back to the basics… calling people, collecting and sending emails, using direct mail.

Here’s another road to the poor house…

Free Training

Just because somebody says is free doesn’t make it free.

What if somebody called you up today and gave you 3 full days of free training? And what happens, if after 3 days, you realize: well, that was kinda cool, but I knew most of it already. Common sense stuff.

Or they show you only one piece, just one of the many ingredients you actually need to succeed.

And in case you hadn’t figured this out… free training is there to sell you something. And of course the presenter makes it look SO easy. But the reality is, what you learned can sometimes take you months or even years to get set up and working profitably.

Truth is, those 3 days didn’t REALLY help you. You could have been using your time to actually get customers. So how expensive were those 3 days…really?

Well, how much do you WANT your time per hour to be worth? And once you’re actually worth that much per hour, you’re going to get paid that much. Without fail.

What to do instead?

Be very intentional with what you learn. When you write out your goals, ask yourself: what exactly do I need to learn to reach these goals?

And then force yourself to learn ONLY those things. Don’t get distracted.

What All This Means For You

Small and medium-sized businesses are getting fleeced by so many schemes and scams. All while good old-fashioned phone calls, direct mail and email marketing will help your business grow.

Think of what stage you’re at in your business. If you’re mowing lawns (or anywhere near just getting started with your business – you know who you are), you don’t need click funnels or AI.

Maybe you just need to use door hangers. Or a sign on your car. Or pound the phone. Even Mark Zuckerberg got Facebook started by sending a bunch of emails to his college buddies.

Sure, there are all those cool, shiny, fantastic marketing tools out there. But they may not be for you. At least not yet.

But if you stay focused and stay away from all these distractions, you can actually take your business to the next level. The level where there’s no more frustration, stress and worry about what works. Where there’s freedom to play with new ideas and options.

Where growing your business is fun again.

At first everything was great. Tens of thousands of customers accept offers and cash in on coupons. The customer analytics data pouring in is an absolute gold mine.

Any company would love to have these solid, specific, fresh details: what offers people are actually responding to, when, what they’re buying, how they’re buying, what they’re ignoring and what they buy again.

But then the bottom dropped out…

The marketing director suddenly decided to ignore all this precious response data and go in a new direction. Months later? Sales are stagnant and everybody wonders what happened.

2017 was a bloodbath for companies making stupid mistakes like this. And sadly, the trend will continue. Why? It doesn’t have to happen, but people simply refuse to learn to market. “You’re selling from your heels,” the well paid expert explained to the nearly dead company. How does he explain the advice?

“It means you don’t 100% believe in what you’re doing.”

Despite all the hard work they put into marketing, tracking customer behavior, analyzing the data and sending out more offers… they threw it all in the trash.

Let’s say you have an employee. He’s a likeable and friendly salesman. But there’s a customer with deep pockets standing outside your door. And a whole week goes by. The customer still passes your door, pausing, waiting for an invitation to come in and buy. But your employee does nothing.

How long would you keep this employee?

Do you make this same blunder with your response data? It cost you real time, effort and money to execute marketing campaigns, track customer behavior and then store the data. Yet if you do nothing with it, this will cost you far more money than you ever spent to get the data.

In one study, 93% of businesses say data is important (or very important) to their success. Yet some companies lie to themselves: “Oh yes, we use our data.” But the truth is, they don’t send out any marketing until the next quarter. Data from the last quarter or last year?

It’s actually rotten by now. Unusable.

Nobody can deny it. Our business environment is changing so rapidly it takes real focus to keep up. It’s vital to know exactly who your target audience is… this month, this week, today. And it’s becoming essential for survival to use behavior data to narrow your focus down to who is going to buy right now.

Let’s say your analytics find 100,000 people who look just like your current customers. Yet predictive modeling shows that only 15,000 of these people will buy immediately. You’re smart. You don’t dismiss the other 85,000. You simply market to them differently than the 15,000.

You keep on digging. You find 5,000 among the 15,000 who become the prime focus of your marketing initiative. And you send out offers to them at least every month.

Companies who will dominate this year have a strategy and a plan that includes action like this. Are you starting to appreciate why it’s absolutely critical that you use really reliable data?

And then act on it?

The biggest mistake companies make is failure to take action. Enough action. Often enough. To grow their business and achieve the results, success and freedom they want.

Don’t make this mistake. Guard your data. Use your data. Refresh your data. Profit from your data.

Let’s make this year the best one yet.

Two, 5 or maybe 10 years from now, the story of you and all the other companies in your industry will be exactly like Amazon vs. Walmart, Target, Sears, KMart, etc. There will be a couple who turned out sort of okay. There’ll be a lot of losers and one amazing success story. You can be the success story, and here’s how.

Everybody’s talking about mobile device data, big data and behavior data. But the real question is: How should you be using this data right now? (And yes, you should be.)

Think for a moment about how people act and what this tells you. For example, the armed forces know they’ve had a lot of success recruiting young people who:

• Have a veteran (or someone currently serving) in the household.
• Visited an armed forces website.
• Are taking some responsibility (looking for a job, getting a car or planning for college).

This is a great example of propensities. In this case, a person with a high propensity to join the military. People who behave a certain way are more likely to take an expected action. The more criteria they fit, the higher the propensity they have (the more likely they are) to act.

Notice the first item (veteran in the house) is a simple demographic. Marketers have known about and used demographics for years. And what about the website visitors? Cookies and targeting pixels can often be matched to specific people with their consent. (They entered their email, filled out a form or requested information.)

But what about the last item? Back in the day, there were only desktop and laptop computers. Now, almost everyone uses their mobile device.

Keyword tools can tell you what searches people type into Google. But can you see how the apps people install on their phones tell you so much about them? They tell you people’s lifestyles, habits, even the purchases they are about to make.

How can you use this information? Well, you could make a list of certain apps and target anyone who uses them. One little problem with that: tons of brand new apps are popping up on people’s phones every day. Your criteria is obsolete before you can use it.

How can you solve this? Categories. Every app falls into a finite number of categories. In the example above, some apps fall into the job-seeking category. Other apps are for college planning.

If you sell cars, imagine how useful it would be to know that someone in your area is searching for a car right now. Either on your lot or a competitor’s. Even if they’re searching for Fords and you sell Chevy – wouldn’t you like to know about them? And as you can see, behavior data not only tells you who – but can tell you when to make people offers.

It gets better. To get the best deals, consumers are happily revealing their location through their devices. And even the purchases they make. Can you see the opportunities here?

Yet there’s another reason you should be using behavior data now. Earl Nightingale, one of the first business philosophers said something really powerful:

“If you really want success…you can get a head start by looking at what everybody else is doing and do the opposite.”

It’s strange advice for those not familiar, but it’s a great strategy for those who are serious about improving their business. Let’s deal in reality here. Most people want 100% certainty before they dive into a marketing method. (And most people make excuses instead of progress, too.)

Mobile device data, behavior data and propensities are still new. And yes, there will always be a bit of unknown in any marketing strategy. Yet the risk behind behavior data is far lower, far safer than just using demographic data or all those marketing tactics people used in past decades. When you use methods like behavior data to narrow your focus and target a specific audience, you don’t just get a little better – your marketing gets exponentially better.

Not everyone will act on this. Some will just talk. Others will wait and see. And that’s why some companies will sort of do ok. Most of them will fail. And only a few will win big.

What will you do?