The Internet is an essential part of our life. We surf the internet throughout the day, looking for various products or services online.

Data is what we share with the websites we visit. But do we know what happens to our shared information or how our preferences pop as ads?

In this podcast recap blog post, we will discuss how websites store data, what goes on with the data that we share, and how we can have an option to control our data to have personalized experiences.

Recently caught up with Jacob Borgeson on the Tech Backstage Podcast.

The Tech Backstage Podcast is a live streamed video podcast that goes behind the scenes with today’s leaders of industry to learn what technologies are solving business problems, and how Design Thinking applied to the future of technology is impacting the world.

Tech Backstage interviewed Jacob Borgeson Director of Product Marketing at Wyng, to learn about data privacy, protection and hyper-personalization.

Product Marketing Versus Traditional Marketing

Product marketing is about bringing a product to market. You do this by deciding the product’s positioning and messaging, launching the product, and ensuring salespeople and customers understand it. Product marketing aims to drive demand and usage of the product.

Product teams provide customer feedback and marketing insights, and this helps marketing & sales teams with better positioning in the market. It is a key department to help organizations increase leads and sales.

Product marketing greatly relies on being the voice of the company to the market and the voice of the market to the company. Therefore, in product marketing, doing a lot of research and analysis and talking to customers is essential. All the information informs the company’s sales team on how to talk about the products and sell them.

Traditional marketing refers to any type of marketing that isn’t online. This means print, broadcast, direct mail, phone, and outdoor advertising like billboards. From newspapers to radio, this method of marketing helps reach targeted audiences.

Then there is digital marketing. The main difference between digital and traditional marketing is the medium through which an audience encounters a marketing message. While traditional marketing uses traditional media like magazines and newspapers, digital marketing uses digital media, such as social media or websites.

In modern times with the internet, ads can follow consumers and track what they do. This has been referred to as the surveillance economy. Marketing has become reliant on this never-ending loop of perpetually connected consumer data.

Today, product marketers use digital mediums more often due to the value they can derive from consumer data that is readily available online, however with more access to consumer data also comes challenges related to privacy

Transforming Data Privacy

Data is shared by people on the internet via many platforms, even if advantageous can sometimes be disadvantageous to many people since the data can be misused.

There is always an opportunity for marketers to build better experiences where they can dig into the roots of marketing by teaching people about the company’s value, while also respecting privacy. It can be done so that people have transparency, choice, and control over what happens to their data.

For instance, at Wyng, the team believes that people share data with companies or brands only when they perceive the products and services as bringing value to them. So, they focus on using and consuming data while protecting it and providing privacy.

Companies invest time and money to make assumptions based on people’s behavior, demographics, and what they search for or click on, whereas the brands can also question consumers about their likes, dislikes, or preferences.

People also should know how their data is being used. Wyng has an open data consumption policy within the company. Brands use the data to assume more about people’s preferences based on things they value, so when an ad pops up about what they are looking to purchase, people voluntarily will share their information.

Embrace Privacy

Wyng focuses on moving towards zero-party data. It is the data that people share intentionally on websites. First-party data is the data that websites observe, whereas third party data is the data that people get from various sources. However, zero party data is the only data that is voluntarily given and is considered the best because of the following reasons:

1. Understand Consumer’s Preferences: With this data, the clear intentions of people can be determined. It is because they tell their likes and preferences and making any assumptions on the company’s part is not required.

2. Can be Acted Instantly: Secondly, after knowing consumers’ preferences, companies can act instantly. Companies do not need to do any processing since they can just take the preferences and match them up to the right products or services.

We see Wyng trying to get brands to transition to zero-party data instead of traditional methods. They use tools designed to collect zero party data by offering people value in exchange for their preference information and then being able to, in an API-driven platform, plug that preference data into all other tools to drive better, relevant, and personalized experiences.

Zero Party Data

Zero-party data is the data that the consumers share voluntarily to websites or brands they visit such as personal context, their purchase intentions etc.

Zero-party data can assist in the journey of finding consumers their required products or services. With zero party data consumers get the right products easily.

For instance, when a consumer comes to a website and says that they require moisturizer for dry skin, the website will focus on showing all the testimonials for people using the products having dry skin, or it might take the consumer right to the products that deal with dry skin. With this implementation, they can have a narrower yet more personalized experience.

Wyng mainly focuses on e-commerce website to provide a better customer experience. Zero Party Data in the Wing platform is like a CRM or CDP that is constantly consumer driven since they provide insights voluntarily.

Conclusion

The most valuable thing that a marketing system can have, is relevant data that consumers share voluntarily to personalize their experiences.

Consumers’ data with zero-party data can be a value-added option where people willingly share their data and receive a narrow, personalized, and a better experience. Moreover, they can also opt-in and out according to their choice.

Marketing systems should offer value, and the interaction with consumers must be valued to build trust. The building of trust leads to engagement and purchases.

Check out the full interview below.