Capture Qualified Leads and Conversions with Our Digital Marketing Agency – No Matter What Comes Next
When your potential customers go online, it’s likely that they’re using Google Chrome as their web browser. Just about half of U.S. internet users hit the Google Chrome button when they want to search.
Google Chrome – and the data it collects – has been a powerful tool for digital marketers since its release in 2008. One of its biggest initial benefits was how it used cookies. But with Google phasing them out, approaches to digital marketing will soon change.
How Cookies Are Used in Digital Marketing – For Now
Cookies are bits of data that a website sends to your browser, such as Chrome, every time you visit a site. These cookies help your browser interact with that site more efficiently. For example, cookies keep you signed in or keep items in your cart, even if you switch to a different website altogether and then return.
The cookies Chrome uses are called “third-party cookies” because they’re useful to parties beyond the website itself, including digital marketing agencies near you that leverage them for strategic digital advertising.
The cookies that Chrome gobbles up as users search and shop online are exceptionally useful. When running paid media services like Google Ads, the knowledge that cookies provide gives the best digital marketing agencies the information they need to deliver the right ads for the right users at the right times.
As good as this sounds, digital marketers need to prepare for a new normal. Google is phasing out cookies, and it’s happening sooner than you think.
A “Cookieless Future”? Here’s What’s Happened So Far.
In 2021, Google announced that it would stop storing information from cookies altogether in 2024. Even more recently, Google announced that it would put an end to third-party cookies during the second half of 2024. Currently, 1% of Google Chrome users worldwide are browsing cookie-free to see how this change affects their user experience.
But why would Google want to stop using cookies, when so many digital marketers rely on this tool to market and remarket their products and services? In one word: privacy. More and more U.S. consumers don’t like the idea of being tracked across websites. Neither do politicians. The phasing out of cookies is one way to respond to this dislike for how data is used.
After Cookies Go Away, How Will Digital Marketing Agencies Advertise Products and Services on the Web?
The answer depends on who you’ve selected as your digital marketing company. In a recent mini-documentary from Digiday, attendees at a 2023 digital marketing conference were asked about their preparation for a cookieless future. Few had convincing answers. This is startling, considering that conference-goers and exhibitors are typically in-tune with industry changes.
But old habits die hard, and we need new marketing strategies, and fast. Tools that marketing agencies used to rely on to serve ads across online platforms simply aren’t going to be available after 2024.
iFocus Marketing, considered the best digital marketing agency in Overland Park, has been anticipating these changes since Google’s announcement. In fact, we wrote about these changes shortly afterward, made necessary pivots, and continued to see powerful business growth from our clients.
As we move closer to the second half of 2024, we’ve refined our strategies even more to ensure businesses aren’t left in the lurch, trying to figure out how to target users online without cookies.
How We Plan to Grow Your Business in the Post-Cookie Ad Space
These three key approaches from our digital marketing agency near you will help you continue to advertise effectively to your customers online, even as Google switches to a more privacy-friendly browsing experience.
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We help you manage first-party data. First-party data is what you gather from visitors who come to your site. iFocus Marketing’s digital strategy team can help you develop, implement, and optimize data collection techniques to gather information about your clients to use for marketing and remarketing purposes.
For example, here’s one strategy: our digital marketing company helps our clients identify interested users based on cookie-free information we’ve gathered. Then, we drive those users toward optimized form-fills on your website that incentivize them to provide contact information. That information can then be used in a variety of ways to move them closer to a purchase.
Although this example may seem a little old-fashioned in a high-tech digital marketing world, think of it this way: the smaller number of qualified leads you get from engaged web visitors is far more valuable than data from those who haven’t yet expressed specific interest in your business, but may have just been passing through.
- Leveraging AI models. New AI tools exist to help digital marketers and businesses determine how to target users effectively based on behaviors that fall outside of third-party cookies. AI can learn from how users interact on your site, chat with your chatbot, call your customer service line. Machine learning can provide the user with useful recommendations and suggestions for next steps, while also giving your business insights to target these users. AI models for digital marketing continue to evolve at a rapid pace, and our team is mastering them, one by one.
- Omnichannel marketing. There’s more than one way to engage with and drive consumers to your website besides following their trail of cookie crumbs. iFocus Marketing provides search engine optimization, paid media, social media advertising, social media management, video and audio advertising, web design services, and more. These channels all work together to carry customers on their journey from the beginning stages of their search, to that phone call where they place an order.
Our Digital Marketing Agency Is Ready for the Future. Join Us.
Our Overland Park digital marketing agency is more than prepared for a privacy-centered, cookieless marketing world where your business can benefit, and users can feel good about their choices.
iFocus Marketing’s award-winning work for a wide variety of clients isn’t the only reason why we’re considered one of the best digital marketing agencies in the Midwest. We’re proud of the way we continue to evolve alongside marketing technology. We provide everything you need before your competitors even have a chance to say, “What’s a cookie?”
Schedule a discovery call with our digital marketing company today to keep your business on the cutting-edge and on the minds of your next big wave of customers.
Peter Mishler, senior digital copywriter at iFocus Marketing, is dedicated to using language to help clients find their audiences. He is the author of two books: a Kathryn A. Morton Prize-winning collection of poetry, from Sarabande Books (2018) and a book of reflections for public school teachers from Andrews McMeel Publishing (2021). His poetry has appeared in many national publications, including The Paris Review, and he is a contributing editor for Literary Hub. New to marketing, Peter taught English for 15 years.
