In this episode I'm talking all about cookies. No, not that kind of cookies,
website, advertising, tracking cookies. The far more useful but far less delicious
kind. The kind of cookies that track you and your customers all over the internet.
What they are? Why you should care? and most importantly, how to use them
ethically and strategically for the best results for everyone concerned?
Let's get to it!
Hey there my name is Adam Earhart, marketing strategist and welcome to the
marketing show, where we help you grow your business by generating more leads,
customers and sales. So, if you're interested in learning the latest and
greatest marketing strategies, tools, tips, tricks and tactics, well, you may want to
consider subscribing and hitting that notification bell so you never miss a
future episode. Alright, let's talk cookie. Now, before we get into the meat
and potatoes of cookies - man there sure are a lot of food references in this
episode - we first need to cover a brief history of cookies, what they are and
essentially, how they came into existence today. Probably most importantly, is that
when it comes to cookies, well, they were created with the best of intentions in
mind. It's not like the first person went out there and thought: "How can I spam
everybody with all sorts of useless stuff they don't want? That came much
later, but in the early days of cookies they were really just there to help
remember previous selections that you may have made when you visited a website.
Basically, when you would visit a website and select either what country you were
visiting from or what language you wanted it in or anything like that, well,
a cookie would get saved and it would remember your preferences so you
wouldn't need to set it each and every time you visited the site. To think of
how this impacts you today, all you have to do is clear your browser and clear
your history and then go through the process of typing everything in
brand-new from scratch every time you log into a new site or visit an old site
and basically as a huge pain, well, cookies solved that. Basically, when you
would visit a website and the website would acknowledge your visit right a
little bit of code save it on your computer and then retrieve it the next
time you visited the site and that's a cookie in a nutshell - another food
reference - but cookies can do so much more than that. More on that in just a
minute. First off, cookies are pretty much
everywhere and they can do a lot so they're not all bad and in fact a lot of
the hype and the media and the sensationalism around cookies and why
they're evil, well, some of that's true, but they also provide a ton of value so
it's not as easy as just wiping cookies right off the face of the planet. Have
you ever visited a website and had them automatically remember your username and
your password? Well, a cookie did that. Have you ever added something to an
online shopping cart and then had them remember the next time you log back in?
Once again, a cookie. Or have you ever eaten a cookie? Totally irrelevant, well,
all of those were brought to you by cookies. In fact, they're so common now
it's almost impossible to find a website that doesn't use cookies but over the
years they've evolved or should I say morphed into these behemoth creatures
that now know more about you and me then we ever thought possible and this
is why platforms like Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and Google, well,
this is why they're able to deliver such highly targeted advertisements directly
to you from advertisers or from you as an advertiser directly to your customers,
because they pretty much know everything about you. Alright,
so that's the high level stuff but technically, What exactly is a cookie?
Well, a cookie is simply a piece of information that a server sends to your
computer and has it stored there for retrieval later. It stores info, watches
what you do and depending on the cookie, can track pretty much anything, which in
all fairness as a consumer, kind of creepy, but as a marketer, well it's
amazing. So, here's how to use cookies as a marketer in the most safe, ethical and
authentic way possible. The most common and easiest to learn cookies are the
Facebook one which also controls Instagram and the Google one, which also
controls YouTube. Now, these aren't technically cookies but rather pixels,
but it's the pixel that allows to set the cookie on your browser. Now, these
cookies in and of themselves are good or bad and just cookies it's what you as a
marketer or as a business, owner or is someone in control of this information
well, it's what you do with the information that makes it good or bad.
For example, if you use this information to serve your customers more relevant
and more valuable types of products or services well then that's a good thing.
If, on the other hand, you're gonna use it to annoy someone or spam them or sell
them complete garbage, well then, obviously it's a bad thing same cookie
very different uses. Now, the benefits of this from a business perspective, really
can't be ignored. They're powerful tools that allow you to collect really
valuable and accurate data on your customers and visitors, but by far, one of
their best uses, when it comes to marketing, is that it allows you to track
people who have been to your website before, which allows you to serve very
different messages and different advertising based on someone who has no
idea who you are and has never visited your site before, basically we call them
cold traffic and someone who's visited your site, knows about you and
understands what you're all about, we call them warm traffic. Well, no
surprise we don't want to go out there and introduce ourselves again and again
and again to somebody who already knows us, that warm traffic. So, by using these
cookies, well, essentially it allows us to serve up custom tailored messages
directly to the right audience. The most important aspect of all though
and the key to really getting these to work and really if you take nothing else
from this episode than this it's to make sure that you have these accurately
installed on your website so that you can begin collecting the data. If the
pixels aren't installed, they can't deploy the cookies and you don't get any
information. So, our cookies bad. Well, cookies have got
a pretty bad rap in the media lately and by no surprise, after all, some pretty
sketchy companies and done some pretty sketchy things. But like I've already
mentioned, it's not cookies that are good or bad but rather how they're used, so,
let me give you a few examples of how they're being used well and how they're
being used. Not so well, and you can decide for yourself. On the good side,
well, for starters they make your life a lot easier. They remember your login info,
website preferences and whether you're a new or returning visitor, they also allow
advertisers to reach you with more relevant and more current information
ensuring that you get the best experience possible and now the bad side.
For starters, they store your personal information. They can be used to track
you around the internet and sometimes your information is sold to others, so
cookies are apparently both good and bad. - Kind of like an oatmeal raisin cookie. Is
it even a cookie? - at the end of the day it's up to the website owner and whoever
controls the cookie on what kind of information to collect and what they do
with that information. You can find the information that they're gonna collect
and what they're gonna do with it on the website that you visit through their
privacy policy. Downside of that, of course, is the main way to get to the
privacy policy or terms and condition page is by visiting the website in the
first place. Not to mention, I'm not sure who's got the time or the understanding
to read through all of those pages now there is some software that allows you
to block cookies on your browser and rules and regulations are also getting a
lot stricter on what kind of information people can collect and what they can do
with it. This is why, as marketers, you want to use cookies when you can, of
course, use them for good, but also realize that cookies aren't the be-all
and end-all of marketing strategy. There's a lot of other strategies you
probably want to deploy in order to stay connected and nurture your prospects and
customers. Things like content marketing, video marketing, email marketing and
other social media platforms that don't necessarily pixel and track your
visitors. A strategically aligned marketing plan here that's really in
alignment with your target market and your business objectives is really the
best plan here, because you never want to put all your cookies in one basket - Oh that was a terrible joke -
The next thing you're gonna want to do is check out this video I have linked up
right here on retargeting and remarketing which is going to take the
concepts we talked about today with cookies and give you more practical and
actionable advice to deploy them in your business. So, make sure to check that out
now and I'll catch you on the next episode on The Marketing Show