How to create a privacy strategy that builds brand trust

Barbara Piermont: Let’s talk about how you can deliver better ads while earning people’s trust.

Respecting people’s online safety is a no brainer. So is giving them the most relevant ad experience possible. But when people struggle to trust brands with their information, how do you get enough data to deliver excellent experiences?

Marketers can earn trust by helping people feel more in control of their data. When people feel in control of their data, they experience significant increases in trust, brand preference, and perceive your ads as more relevant.

For instance, in Asia Pacific, people with high perceived control over their data were 1.3X more likely to take action to explore an ad.

It’s important to note that feeling in control is not the same as being in control of one’s data. Privacy tools that allow people to change cookie preferences or unsubscribe from marketing emails do give people greater control over their data. But on their own, those tools don’t spark that feeling of control enough for people to trust a brand’s data practices. More on that in a moment.

To create positive privacy experiences and protect brand preference, you need to go beyond the basics. We found 49% of participants in the Americas would choose to switch from their preferred brand to their second-choice brand if they had a positive privacy experience with the second-choice brand.

Positive privacy experiences like letting people know why their data is being collected, what it will be used for, and how their experience will be improved can have a profound effect on their perception of your brand.

Also consider this: for survey participants in Europe, a poor privacy experience was almost as severe as that of a data breach. All of that to say, handling privacy well can have a very positive impact. And handling it poorly can be a critical error.

So what can you do to create privacy practices that improve your marketing effectiveness while building trust? We found three clear steps.

1. Ask people about how and how often they want to be reminded of privacy settings.

2. Be transparent and share all privacy policy updates directly with your users via email.

3. Ask for and get consent before personalizing anyone’s website experience.

Our research in Europe showed that individually, each of these practices increased feelings of control by up to 14%. But when all of them were put into practice together, the modeled data produced a 37% increase in feelings of control.

That’s a lot of info to take in. Let’s rewind what we just covered. If your privacy practice improves people’s feelings of control, you can increase trust, improve marketing effectiveness, and build resilience for your brand. The key is checking in with people to make sure they’re on board.

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