131: Privacy in Online Marketing
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Summary:
Modern technology and social media have made marketing as easy as a click of a button, but that sometimes comes with a price. We discuss privacy in online marketing, what to consider before buying targeted ads, and what it means for small businesses in a hyper connected world. Natasha O’Banion answers, “How do I make the most out of first mover advantage in my area?”
Topics on this episode:
What is ethical marketing?
Principles
What to do with social media?
What are the alternatives?
Ask a Pet Biz Coach with Natasha O’Banion
Main take away? Treat others as you want to be treated, even in marketing.
Links:
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
clients, ads, pet, tracking, business, tracked, facebook, people, marketing, podcast, instagram, sponsor, post, website, pet sitter, vpn, ethical, confessional, treating, data
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Collin 00:18
Hi, I'm Collin.
Meghan 00:19
And I'm Meghan.
00:20
And this is petsitter. confessional
Meghan 00:21
an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us today for Episode 131.
Collin 00:35
Hello.
Meghan 00:37
Thank you also to our sponsors, pet sitters associates and our amazing patrons. We have a new patron this month. Elisa. Elisa, we are so grateful for your support. If you'd like to learn more about becoming a patron, you can go to pet sitter confessional comm slash support. Our topic today is about ethical marketing. And I know that you wanted to add a caveat in here.
Collin 01:02
I did, I did. Because I think both you and I are pretty passionate about this. But the caveat right off the top of here is that this is totally 100% our opinion and how we choose to operate. So please, please do not hear this as judgey because as you've heard us say many, many times, you have to make the decisions you need to run your business the way you want to. We just wanted to throw this topic out there and talk about it since it's something we believe in and really, honestly just want to get your feedback on it.
Meghan 01:37
So then why are we talking about this? Really, because we are tired of being tracked on the internet. And many clients are becoming increasingly wary of social media tracking as well. The ads that are seen on Facebook after they visit another website, I'm sure you've noticed that it's it's all over the place. So
Collin 01:56
tell us about that. How are you followed around the internet?
Meghan 01:59
Well, websites typically embed Google and Facebook pixels into their sites that then allow you to be tracked wherever you go after that, wherever you are in the internet space, they track you. And then when there is an ad spot on a website, it checks your tracking pixels to see where you've been. And then it offers up some suggestions. It's kind of creepy, actually.
Collin 02:24
And I've also recently learned that many podcasts have started tracking listeners and their listening habits. We don't do that. And I actually want to get to that a little bit more in depth later. But But that is something that is increasingly and in small businesses are actually able to take advantage of this systems as well. We've done it for both our pet sitting business and for the podcast in the very beginning. This is where you go in and you can promote a post or run a direct ad on Facebook or Instagram or other sites as well. And you can do all those cool things where you check the demographics and reach that you want. And but but really, how is Instagram or Facebook? How are they able to get that kind of information that you're able to use so powerfully as a business? Well, they track their users, they use the data that users put into those websites and then are tracked across the websites, sometimes without them fully understanding or knowing that they're being tracked at all.
Meghan 03:23
So it's really an amazing tool for businesses. But it's also is it really treating the client with the most respect? I mean, if you get annoyed as I do, you get annoyed that when you go on Amazon, and let's say you look at Christmas lights, and then you go into Facebook, and all your ads are Christmas lights, or you go into a blog article, and you see that they have a Google ad space on the right hand column. And it's about Christmas lights. If that annoys you, then how do you square that with being a business owner and doing the same thing to clients?
Collin 03:58
Right, because as I mentioned, it's so easy to go in and pick females between the age of 25 to 34 that live in Cincinnati, Ohio and boom, you can target all of your ads directly at them for your services. We as business owners have to be okay, with how that information has been acquired and how it's treating the customers. Why are we able to do this? Well, again, it's because Facebook and Google suck up all of that information about those individuals and put them into categories and buckets. And if you've never done this, if you've never gone into Facebook, into the settings and seeing what they have predicted about you, whether you've liked the page or just how you interact with certain posts, they built a profile of who they think you are, and they sell that information to advertisers. And now we freely use the internet right we we use it because our data is what's being sold. We freely download apps even doing those quizzes that will tell you which Harry Potter character you are
Meghan 04:58
those all harvest you're doing And track you. The only reason for this discussion that we're having is just to say that as a business owner, how do you want to acquire your clients? Part of the ethical marketing is Do unto others. It's the golden rule. And if you don't like that, what do you need to do? If you are perfectly fine with them tracking your data? And you think that's perfectly ethical, then that's your business that is fine like you do you boo. We are talking about thinking about the holistic approach of your company and all that you do. If you try to treat your customers ethically and morally when they are in your care, why shouldn't that extend to how you acquire them and bring them into your care? Social media companies have us convinced that there is no other way to get clients. But they really have a vested interest in keeping people using them and relying on their platforms.
Collin 05:57
We've been harping here on Facebook, and Instagram, and we can even throw LinkedIn here, because they are the the big players, we have to recognize that Google is a part of this too, and actually sits above all of these, because it's really it controls a lot of how traffic flows to and from these and smaller sites. We've all heard of Google Analytics, I know we have it for our website, as well. But we don't have the AdSense that's on there that actually will do the tracking across the website, because we personally don't want that data from anyone who visits any of our websites. We don't want it because we don't want that collected from us, you know, I don't think a particular website should be able to see your traffic history or predict where you're going into the future. And I can honestly say that I spend the vast majority of my time online using a VPN because I don't like being tracked by others.
Meghan 06:51
What is a VPN?
Collin 06:52
It's a virtual private network that actually hides your location and the exact a unique identifier for your computer. So you don't get locked into the ad tracking?
Meghan 07:03
How would you get one of those,
Collin 07:05
you can download it. And they're, they're free to get sometimes you pay for them, but you can download them. ExpressVPN is one of them. You can also get cloud VPN and a couple other resources.
Meghan 07:16
Well, this kind of sounds like Whoo, like, okay, I'll just big brother is always watching.
Collin 07:21
It can seem like that. Absolutely. But you can use a VPN for a lot of different reasons. And really, again, I like to use one just because I don't like being tracked by ads. It's not something that makes me feel good. And so you can use something like this to do that for you. If you feel the same.
Meghan 07:41
Well then how do you ethically market in a digital world,
Collin 07:45
the key here is that it's not really a marketing strategy. It's more like a philosophy that really changes and influences how you go about marketing. It's it's absolutely starts at being truthful about your product, and your service, telling the truth that's just absolutely fundamental to this. And, Megan, you mentioned this earlier, it's the golden rule, treating others the way you want to be treated. And I love this quote, it says in the context of marketing ethics refers to the practice of promoting fairness, honesty, and empathy. In all of our marketing activities,
Meghan 08:21
you get to define what you find ethical for your marketing, but generally, it follows a set of principles. One is the common standard of truth will be observed in all forms of marketing communication, personal ethics will guide the actions of marketing professionals. advertising is set apart from entertainment and news and the line is clear, marketers will be transparent about who is paid to endorse their products, consumers will be treated fairly. Consumer privacy will be respected and upheld at all times. Marketers will comply with standards and regulations set by professional organizations and the government. And ethics should be discussed in all marketing decisions in an open and honest way.
Collin 09:03
And really, for the discussion of this episode, we're really focusing in on the consumer privacy will be respected and upheld at all times. But as you can see, there's so much more to this, it could probably be a whole series of episodes if we wanted to dive into each one of those.
Meghan 09:18
But we try to treat our clients as ethically and morally sound as possible once they're in our care. So what about how we get them in our care,
Collin 09:26
we're talking about ads and marketing. So did want to take a moment to talk about why we run the kind of ads the that we do for the podcast. Really, it's because we control them, we read them or produce them in relationship with the sponsor. They're not dynamically inserted based on what you're listening or browsing habits are. And we have relationships again, like I said, with actual sponsor and only provide download numbers and country of origin, nothing about personal information. So here's one of our awesome sponsors who respects that decision.
Meghan 10:01
As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, pet sitters associates is here to help. For over 20 years they have provided thousands of members with quality pet care insurance. If you work in the pet care industry or want to make your passion for pets into a profession, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom and running your business. Learn why pet sitters associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today at pet set llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership pet sitter confessional and using the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets it llc.com what can be really frustrating is that unethical marketing more often than not is much more effective and not necessarily illegal. So does this mean that we shouldn't target customers when we run ads?
Collin 10:54
Well, I would say recognize that not relying on ads and social media is going to take a lot longer, as we've already talked about the new anticipate, you likely won't see immediate gains right away in the form of likes, follows client contacts, all that there are a lot of ways to grow both your social media following and your business without tracking your customer focus on clients and potential clients not necessarily gaining more likes and follows. It is absolutely okay to have 100 likes on Facebook, if those hundred people are local, very engaged and are your actual clients.
Meghan 11:30
Right. So ethical marketing is a much longer process. It's not that you are going to get 1000 likes and shares because you put out a post about pet care, or you choose to a shoe social media entirely and do it all offline, there really is a happy medium to this, of utilizing the tools, but not to their full extent. So say, okay, you want to run an ad maybe only target your local geographic area, that's still sucking up their data. But it's less creepy than age demographics, what they like where they go to eat, and run these really targeted powerful Facebook and LinkedIn ads. Having a presence online and relying on social media are completely different things. You can still have a company website, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, tik tok by me, we LinkedIn, whatever. You can have all the things, and you can post and you can be active with updates and blogging,
Collin 12:29
or podcasting, or
Meghan 12:30
podcasting for SEO purposes. And you can do all of that without exploiting the potential or existing clients data and respecting their privacy.
Collin 12:40
I really feel like we may be on the small percentage of people and business owners here.
Meghan 12:47
Well, yeah. Because that's it's the easiest thing to go into Facebook and click all your targeted people. And
Collin 12:55
there you go and get results get immediate results from that kind of interaction,
Meghan 12:59
right? Well, and that's what everybody talks about on all their social media gurus, they're like, you have to go into LinkedIn and do this certain ad and you'll immediately get clients,
Collin 13:10
right. But what this discussion is coming from is this is we're trying to put ourselves in from the consumers perspective. As a consumer, I don't like being tracked. Again, we as business owners, we're trying to square the circle here of being an ethical business owner, as well as a concerned citizen. If you don't like being tracked, how can we turn around and install facebook pixel on our website? I can't answer that for you. That's your business as we started this, this episode with in as you've said, Megan, you do you boot? Can I say that? Or is that only your tagline? That's kind of weird. Okay. Okay, so we'll leave that to Megan. So I did extremely powerful tool that Facebook, social media, all of those have given us and it's a huge amount of data and insights that that we get access to. And a real tangible, real quick tangent here. It's the same thing with podcasting. I mentioned this earlier, a lot of podcasts have started to do some really nasty things. When it comes to tracking and what goes into the RSS feeds, many have started placing tracking pixels into the actual album art of each episode. So they can see how long you've listened, what you've been listening to afterwards, what you've skipped, how frequently you've skipped things, and whether you've clicked on any of the ads or not on the inside of that episode, and where you go after that. That's unfortunately, where a lot of this stuff is going. And it's unfortunate that many of us feel like we also have to go that way if we're going to be competitive and act like the big players. But if you don't believe that, how they're acting is ethical. Why would you go and then act like them.
Meghan 14:56
And so again, just so you know, for our podcast, we get the country of origin, what you listened on and that you've downloaded, we don't get anything else,
Collin 15:04
right, we can tell where somebody lives what country somebody lives in, if they've listened to or not. And again, that's just a simple download stat. And if a sponsor ever wanted to know more about that, then then you, we would turn them down, and we would not work with them.
Meghan 15:19
A lot of other podcast trackers can track the device you listen on. So it's not anonymous, and they do dynamic ad insertion. So as you listen to every episode, are different each time you download it, based on who is paying for the ads and what they think is most appropriate for you. So they are trying to serve out better ads every time,
Collin 15:39
right? It gets real creepy here. But you could say the same thing about Instagram insights, you know, the age of your followers, you know what times they're most active on, and Facebook and Instagram, readily provide this, these analytics to us. And then we have to sit there and look at them and decide for ourselves for our business, whether we want to use that data or not.
Meghan 16:00
Yeah, it's already being collected for you. So you have to figure out if you want to use that or not. So what do you do if you don't want to use some of the data that's readily available,
Collin 16:10
there's this list. And you've actually probably heard of all of these before. So there's no real new thing under the sun here. And there's a there's a reason for that. It's the fact that many of the same things that we try and do in an online format, had their origins in person to person interactions, and social settings and social contacts, without all the tracking. So you can collaborate with others, both in your local area with other businesses, and even with clients to get your name out there. You can host events, virtually too, we can all do that now, support charities, especially local ones, and partner with them. So you get each other's name out there, attend seminars, conferences, even online ones, especially this time of year to reach people that aren't on social media. This is really, really important is that even though we feel like social media is the be all end all of where everybody is, there's still a big chunk of people who have decided that it's just not for them. So where are those people? How do you find them? Yeah,
Meghan 17:15
we were doing Christmas lights the other night and driving around this really nice neighborhood. And I was like, Where are these people? Right? How do I find them? What do I do? How do I target specific neighborhoods with people that may not be on Facebook,
Collin 17:29
or may not be on so any social media at all, there's no real way to go target the person with a really nice house. That's not. So you can sponsor events. I know our city is doing a light show throughout one of the parks. And he had the option to sponsor, one of the Christmas light displays that they had an awesome thing to get your name out there and associate it with a really cool thing. You can do giveaways. One thing I know that we really, really like is to reward referrals from existing clients, they've been with you a while or or maybe they just you really, really like them. And so you want to give them something that they can then tell other people about and get some get a kickback for it. You can also connect with local newspapers to write articles for them about pet care about pet sitting just about pets in general, you can go back to and do those good old fashioned banners, brochures, physical newsletters that you hand out, and you mail out to people who are on your mailing list.
Meghan 18:29
These probably don't sound as exciting as Tracking and Data Acquisition, do they? They sound really old fashioned. But they work. They were tried and true for a reason. They all are about relationships. And again, they can be done virtually and in person without the tracking.
Collin 18:48
So if you've listened to all of this, and you're sitting here going, but how in the world do I get clients? It's worked for me in the past, but maybe I'm not comfortable with it moving forward. How do I get clients who are on Facebook and I still want to get my information in front of them.
Meghan 19:06
I would say think about the long game here. It's not going to be quick and easy. Continue to post post a lot content just make we've talked to Dan from Dan's pet care about this. Gary Vee has a bunch of stuff about this. Just make content get in front of eyeballs. And that's really hard when the Facebook algorithm is basically in the toilet, as well as Instagram and most other platforms. But just make contact posts and local Facebook groups if they allow you to encourage your clients to share your content as well. You can't force them to do anything but making content that is valuable to them that offers pet care tips that as is a funny meme that they want to share it that is valuable pet care, pet owner information will help them to want to share your page. It Like I said It's going to be a slow build, but it's worth it.
Collin 20:02
Yeah, the thing about those boosted ads or those promoted ads, all that is doing, it's jacking up the the share rate for that ad for that post, you can get to that same level, if you encourage your existing clients to share your posts with their friends, it has the exact same effect because your content is still being shared. It's still being seen by multiple eyeballs. One just does tracking and the other one does not.
Meghan 20:30
We want to know how you view ethical marketing, what kind of practices do you implement, we would love to hear if you agree with us, and especially if you disagree with us on this and how you choose to run your ads, it is your business, we have chosen not to run targeted ads any longer because of all the data tracking. But you may find that it's perfectly fine for you. And that's great. We want to know every side of this opinion. Because there are so many different businesses, everyone is unique and everyone has a different opinion. So please let us know we would be happy to have a discussion about this more. And we would love your feedback.
Collin 21:08
Absolutely. And you can send that to feedback at petsitter confessional.com. Check us out on social media.
Meghan 21:14
Yeah, anywhere at pet sitter confessional. Yeah. Pet business coach Natasha, oh Banyan is back to answer another question this week. How do you handle first mover advantage?
Collin 21:27
I am the only one in my market doing the services that I offer. How do I grow quickly before others start doing the same?
Natasha 21:34
Oh, I love this question. I had a client that we actually talked about this. So I put all the pressure on her. She's in Pennsylvania, like a really royal royal environment. And I asked her I said hey, do you want to get out of that territory? So you don't have to be like, like the go to person like someone doesn't want to always be like the founder? Do you want to not be like, you know, the person who sets the standard? And she's like, No, I want to stay here. And I'm going to do this. This is so good. I said, so now the tone that you set in your community is going to be what it is. So you can market to everyone. Anyone that comes behind you. I want you to be so far ahead. That Now we already have our people. Nope, we already got our people we know that we're going to be so far ahead of your competition learner comes by you they already know who to go to. One thing I suggested to was to do a block party. I'm like, introduce your business to the whole community because it was a very, like small mom and pop town. And she said, What should I do when my clients live so far apart? Or everybody knows each other? So I got to take over Instagram handle for the day? And I think she had like 500 No, she had 100 followers. And she's like, no, everybody's just like, doing their own thing. And they're in their territory. I say no, you need to talk to these people. Because these are your best affiliate. Because mom and pop, they all talk to each other. So I said we're gonna do a block party, we're gonna get everybody on the blog, they're gonna bring their dogs, it's gonna be epic. And so now every single year, she's the one that creates this party that everybody looks forward to the town's talking about it. And guess what, sorry, new dog walker pet sitter, there's this amazing person in town is doing an amazing blog party. Everybody knows about it happens every single year. And everyone's excited about it. I'm sorry, that's already happening here. It was kind of cool, she really got the buzz happened in her town about it. By now you want to get yourself so far ahead of your competition. Also, with that said, too, is since you are the only one, don't be cheap on your pricing. You know, you're the only person there. So they don't have anyone else to go to they don't have anyone to reference to. So make it worth your time to make it make sense for you to be in that territory. Because those are hard areas. Remember, when I started, there was over 300 dog walkers in my community. Don't worry about who was before you or who's after you. If you start getting into that mindset, you're gonna get yourself all shaken up. You are different. You offer something else, you have clients that prefer your style, your energy, your type of service. So don't worry, there's always someone available for the next person. Don't worry about who was there who wasn't there. I'd be happy that someone came by makes them like, Oh, I need to go on a vacation. Can you help me out? You know, I love to kind of lean on each other. So don't worry about the competition there. We're all doing something different.
Meghan 24:39
Natasha offers pet business coaching and if you would like to participate in that you can go to her website, start scale sale.com and use the code PSC 20 for 15% off any of her coaching. We thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy day to listen to us. We really appreciate it. And if you feel like we've deserved it, please leave Give us a review on Apple, and we would love to hear any feedback that you guys have. Absolutely. Thank you.
Collin 25:06
Thank you. And we would like to thank pet sitters associates for sponsoring this episode as well as our amazing patrons.
