If you’ve been following along with us here at NetElixir, you know that the looming deprecation of third-party cookies is already transforming how digital marketers track and report the consumer data used to inform marketing strategy and campaigns. The changes in how that data is collected and how it can be used has ripple effects across every channel and aspect of digital strategy, from rethinking SEO to a new focus on social media. According to EMarketer, 32% of marketers see social media profiles as key in the cookieless future, and we anticipate marketers will rely on social media when seeking to reach new and existing customers without the third-party data they’ve relied on for years.
When Cookies Began to Disappear, Social Media Took the Hit
While many marketers have only begun to think about cookie deprecation now, with Chrome set to phase out tracking by 2023, social media marketers saw the writing on the wall as early as September 2020. That was when the release of iOS14 limited retargeting capabilities for Facebook and offered users the option to ask the app not to track them, making paid social campaigns more difficult to run. Social strategists saw the window in which they could retarget users shorten from 28 days to 7 days, curtailing marketers’ ability to reach back out to potential customers and requiring marketers to totally rethink how they use social media channels for marketing.
Finding New Audiences through Social Media Channels
Savvy marketers are beginning to see social media as a critical channel for reaching out and connecting with potential customers and building new audiences. Paid social is a unique data-rich environment great for testing products, promotions, and messaging across different audiences. As the appetite for first-party data grows, marketers will need to develop paid campaigns that help them generate new leads of potential high-value customers who can become brand loyalists that have continued engagement with your e-commerce business.
Lead generation ads and campaigns that focus on exciting offers, not just discounts, and promise community and exclusivity, can inspire new audiences to connect with your brand on social. A community on social allows you to access first-party data that will let you reach users not only on social media but also on other platforms. Digital marketers are now thinking more broadly about how a brand is performing and growing across channels with the recognition that the growth of audience and engagement in a channel like social can have a broad effect across other channels. By leveraging the strong points from each channel, marketers can build a customer journey that keeps the user engaged and ultimately converts them from a browser into a buyer.
Reinvent Your Social Strategy with NetElixir
Whether you’re ready for a total overhaul of your digital strategy for the cookieless future or simply want to dig into how your social media channels can support your e-commerce business moving forward, NetElixir will work with you to find the solutions you need to reach your customers. We’ll help ensure you’re telling compelling stories that will engage new audiences, using marketing psychology, and our brand and data-driven insights to understand and influence customer behavior. We can help you devise and execute your first-party data collection strategy to ensure sustainable growth and engagement of your customers, as well as leverage incrementality for holistic growth and test new channels to reach new and desired audiences. Our hands-on, knowledgeable team is made of analytical thinkers who love to create and share knowledge and to innovate in the e-commerce.
We’ll use our proprietary social media campaign framework to help you find, target, and engage the perfect customers for your brand. We’ve invested over 500,000 hours developing social media campaigns on Facebook/Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and Pinterest from initial design to final implementation. We’ll work with you to develop an authentic brand voice that helps your customers identify and connect with your business across all your social media channels. And while you’re creating content for your social campaigns, why not let NetElixir help you take a good look at your SEO strategy and make sure it’s meeting your requirements for the cookieless future and get your e-commerce business set up with Google Analytics 4 for all your tracking and reporting needs.
Ready to Learn More?
Contact NetElixir to discover how we can help your e-commerce business put together a social strategy ready to target new audiences in the post-cookie world.
Additional resources
- Christmas in May: Your Holiday Strategy in the Cookieless World
- Preparing for the Cookieless World With Google Analytics 4
- Crafting an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy
