Cloud storage has become the standard storage method across major corporations, small businesses, and homes. Integrating a secure cloud storage solution into a marketing campaign offers numerous benefits for businesses and marketing teams. It can be the difference between a successful marketing campaign and one that falls short of expectations.
Consumers are constantly experiencing an overwhelming amount of products and services from social or other forms of media, and as a result, are seeking a more personalized experience from marketing campaigns.
In response to this demand, companies use a more data-driven marketing strategy to engage customers, improve user experience, and drive conversions. An essential tool for this success is cloud storage, an effective tool for building strong business and consumer relationships.
However, due to the sensitive information regarding customer data, security, and privacy are equally as important as a successful marketing campaign. So, if businesses implement the cloud into their marketing strategy, ensuring a secure cloud storage solution emphasizing privacy and security is crucial.
Why Use the Cloud Storage for Your Marketing Strategy?
The cloud can be a vital tool for a marketing strategy because it helps businesses focus on the essentials of their product. A company should know its target customer, focus on their problems and pain points, and solve them.
A more in-depth strategy will depend on the business and what it hopes to achieve. Still, if marketing teams use the cloud effectively, it can be a vital component of the overall strategy of the business goals. Here’s how.
Getting to know your target audience
With more and more people moving away from brick-and-mortar stores and choosing online shopping, it is difficult for a company to understand its customer base. Important information, such as preferences, needs, and requirements, must be analyzed and understood so customers remain loyal to the brand.
Traditionally, customer data relied on time-consuming surveys done in person, and the data was stored in hard drives or paper files, putting the data at risk of corruption or damage. Cloud storage offers a remote, secure, and accessible way for companies to store and analyze this data more quickly and efficiently. With the cloud, members of the marketing team can gain insights into customers, such as:
- Customer demographics: which include customer age, gender, location, lifestyle, hobbies, etc.
- Preferences: Knowing what products customers prefer, which companies, and other shopping habits
- Customer journey: learn how your customer interacts with the website, social media engagement rates, or email responses
Once this data is in the cloud, the marketing team can identify trends like organic traffic growth or gaps in the market and tailor the customer experience for a more personal, unique customer experience.
Flexibility & scalability
Cloud storage can be adjusted and scaled up or down based on current trends or business needs. For example, during an important marketing campaign, a website may see increased traffic or a surge in customer data it needs to store and handle. A team can adjust the storage requirements of the cloud to meet this high demand accordingly without affecting the campaign’s flow.
Affordability
Cloud storage can help optimize a marketing team’s budget due to the flexibility previously mentioned so that marketing teams can better spend their money on social media campaigns or other advertising costs.
Cloud storage is a highly resource-efficient business for companies to use. Costs can be scaled automatically to coincide with new campaigns or down periods. Furthermore, traditional newspaper, radio, or TV campaigns would be a considerable expense, whereas now cloud-based advertising on the internet is often free or much cheaper than conventional ad campaigns.
These are just the tip of the iceberg regarding the advantages of how companies can use the cloud in marketing and across other departments. Successful businesses must constantly shift due to the ever-evolving nature of customer wants and needs, and the cloud gives them the power to do so when used correctly.
However, there is one vital component that a marketing strategy must take into account when using the cloud to be successful – cloud security and handling customer information.
How to Ensure Customer Privacy and Security for a Cloud-Based Marketing Strategy
Unsurprisingly, customers are initially unwilling to hand over their personal information to a business due to increased data breaches, third-party sharing, or lack of clarity in a business’s privacy policy.
When data is handled correctly and securely and shared with a company via explicit consent by the customer, it can build a strong relationship established from a place of trust. Therefore, choosing a secure cloud storage provider built on privacy is imperative for a business brand and security.
Choosing a secure cloud storage for an effective marketing strategy
We have established that customer data is paramount in building an effective marketing campaign, but customers may be unwilling to share this data with a business. Incorporating a company’s security features and how a company protects its customer data is an effective method to build trust.
Cloud storage is one security feature that can be used in a marketing campaign to build this trust, demonstrating how a company protects its data from third parties, data breaches, and unauthorized access. It is important to use a secure and private cloud storage that ensures your online security.
How to choose a cloud storage with the best security features
The most secure cloud storage providers choose encryption technologies that protect customer data from unauthorized access. On top of this, there are privacy laws that cloud storage providers and businesses must follow, which also help convey the message that a company cares about the privacy of its customers.
Encryption and authorization technology
For example, with client-side and end-to-end encryption technology, if a data breach were to happen to a company, all the attacker would see is personal information in an encrypted (unreadable) form.
Other methods companies can use to secure data gathered during a marketing campaign include:
- OAuth: Allows third-party access if needed without exposing user credentials
- Certificate-based authentication: clients need to provide certificates to prove their identity
- Biometric authentication: improves privileged access and provides an extra layer of security
Compliance with privacy laws
Businesses and cloud storage companies must comply with strict regulations concerning handling customer data for the EU companies should follow privacy laws from the GDPR, for the US, HIPPA.
Advertising as a company that follows privacy laws protecting customer data will help customers feel more confident that their data is handled securely and carefully.
Backup and data recovery
Unfortunately, hackers regularly target businesses to steal the sensitive information they hold. In the event of a data breach, cloud storage can help reduce the damage because the cloud consistently backs up its data, reducing the risk of massive data loss.
Cloud storage backup and recovery methods may help limit the damage of a data breach, giving the company a small chance to rebuild its reputation and limit the damage caused by the cyber attack.
Using cloud storage effectively in marketing
Cloud storage is expected to grow as a business over the next few years, so now is the time for companies to integrate the cloud into their business and marketing campaigns if they haven’t done so already.
As most consumers continue to rely on online shopping, personalized, data-driven marketing campaigns are how companies can utilize this to their advantage. Embracing cloud storage is not only important for marketing, but it is also necessary.
