With the rise in cybersecurity threats, most countries have put data privacy at the forefront. They’re formulating laws to ensure that their citizens are protected. Therefore, as a business, you’re mandated by law to comply with the said regulations across your operations, including digital marketing. This article will guide you appropriately.
1. Practice Transparency
In some situations, you might be forced to request personal data from your clients. This could be their login details to your website, for instance. In such scenarios, you need to inform them why you need this information, who’ll have access to it, the length of time you’ll store it in your systems, and others. You could also include how they’ll benefit by divulging this information.
As part of transparency, you should inform them of any updates or changes you make to your privacy policies. In case of a breach and there’s a possibility of data getting into the wrong hands, you need to inform them.
By practicing transparency, your customers are well aware of what they’re getting themselves into right from the start.
2. Refrain From Sharing Data With Third-Parties
Most breaches are believed to occur when there’s a third party involved. With digital marketing, you might need several tools offered by different providers to make your analysis. To avoid data privacy breaches, look for solutions where you don’t need to involve third parties.
If you have to utilize the services of a third party, ensure that you first seek consent from your customers to do so. With permission, inform the outsourced provider of your data protection policies that they need to adhere to you to work together. Also, as you send them files and data, use secure platforms such as GoAnywhere’s enterprise secure file sharing and others. With such tools, you’re assured all your clients’ data will be safe.
3. Adopt Creative Marketing
Most digital marketing tools require your clients’ information to generate data. With this, you might find it hard to ensure you’re compliant. Your team will work from the point of skeptics, which isn’t a desirable way to run your operations.
Adopt strategies that don’t necessitate customer information. This will work, especially if you don’t have the resources to acquire data protection tools. Use colorful ads on your website, or pay companies to advertise on their websites. To get more attention, make these ads colorful and often change them. When they’re vibrant, they’re likely to catch your potential clients’ attention, meeting your purpose.
Content marketing is another approach you can implement. Aim at writing blogs on hot and trending topics within and outside of your niche. This will bring more traffic to your website, and its visitors will see what you’re all about and the services you offer.
Make use of your social media platforms as well. If you haven’t been active, it’s time you now do. By embracing such techniques, you’ll avoid collecting personal data as much as possible, reducing the possibility of a data breach.
4. Give Your Customers Choices
Besides informing them of how the data collected will be used, you need to provide a platform where they can opt out of the said service if they so desire. This could be a campaign where you’d send them promotional information or email marketing where you send them products they might like. For this, please give them the option of unsubscribing to these services at their pleasure.
Besides marketing issues, it could be on your cookies or terms as they navigate your website. Below the message on your cookie settings, provide the option of accepting or rejecting. The same applies to your terms and conditions.
Provide information on how they can withdraw any permissions they’ve granted you. This is especially with those they can’t easily opt out from like email unsubscribing. Provide an easy-to-follow guide.
5. Hire A Compliance Officer
It might become overwhelming to ensure that your digital marketing strategies are compliant with data privacy with all the strict regulations. You might find yourself neglecting other key operations because of this.
Hiring a compliance officer to handle your marketing strategies’ data privacy can avoid all the stress. They’ll run through any marketing action before it’s implemented to ensure it’s compliant. Your compliance officer will also keep up with any new and changing data privacy laws and ensure your marketing operations are up to date and adjusted as necessitated.
Conclusion
Ensuring data privacy in your digital marketing isn’t a daunting task. This article has shown you some easy-to-implement tips to ensure compliance. Adopt them, and you won’t have to worry about your marketing operations being compliant anymore.
