Businesses across the UK and Europe have been extremely busy trying to comply with the new GDPR regulations before the deadline on May 25th. The new regulations will ensure that people’s personal data is safe and protected whilst forcing businesses to be much more transparent with how they use this data.
GDPR is changing many aspects of businesses, including their approach to marketing, because of the changes to who and how they send out their content. One big requirement is that companies must ask contacts and recipients of their marketing material to actively opt-in to receive it.
With the marketing departments being heavily affected, businesses are looking into exploring new and more effective ways of reaching their target audience. The new GDPR regulations will likely lead to an increase in social media marketing by UK businesses as this is a simple and compliant means of distributing content online.
It is predicted that businesses will look to expand their social media presence to communicate their products or service to both their current audience and potential new prospects in a bid to fill the void left by direct contact.
A huge advantage of using social media is that Twitter followers, Facebook ‘likers’ and Linked In connections will already have connected with your business and therefore have chosen to ‘opt-in’ to receive your marketing material.
Social media has various tools which enable you to target different market segments and adapt your online marketing to different audiences. For example, Linked In allows you to identify people according to their job title, industry and seniority whilst Facebook allows you to target different people relating to their likes and hobbies.
Whilst GDPR has caused a lot of upheaval to local businesses, it also poses lots of opportunities which can be pragmatically taken advantage of.
Northern Media is a Wakefield-based digital marketing agency that offers services such as social media. If you’d like more information about how social media marketing can help your business reach it’s target audience, call a member of our team today on 01924 367 105.
