Using Your Privacy Policy as a Marketing Tool
If you’ve been following my posts here, or on a number of other channels, you already know the importance I place in Privacy Policies. If you don’t have one, get one now!
So today I want to discuss how to use your privacy policy as a marketing tool. Think about the basics of what a privacy policy is. It tells your customers how you use their customer data, that you collect, and who wouldn’t want to know that. It gives them confidence in providing you with the means to contact them to continue the conversation they started when they first reached your site.
So with that in mind, make sure you place a link to your policy somewhere on every page of your site, placing it in the footer section is pretty standard, and people are used to looking for it there. I recommend this as a perfect default place to put it.
Next make sure to include a link to it, using the anchor text “Privacy Policy”, everywhere you have a form that collects any personal data, this includes newsletter sign-ups, shopping cart pages, whitepaper requests, etc…
If you really want to get fancy, include a small bit of marketing with that “Privacy Policy” link like “”Privacy Policy”” – Because We Respect Your Rights” or “Our “Privacy Policy” Protects You.” I think you can see where I am going with this.
Providing your visitors with clear access to your policy is a strong marketing tool because it strengthens their trust in your company and in your business ethics, which is a great building block to generating a long term lead or customer.
Learn how to use your privacy policy as a security tool.
FYI - I know I am going to get some wise-ass who points out “Hey OMPundit, if the Privacy Policy is so important, why doesn’t your blog have one yet?”
Fair enough question, the only exception to not having a privacy policy is if you collect no visitor data directly from the customer. At the time of writing this post, I don’t have a newsletter or any sign-up process where I capture my visitors’ names, email address, etc… so I don’t need to provide it at this time.
But if I get to the point that I do want to capture my visitor’s data to provide them with more tools and information, I can promise that a Privacy Policy will go up on this web site before any tools to collect that data do.
