Breaking News: Paid advertising is about to take a hit. Consumer data privacy measures by the tech giants – phasing out of third-party cookies, Apple iOS 14/IDFA changes – and ever-tightening privacy regulations – GDPR, CCPA – means paid advertising is going to be less trackable and less effective. Multi-channel attribution is going to be harder and more probabilistic. The effects of IDFA changes will be felt as soon as early Spring 2021.
Content marketing and SEO may have taken a back seat to paid ads for your business over the past few years. If so, it’s time to rethink your strategy.
While content marketing, SEO, brand and relationship-building have always been foundational to the Good Marketers’ Toolset, they have, in many cases and over time, been deprioritized because of the silver bullet of paid advertising. Businesses have been quick to jump on the paid advertising train to fast-track conversions, sales and profit. And why wouldn’t they? With the machine learning algorithms now so advanced that they can rapidly identify the best audiences and creative and help you scale your campaigns very quickly, what’s not to love about it? Who doesn’t want instant gratification? But beware! Things are about to change. Targeting is going to become diluted and machine learning algorithms will be less effective.
Am I saying you should stop paid advertising on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Snap, TikTok etc. and switch 100% to content marketing and SEO? Hell no! These paid channels should remain part of your marketing mix and absolutely still have a place there.
What I am saying is you’d be smart to lean into more organic, owned media channels such as content marketing, SEO and email automation. By building out your website with rich, interactive, consumer-friendly (and google-friendly) content and capturing emails, you can set yourself up for success and safeguard against the hit that performance marketing will take. Fine-tuning this part of your marketing strategy, will deliver lower Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), stronger brand affinity and stickier customers!
Content is still King and First-Party Data is now Queen!
