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5 Digital Marketing Tactics For Senior Living Communities

November 7, 2022/in Articles, Blog, Directors, Senior Living Marketing, SEO, Website Design, Website Growth Driven Design /by Nicole Wagner

More and more seniors are becoming tech savvy, using smart phones and tablets to communicate with family and friends. They also use their smart devices to do their own research on where they want to live and how they want to do it. This is one reason why digital marketing tactics are critical for senior living marketing.

Digital Marketing Tactics for Senior Living Communities

Your website is one of your most important assets. It’s where consumers are going to find out more about your company. The place where you build trust. Where you show your leadership in the senior living industry. It’s where they can get more information about your community.

With your website in place, what digital marketing tactics should you employ?

Blogging

Blogging offers you the opportunity to provide your audience with useful information while positioning you as a trusted expert. You can use your blog to provide useful information like how to downsize, how to stay healthy as you age, how to find the right senior community and how to find work as a senior. High-quality content keeps people coming back.

Check out these tips on How to Have a Successful Blog

SEO (search engine optimization) works to get your community’s website found by the search engines. It is done with keyword placement, quality content, and a dynamic website. The more you have of all three, the better your SEO results will be.

Social Media

Social media allows you to engage your audience. You can share tips, post links to new content, or share testimonials. Facebook offers a place to share as well as a place where potential residents can make queries or learn more about your community.

Email lead nurturing allows you to make your community more attractive to people who have expressed interest. You can share community events, resident highlights and interesting tidbits to show how involved and engaged the residents of your community are. That makes it more attractive to those considering moving in.

Online Advertising

Online advertising positions your brand in front of anyone seeking information on senior living communities. In fact, as they search for that kind of information, your name pops up. It can give you highly qualified leads almost instantaneously.

How Brands Use Feelings to Get People to Buy

These tactics will help you position your senior living community. You can grab the attention of seniors as well as their loved ones and care providers.

Generation X Matters: How to Tell Your Brand Story to Them

November 4, 2022/in Articles, Brand Development, Brand Story Telling, Directors, Storybranding /by Dan Gartlan

Generation X, often referred to as the middle child, is the generation sandwiched between the baby boomers and the millennials. And just like the middle child, they often feel forgotten, especially when it comes to marketing. However, this generation has impressive buying power and are essential to consider when determining how to tell your brand story.

Generation X are now in their late 30’s to early 50’s, and are the generation that remembers a time before the technological, and specifically the digital, revolution. On the whole, however, Xers were young enough when it happened to have embraced the change and made technology work for them. They have a foot in both camps and are just as at home with print media, as they are with blogs, Facebook and YouTube.

Why is Generation X Important?

While, relatively speaking, Generation X is a small customer segment in comparison to baby boomers and millennials, they have immense buying power, which should not be overlooked. However, marketers are confused about how to reach a generation that has one foot in the past, and the other firmly in touch with digital technology and change. Research has shown that 62% of this generation still read print media, while at the same time 60% use a Smartphone on a daily basis.

Despite the difficulties of appealing to this generation, they are ignored at your own risk; after all, they account for over 30% of consumer spending, and not only are they buying for themselves, but many still have financial responsibility for their children as well. They are also extremely brand loyal, once they find a brand that is worthy of that loyalty.

Creating Consistency is Key

Given all of this, consistency is vital in your brand storytelling, not only within your story but also across the platforms through which you tell that story. However, generation Xer’s are also busy, often juggling children, careers, and responsibility for older family members. So, your story and your brand need to be instantly recognizable, and easily digestible. Short snippets of information combined with audiovisual formats make your story memorable and accessible. Generation X is not shy of technology, so utilizing channels such as YouTube, along with approaches such as email marketing, is vital if you are to get your brand’s story across in a meaningful way.

While busy juggling their many commitments, creating the lifestyle they want remains of paramount importance to this generation. They work hard and expect their money to work hard on their behalf, especially as there are few guarantees when they hit retirement. They respond well to offers, especially coupons that offer what they want at a price that is well within their budget. However, they are wary of trying new, untested companies, so when choosing how to tell your brand story, you need to develop trust from the very start.

Got tips? Sure we do! Check out these six tips on email marketing.

Hearing the Voice of Generation X

Generation X has strong opinions, is generally worldly-wise, and drawn to companies that are ethical, and which promote ethical goods and services. These need to form part of your brand story if you are to begin to build the trust of this generation. However, you also need to show that you value your customer, as well as the planet.

Excellent customer service is essential to Generation X. They need to feel valued and respected by your company and your brand. If they do not, you will know very quickly. This generation, more than any other, is not afraid to take the time to say what they think, and they expect you to listen. So, your story needs to focus on the customer and show that not only do you accept and listen to feedback but also that you act on it. That means that while the fundamentals of your story – your ethos, mission, and goals – may not change, how you achieve these needs to be tweaked to adapt to the changing needs of this generation.

The 5 W’s Of A Thank You Page

October 28, 2022/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Thank you pages are an important part of the inbound methodology. To better understand a thank you page, it is best to look at the 5 W’s: Who, what, when, where, and why.

Who sees a thank you page:

Anyone who chooses to follow a link on your website to obtain an eBook or a white paper of some sort, is going to see a thank you page. These people can be prospects, leads or customers.

What the page should look like:

A thank you page should look similar to your companies website. The thank you page should include the main headers which can be seen on your website as well as the name of the company. Most importantly, the message that states “thank you for ___”. You fill in the blank with signing up or downloading the eBook, etc. Additionally, the time frame in which the person will receive the information they have requested. To the right side of the thank you page, it is good to include information related to the topic. Additionally, including a CTA to increase lead conversion, is a good addition as well. When designing your thank you page, it is important to remember that it should NOT be a blank white screen that says thank you.

When a thank you is important:

Thank you’s are always important. Especially because in today’s time, people are always looking for information. By providing a thank you page, there is a good chance the person could return to the website. These pages are something very positive.

Read more on how a thank you page is not the end but a continuation.

Where to go after this step:

Once someone has seen the thank you page, they will be waiting for the information requested to be sent to them. It is important to get back to that person within 2-3 business days. Something else that can be done is to start sending emails to that person with information similar to what they requested. This way, by keeping your company as a part of their attention, they won’t forget about you.

Why these pages are important:

These pages are important because it shows people that you care. It also shows that you will get back to them with the information they are looking for. Thank you pages are important when converting people in the inbound methodology.

Overall, thank you pages are a great addition to have as a part of your website. Don’t forget that these pages appear after someone has requested information. That means that your website will need to include call to actions.

How To Tell Your Brand Story Using Personas

October 17, 2022/in Articles, Brand Development, Brand Story Telling, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Storybranding /by Dan Gartlan

When considering how to tell your brand story, you must think of the role of the audience as well as that of the storyteller. Stories create wonder, excitement, and engagement in the world they create. Through storytelling, your business can engage with its audience on a much more emotional level. Connecting with your key audience is vital, and can be achieved through the creation of buyer personas.

What Is a Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona is a fictional character that represents the behaviors, goals, and needs of your current and potential customers. Once you know who they are, the problems they are facing, and what they want from life, you can begin to see how to tell your brand story in a way that reaches them and provides the answers they are looking for. The more thoroughly the buyer persona is fleshed out, the more focused your brand storytelling can be, and, consequently, the more effective.

Where to Start with Your Buyer Persona

As with any storytelling element, you start with what you know. Who are your current customers? What age group do they fall into? What gender are they? This information can be gleaned from login details, email lists, and customer feedback. If you make use of social media platforms, the data your customers share publicly provides a wealth of knowledge. You will find that specific characteristics are more common than others, providing you with the basis for your persona. It is essential, however, to create more than one persona, or you could have too narrow a view of your potential audience.

Using Your Brand Story To Reach Millennials In Business

Putting the Flesh on the Bones

Once you have these details, you can begin to ask further questions that allow you to fill in the gaps and create fleshed out individuals. Give your buyer persona a name, age, and gender. Determine their marital status and flesh out the details of their immediate family. Don’t forget to consider their level and type of education, as well as how long they have been out of school. All of this is important because how you approach a single millennial will differ significantly from how you tell your story to a married member of generation X with a mortgage and a family.

Give your personas a career, responsibilities, and challenges. How do you think they approach these elements in their life? How do these aspects affect their levels of trust, loyalty, and their approach to taking risks? These are again all crucial elements in how you tell your brand story and what image of your company you create.

Don’t forget to consider their social life as well. Your buyer personas need to be as human as possible. As well as helping you to create a connection between the audience and the story, this helps you understand where they spend their disposable income, and what you can do to redirect more of that spending towards your brand.

If you are ever unsure of the next step to take with how to tell your brand story through a buyer persona, just imagine a conversation between them and your brand persona. If it is a long pleasant conversation that finds solutions and answers questions, then you are on the right track. If it ends in an argument or, even worse, still silence, you probably have to revisit your brand storytelling strategy from the top.

How To Tell A Better Business Story

October 10, 2022/in Articles, Directors /by Dan Gartlan

A critical key in modern marketing is storytelling. Now, anyone can generate and tell a story. For it to be effective, however, it needs to convey a meaningful message to your audience. Simply put, you need to tell a better business story.

The Meaning Behind the Story

There is some question as to why you need to tell your story in the first place. Who is interested in the history of your company? Your target audience, that’s who.

Connecting with your target audience requires making an emotional connection. That connection builds excitement and encourages loyalty. Storytelling is one way to do this. Humans have connected to their culture and history through storytelling for millennia. It stimulates the mind and it invokes deep emotions. It provokes empathy, engagement and perspective. And all of that promotes an emotional connection.

Visual Storytelling Techniques That Will Take You To The Next Level

Crafting a Better Business Story

How can you make your business story more engaging and exciting?

Tell your audience how your company is changing the world. When you opened the doors, you had a vision on what you wanted to accomplish. That vision may have changed a bit since you started, but you still have a vision. That is part of what you need to convey to your audience through your business story. You want that audience to see that vision and to embrace it as part of your brand.
Show your audience why your company matters. Part of what you need to convey is what makes your company different from your competitors. Telling your story gives you the opportunity to highlight what makes you different and why your customers choose your brand. This differentiation needs to be an integral part of your story.
Be authentic. Today’s consumers have the ability to check the facts. When you are telling your business story, you need to stick to the facts and avoid embellishing the truth. If your story sounds a bit boring, try a different angle. Even the most boring story can sound interesting with the right storytelling.
Focus on your audience. Your story needs to create an emotional connection with your audience. You don’t want to throw details into the story that clutter your message. When crafting your story, be sure each highlight you include invokes or enhances that critical emotional connection.
Be courageous and audacious. Brainstorm and explore all avenues of how to convey your business story. You may have a few bad ideas, but if you explore the inspiration behind those bad ideas, you may find the perfect angle for telling your story. Or you may find the right details to set your story apart from the competition. The bolder and more audacious you are, the better your story will be in the end.
Tell, refine, retell. The first time you tell your story, it will sound hesitant and awkward. You may not have the delivery smooth and the details are rough. But, that is only the first time. Refine your story, smooth out your presentation. Tell the story again. And again, and again. The more you tell it, the more you refine it, the better it will end up.

Each of these tips will help you craft a better business story. Remember, you are not going to get it perfect at first. But, the more you tell it, the more you refine it, the more authentic it becomes. And that is how you make that emotional connection with your target audience.

6 Effective Call To Action Examples

October 7, 2022/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Dan Gartlan

Great content is essential to building brand authority, attracting leads, engaging with leads, building trust, and more. However, good content will only take you so far. If you want your leads to take action once they’ve read or viewed your content, you’ll need to end with a convincing call to action. Without calls to action, your leads won’t know what you want them to do, which will make it more difficult for you to capture them. The following call to action examples will give you an idea of how to create a call to action that is effective:

1. Be Clear And Concise

Your call to action should only be a sentence or two long. If your call to action is too long, your intention may get lost. The last thing you want is for a lead to read your call to action and forget what it was that you were attempting to get them to do by the time they get to the end.

2. Highlight Benefits

You can’t tell a lead what to do unless you offer them something of value in return. For example, you can’t just say “sign up to our newsletter,” if you don’t provide a reason for them to do so. Otherwise, what’s the point in them taking action? Take the call to action examples of Ikea, one of which asks leads to sign up to their newsletter:

Sign up here to get IKEA promotions, news and exciting design ideas for your house and workplace delivered right to your inbox!

This call to action is very clear about what the benefits are to signing up to their newsletter, all while keeping it short and sweet.

3. Emphasize A Lack Of Risk

One of the reasons why it’s so important to build your brand authority is so that you can build trust with your leads quicker. The more people trust you, the more willing they will be to follow your calls to action. However, even if you have managed to establish your brand, people tend to be hesitant about providing their personal information. Because of this, you should emphasize the low risk of following your call to action. Netlifx has a great example of this:

See what’s next. Watch anywhere. Cancel anytime.

Not only does Netflix highlight the benefit of signing up (watching anywhere), they also emphasize the lack of risk (cancel anytime).

4. Use A Sense Of Urgency

Create a sense of urgency with the words you use. This has a psychological effect on leads, helping to encourage them to take action sooner rather than later. If they decide to wait until later, they may forget about your offer, after all. Words that incite urgency include “now,” “today,” “instantly,” and “hurry,” to name a few.

50 Most Powerful Call-to-Action Phrases

5. Consider Two Calls-to-Action

Because you should keep it simple, it’s usually better to stick to one call to action at a time. However, in some cases, two may be appropriate. For example, if you offer two versions of your service, such as free and premium, or if you have a trial available, in which case you may want to have sign up buttons for the service itself and for a trial to that service. Spotify does this with their call to action, which includes two buttons:

Get Spotify Free

Get Spotify Premium

This can be effective since people who try free versions or trial versions are often more likely to sign up for the paid service as a result.

6. Make It Stand Out

Make sure that your calls to action are easy for leads to spot. Instead of just using regular text that blends into the text of your content, consider using buttons that are of different colors than your background. Many successful call to action examples also use visual images. Lyft, for example, uses an image of a driver and his passenger, who is enjoying the ride, as an image that provides an immediately positive impression of their service.

The stronger your calls to actions are, the more leads you’ll convert. These call to action examples should give you a good idea of how to make calls to action that will help improve your conversion rate.

How Data Driven Creative Is Shifting The Advertising Industry

October 3, 2022/in Advertising Agency, Articles, Blog, Directors /by Mark Beebe

It wasn’t that long ago that businesses had limited data to use for their creative. Marketing campaigns were often built using subjective creative instinct and little else. However, now that advertisers have access to significant amounts of data, including personal customer information as well as audience behaviors, creative decisions are being informed by their data. The use of data allows businesses to make much better use of their resources, thereby making your data driven creative efforts more successful as well as more cost-efficient. The following are just a few ways that advertising agencies use data driven creative tactics to influence your marketing campaign for the better.

1. Develop More Accurate Buyer Personas

Arguably the most important facet of any marketing strategy that you implement is the audience you’re targeting. If you’re targeting the wrong audience, your efforts will fail. This is why developing buyer personas is so important — and the most effective way to do this is through the use of customer data. You can use the data you have from previous customers as well as data from the leads you’ve captured in order to identify exactly who your audience is, which will help inform the creation of your buyer personas.

For example, you can track the behavior of your customers by viewing what pages they visited and what actions they took before making a purchase. Information like what they’ve purchased and when they purchased it will be very helpful in being able to reach your audience as well. Many businesses will also create post-sale surveys for customers to fill out that provides valuable information as well. Additionally, you can gather information from your email opt-in forms as well as from your social media followers.

2. Locate Where Your Audience Is

Knowing who your audience is won’t help much if you don’t know where they are. There are countless social media platforms on which you can target your marketing campaigns. If you choose a social channel on which your target audience isn’t present, your campaign will fall on deaf ears. Figuring out what platforms your audience uses is the first step towards reaching them, and your data can help you pinpoint where they are. For example, you can look at the social media data of similar companies to determine where they have the biggest reach, or you can add social share buttons to your content and then identify which platforms your content is being shared on most.

You can also set up business pages on several social platforms and link to them in your email campaigns and on your website. You can then track which pages receive the most follows, which will tell you which social channels you should focus your marketing efforts on.

3. Personalize Your Ads

The amount of data that you have at your fingertips should allow you to personalize the experiences of your customers, especially once you’ve created your buyer personas. For example, retargeting customers using PPC (pay per click) ads highlighting items that they added to their cart but didn’t end up purchasing can be a very effective way to close a missed sale opportunity. Personalized experiences in general, whether it’s personalized CTAs (calls-to-action) or personalized emails, have a big impact. A recent study even revealed that consumers are twice as likely to click through ads for brands they were unfamiliar with if it was tailored to their preference.

4. Create More Relevant Content

By using your buyer personas and by collecting and analyzing how your visitors engage with the content you produce, you can fine tune your content strategy to better target your audience. By tracking several metrics, including time spent on a page, engagement with the content (comments, social shares, likes, etc.), click-throughs, bounce rate, lead captures, and more, you can identify what content performs at the highest rate. You can then craft new content that’s aligned with what type of content performs well. For example, if you noticed that short-form content in list form performs well but long-form content without bullets or numbers does not, then you should have a pretty good idea of what future content should look like.

These are just a few ways that data driven creative can work and why it’s changing the way the advertising agency operates. Using the significant amount of data that you have access to in order to drive your creative marketing decisions will make it easier to successfully identify who your target audience is and how to reach them in a cost-efficient manner.

Real Estate Marketing Trends You Should Implement Into Your Marketing Strategy

September 26, 2022/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Real Estate Advertising /by Mark Beebe

The real estate industry has seen a lot of change over the past decade. It wasn’t that long ago when a homebuyer would reach out to a real estate agent through their office the moment they became interested in buying a new home. These days, the majority of homebuyers do their househunting online, which means inbound marketing has become a vital part of the real estate business.

As such, it’s important that you stay up to date with the latest real estate marketing trends. While some come and go, some of these tactics could end up making a huge difference in terms of standing out from the competition and attracting new clients. The following are some of the latest real estate marketing trends that you’ll want to incorporate into your marketing efforts:

Establish a Blog

While businesses, in general, have realized the benefit of blogging years ago, it’s taking realtors a surprisingly long time to catch up. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 77 per cent of Realtors did not have a blog in 2018. This means that by setting up a blog, you’ll have an immediate leg up on your competition. Regularly publishing helpful and relevant content on your blog helps to build authority and authenticity, which will make it easier for potential clients to trust you. Having a blog will also help with SEO, thereby increasing the exposure to your real estate business and bringing in more potential clients.

Be Mobile-Friendly

It’s absolutely essential that all of your online content is mobile-friendly, including your website. This is because homebuyers are doing the majority of their research on their smartphones or tablets. For example, if a potential homebuyer is driving around a neighbourhood and they see a house for sale, they may visit the website displayed on the for sale sign on their smartphone while they are there. If they have problems viewing it on their phone, they are likely to just give up on it.

Offer Virtual Tours

Because homebuyers are doing the majority of their research online, they are less likely to visit a property in person unless they are absolutely sure that it could potentially be something that they are interested in. You can drum up interest in your properties by offering virtual tours online. This makes it easier for homebuyers to get an idea of what the property looks like. This can help convince potential buyers to get into contact with you in order to see homes in person.

How Will Inbound Marketing Help Me Sell Custom Homes?

Social media is one of the best ways to reach potential homebuyers. Join Facebook groups and contribute to discussions about real estate advice to potentially connect with buyers. If you give out good advice, buyers are more likely to reach out to you. Social media channels like Instagram are also quite helpful for real estate agents since they provide you with a platform to post pictures of your properties on that can be easily shared. You can also use social media to draw attention to certain events, like open houses. If you’re not using social media at this point, you’re missing out on a huge audience.

Find Influencers

While building your brand authority through a content strategy and a social media presence can be effective, one of the most effective ways to gain instant trust is through the use of influencers. Influencers within your industry, which include previous clients, popular real estate bloggers, and other trusted industry experts, wield an enormous amount of influence within the community and can be extremely beneficial in recommending your services to homebuyers. Connect with such influencers through social media and build relationships with them. B2B website

Create Video Content

People tend to prefer consuming video content over reading text online–especially if they are on a mobile device. It’s why you should create video content, such as videos of your properties, videos of open houses, testimonial videos, and more. Such videos are more engaging, provide better insight, and are more shareable than other forms of content.

Staying up to date with the latest real estate marketing trends can help you improve your own marketing strategy, so keep these current real estate marketing trends in mind.

What is Attraction Marketing And How Can It Set Your Business Apart

September 23, 2022/in Articles, Attraction Marketing, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Strategy /by Dan Gartlan

Attraction marketing is the culmination of your marketing efforts to draw customers to you and your brand. As with any marketing strategy, attraction marketing focuses on setting your brand apart from your competitors by making your company attractive to potential buyers. This is accomplished through developing your brand marketing strategy by evaluating your marketing goals, evaluating how your are performing, and adjusting your plan using metrics.

Attraction Marketing Strategy and Story

Attraction marketing is all about making your brand more attractive to your buyer personas as well as attracting them to you through inbound marketing. The two work hand-in-hand and should be a pillar of your marketing efforts, and it all begins with your attraction marketing strategy or strategies as the case may be — there is no one “right” way to market your brand but there are many tried and true ways to do it.

Strategy alone, however, doesn’t necessarily flow through to your customers but your story does and storybranding is how to give your brand an enduring and lasting impression on your clients. Be careful though, as storybranding and storytelling are two different animals.

Get Found and Be Seen

Your brand story sets up the foundation for who you are and what you do and, if done right, will be the thing that your buyers admire as they meander through your sales funnel. Of course, all of that magnificent storybranding will be for naught without a quality website and some killer SEO which is exactly why you need to shore up your website: to be seen.

We’re talking, of course, about your internet presence and how it affects your attraction marketing campaigns. The gateway to your brand story and to your attraction marketing as a whole goes through your website which may very well be your most valuable sales asset. Most importantly, it puts you on a level playing field with your competition through the necessary exposure of the internet.

Getting folks to that site comes down to search engine optimization which spans both organic and pay per click by optimizing your website for greater results. While SEO is an intrinsic tool to have, the quality of the content you provide on your site is what keeps buyers there and hooks them in to your sales process.

Want to learn more about how to create quality content? Read this article on how to create content for each sale funnel stage.

Thought Leadership

Possibly one of the most useful parts of attraction marketing for your business is that you become the thought leader in your industry. Buyers as well as industry leaders will turn to your brand to help solve their problems as you make them more aware of the issues they face.

Thought leadership though is more than simply having quality content and making that content relevant to your target audience. It deals with the entire suite of broadcasting your brand, who you are, and what you know about your industry and the solutions you have available across many different avenues. Social media, trade shows, marketing metrics, and lead nurturing all make up vital pieces of your thought leadership toolset.

More than that, the importance of thought leadership for your brand is to continue to set yourself up on a higher plane than the rest of your competition by delivering what you already know and conveying it in a way that attracts people to you.

Lead Nurturing Throughout the Buyer’s Journey

Once you’ve got a lead whether from a trade show, through your inbound marketing, or through social media, it’s time to nurture them through your sales process and guide them through their own buyer journey.

While there are many ways to nurture leads, keying in on how your specific buyer responds to different stimuli is necessary for landing sales. Tactics including drip emails, lead nurturing campaigns, and remarketing are all tools that should be part of your lead nurturing tool box. Additionally, towards the end of your buyer’s journey, your sales and marketing staffs should be on the same page for sales-ready leads.

Finally, you’ll need a way to evaluate your marketing efforts. Inbound marketing software, analytics, and metrics can certainly help, but having a strong OODA loop within your organization will aid in making decisions. Remember, it all starts with data.

The Nitty Gritty: Why Attraction Marketing?

The question you’re undoubtedly asking is why attraction marketing is useful to your business which is a very valid one. Think of attraction marketing as the magnet that draws customers to your brand at large. The deeper aspects of attraction marketing such as your content, thought leadership, and brand story make your brand something that sticks with them.

What General Data Protection Regulation Means For You

September 19, 2022/in Articles /by Nicole Wagner

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is legislation that went into effect in May of 2018 which gives you as an individual more rights and protection over your personal data.

Companies will have to be transparent about what data they hold about you and why, and will no longer be able to spam you with unwanted marketing material or share your data with third parties without your knowledge. In our opinion, this is a hugely positive step forward for the rights of the individual in the context of the current multi-billion dollar data industry and the wake of the Facebook/ Cambridge Analytica scandal.

GDPR affects all businesses operating within the EU in terms of how they collect, use, share and store personally identifiable data such as names, addresses, phone numbers and emails. There is a misconception that GDPR only affects B2C businesses. GDPR also affects B2B businesses because client and employee names, emails and job roles can all be used to personally identify individuals.

How Will Businesses Need To Change?

Businesses require new procedures, contracts, rules, and other paperwork that was in place by May 25, 2018. As part of this, your website will need to be GDPR compliant. However, it’s important to note that your website is largely a reflection of your internal policies and processes; you can’t update your website without first looking at your business. So before we jump into how to get your website GDPR compliant, let’s start with reviewing some of the key aspects your business will need to consider in light of GDPR.

Going forward, you must be upfront and honest about how you will use personal data e.g. letting individuals know why you’re collecting it and what you will do with it. You must ensure that all data you collect is lawfully processed e.g. if you’re an accounting firm, you can’t collect data about your clients’ political beliefs as it’s simply not relevant. You must also specifically name any third parties with whom you’re sharing personal data, and have new contracts in place with them as data processors.

Additionally, you must always give individuals the option to opt-in rather than opt-out of direct marketing – that means no more pre-ticked boxes saying ‘I want to receive promotions and updates, and you should check that any individuals currently on your mailing lists have consented to receive updates from you.

You must have adequate measures to securely store and protect personal data and can only store it for a valid time frame – this means you can’t keep data on your ex-clients years after they’ve ceased being your client. Upon request, you must also be able to give an individual a breakdown of all the data you hold about them and delete it permanently if they so wish. To see how ready your company is for GDPR, complete the governing body ISO’s checklist for getting ready for GDPR.

How To Be Sure Your Website Is General Data Protection Regulation Compliant

A page on your website that states what cookies are used on the site, both yours and from third parties and what data you capture with them and what you do with it. An example of a typical compliant cookie policy can be seen here on our website: Privacy Policy

You don’t need to have one but you do need to state what cookies are used and what the privacy policy is at the first point of arriving at the website – so a pop-up is the most logical and well-established solution. It needs to state that cookies are used on the site and that the user needs to agree to the use of the data as set out in the privacy and cookie policy.

The policy pages state what cookies are used (both yours and third-party ones) and that you have to agree to the terms in order to fully use the site. It is very possible that, as some cookies are purely functional and not data gathering tools, the site won’t work properly for you. You will, of course, have the right to request the website owner to disclose what information you hold about the user and it is permanently deleted.

The use of the website must not be limited to those who accept the use of the cookies. The user must be given the option to use the site without the use of cookies and decline the use of cookies for their session. It must be explained to them the cookie notice that if they decline the cookies the site may lose some functionality.

3. Privacy Policy

A privacy policy is a more thorough document that states the website owner’s full statement of what data is captured, when it was captured, what the data is used for, the third party’s details and the process, including the DPOs (Data Protection Officer) details as well as the process of requesting the user’s details and request that they be permanently deleted.

4. SSL certificate

Secure Sockets Layer certificate – it’s the encryption code process that sits on the hosting space of your website. It is the thing that makes the browser bar display a secure notice and sometimes go green and show a padlock symbol. The purpose is to securely encrypt all the details that are entered into any forms or fields on a website. A variety of SSL certificates are available.

5. Pseudonymization or Anonymization

– This one’s harder to resolve.

Most websites that have user accounts and store information about their users (like your Amazon account storing your name, address, date of birth etc) store that data in an SQL database. This is a web-based database that the website calls to, queries and delivers your details when you sign in. In most instances, unless it’s online banking, these details will not be stored encrypted and so if the SQL file was accessed the content could be clearly read.

It’s very hard to both store and retrieve data in an encrypted way and that is why most sites don’t. However, as part of GDPR, ‘pseudonymization’ means that websites will need to start moving towards the users being identified by a username only and that the rest of the data is encrypted so that there is no possible connection between the user and the stored details. You will need to speak to your website developer and host about planning this change as it will take time, and planning and require a budget.

If you have the facility for users to sign up on your website to receive a newsletter from you, you need to make sure the user has opted in to receive that subscription and you can ONLY send them what they signed up to receive.

You need to seek consent for each method you plan to email them, indicating how it is to be used and how you can unsubscribe. You cannot automatically assign users to receive the information they did not consent to. There must be separate opt-in boxes for each type of subscription/email content you wish to send.

E.g If a user signs up for a service they buy on your website, they will have to check a box to accept the terms of that service. If you offer a monthly marketing newsletter there will need to be a separate check box for them to select. It cannot be a ‘required’ field. You’ll also need to provide another separate check box if you also give the user’s details to another party.

Read our article: Choosing HubSpot CRM As Your CRM Solution

General Data Protection Regulation states that it must be just as easy to withdraw as it was to sign up. Make sure you keep your contact preferences page easy to find. In addition, you may consider segmenting topics of interest and providing an opt-out checkbox for each one. Including easily identifiable opt-out links in all marketing emails can also help to remain GDPR compliant.

7. User Account Creation

If your website is an eCommerce one or allows a user to set up an account for access to services behind a login area, you will need to ensure that you have both the SSL installed and also work towards the data being stored using pseudonyms. Recent headline examples (Uber, TalkTalk, Experian) have shown that even major internet giants aren’t doing this so better to talk to your web developer about how you can move towards this process.

8. Payment Gateways

If you have an eCommerce website and use one of the popular payment gateways, such as PayPal, Sagepay, Worldpay or Stripe, you need to make sure that (as well as ensuring the processes are followed in line with the above points) the payment gateway privacy policies are checked and referenced in your own privacy policy. If they are UK (or European) based, they will need to be GDPR compliant, if US-based, Privacy Shield compliant. The storage of actual payment details on a website falls under and is regulated by PCI compliance.

9. Enquiry & Contact Form

If your website has an enquiry form for people to send you messages, you need to ensure the following are adhered to:

The website has an SSL
The details are not stored in the website’s SQL database unless stored encrypted
If they are sent to you by email, your email service provider adheres to GDPR rules and that the email is stored and sent according to GDPR secure methods. Many email service providers, like Google email and Outlook 365 are updating their terms of service in accordance with GDPR – it’s worth checking their policies to make sure your email provider complies. Email is one of the most common places private data gets abused and lost or misused.
Do you print out the email with the enquiry details? If you do, this is also a data risk. Ensure you have a shredding process in place to make sure that emails with users’ private details aren’t just put in the bin!
No pre-checked boxes to automatically sign the enquirer up to a newsletter.

The enquiry is explicit to that instance. You cannot then add the user’s details to your marketing database unless they have explicitly agreed to it using a separate check box.

10. Live Chats

If you have a live chat service on your website, you need to make sure that you refer to this third-party service in your cookie policy and privacy policy and that you review their GDPR/Privacy Shield policy. You may think the data isn’t being stored anywhere, but it is – very often the transcript of the chat is emailed to both parties once completed. The above principles of storage and use apply here, too.

11. Connected Email

While not strictly website-related, all email services and the storage of email from all with whom you are connected must be stored in accordance with DPA (Data Protection Act) & GDPR guidelines. In short, make sure you store your email data securely, use good anti-virus applications and archive and delete unnecessary emails completely. And have a Data Retention policy – a statement by your organization follows in terms of how you store data and for how long before it is deleted.

Using social media sites for your organization also falls under GDPR. While you do not need to seek permission from each person who ‘likes’ your page or ‘follows’ you, you do need to ensure that any information gathered directly from people with whom you interact on these sites is handled in accordance with the GDPR privacy guidelines. If you’ve had a chat using Facebook Messenger with someone about an enquiry, make sure the chat history is completely deleted when it’s done. Get the person to email you so that you can hold the formal connection outside of a social media channel.

You also need to make sure that your privacy policy refers to these third-party data controllers, especially as people use SSO (Single Sign-on) for logging into sites and also using their social media account logins for convenience. You also need to ensure that, if you use the details of your customers or connections on your social media page to promote your business you have their consent to do so.

13. Google Analytics And Other User Tracking Systems

If you run Google Analytics on your site (or any other tracking service) you will need to make sure that it is referred to in the cookie policy and the privacy policy and that you ensure you check the third party’s own privacy policy to ensure they comply. While we know that Google Analytics will be both GDPR and Privacy Shield compliant, other, lesser-known tracking services may not be.

You must enable the anonymization option in Google Analytics to properly conform to GDPR. Google Analytics records users’ IP addresses in visitor reports and this is deemed as ‘identifiable information. You don’t really need it so turn it off. What’s not fully clear right now is how this will affect geographic reports. We’ll update you on this in the coming months.

14. CRM Connection

Related to points 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10. If your website captures a user’s data and then writes it into a CRM, such as Salesforce or Pardot, you need to make sure that the data collection process is secure, as previously referred, and that you refer to the third-party service in your privacy policy. Additionally, if your website automatically sends the enquiry directly into the CRM, the date, time, reason for capture and consent details are also captured. As a user, they have the legal right to ask you where you captured their details, when, was it explicit how the data will be used and how the details can be permanently deleted (also known as ‘request to be forgotten).

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has actually launched a dedicated advice line to help small organizations prepare for the new data protection laws (GDPR). The service is aimed at people running small businesses or charities and recognizes the particular problems they face getting ready for the new law.

Organizations Need To Make Sure They:

Have a Data Breach Process

The General Data Protection Regulation requires the data controller to have suitable processes defined and in place in case of a data breach. Depending on the severity of the breach, the data controller has a legal obligation to report a data breach (of identifiable or un-pseudonimised data) within 72 hours. Further information on the reporting of a data breach can be found on the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

Appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO)

All public authorities and any organization that processes personal data (the data controller) on a significant scale must appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO) responsible for monitoring internal compliance of the GDPR regulations within the organization. Even if you don’t feel that your organization falls into this category we think that it is a good idea to appoint a DPO for your organization. This person can keep data protection high on the organization’s agenda and ensure that GPDR compliance is achieved and then maintained.

Have a ‘Right to be Forgotten’ Process

An organization must have a Privacy Policy statement on their website. This statement, amongst other things, must include what data is captured about the user, what it is used for, how long it is stored, whether it will be shared with anyone (and detailing who), and the process for a user to request to be provided with full exposure of what data is held about the user and the process for them to request it is completely removed from the organization’s system – aka ‘the Right to be Forgotten.

Have Good Default Privacy Settings

If your website captures any sort of user data or details, such as an eCommerce website or one that allows the user to have an account with some sort of profile that identifies them, make sure the website is set to the highest level of privacy for the user by default and that there are settings the user can choose to downgrade their settings if they wish – a bit like your privacy settings in your social media apps. DPOs should be checking that only data that is absolutely essential be captured.

Improve Data Encryption and Work Towards Storing User Profiles As Pseudonyms

Basically, if you’re storing personally identifiable data on your website (user accounts that have their names, email, shipping/billing addresses etc) you need to be working towards getting that data stored so that it is stored encrypted. Peudonymization is also something that should be considered. This basically means that account profiles have usernames or login methods that are not visibly connected to the actual individual – usually, this is done by having two databases for the website – one for the pseudonym and that database connects to the actual account details so that the whole profile does exist in one place. This reduces the exposure of PII (personally identifiable information) becoming exposed in the event of a data breach or hack.

The first step is having an SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate on your website that encrypts all the data entered into a website through form fields (like when you set up an account, buy something online or sign up to a newsletter etc. However, the data is most likely not stored encrypted. Most CMS systems, like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla don’t do this and you’ll need to have some customization done to your site to make the data get stored encrypted so that in the event of a breach, the data is useless and cannot show identifiable information to individuals.