The ninth P of marketing framework
Privacy is now the 9th P of marketing best practice. Permission has replaced persuasion.
Follow this 7-step framework to climb to Privacy-Led Marketing success
What: Embed data privacy as a core marketing principle – not only a compliance checkbox.
How:
- Run internal training sessions to reframe privacy as a driver of customer trust and long-term growth.
- Appoint a ‘privacy champion’ to bridge marketing, legal, and product teams.
- Link privacy goals to performance metrics eg increased consent rates, improved data quality, higher ROI.
- Integrate privacy wins into brand storytelling to inspire internal and external buy-in.
Why: “Privacy isn’t just a challenge, it’s an advantage. But it requires moving beyond short-term thinking and taking a more strategic, long-term approach.” – Mariusz Gasiewski, CEE mobile and gaming apps lead, Google
What: Understand your audience’s expectations and anxieties around data. Why do they hesitate to share? Where does trust break down?
How:
- Treat consent as a brand touchpoint, not a pop-up. Design consent banners like landing pages so they’re clear, branded and value-driven.
- Give consent the UX treatment: make it intuitive, helpful and consistent across platforms.
- Use social listening and surveys to understand sentiment around privacy and personalization.
- Respect the pause. When users hesitate, reward their attention with clarity and control, not pressure.
- Include customer voices in your privacy design process; co-create trust.
Why: “The difference between being trustworthy and being trusted comes down to how you manage your data relationships. You can signal trustworthiness through expertise, transparency, and intent, but that doesn’t guarantee people will trust you. What earns their trust is respect – demonstrated consistently at every stage. And often that means treating customers as adults: listening to them, honoring their choices, and never taking their consent for granted.” – Chad Wollen, co-founder and managing partner, The Privacy Experience Agency
What: People are far more willing to share their data when they clearly see the benefit.
How:
- Make privacy understandable: use plain language and friendly UX to explain why data is collected.
- Educate without being overwhelming: use visuals, examples and progressive disclosures.
- Position data-sharing as a value exchange: ‘You give us insight; we give you relevance.’
- Use preference centers as a brand engagement space – personalize content and show tangible outcomes of consent.
- Be creative: use your brand’s tone or humor to make privacy relatable.
Why: “The more value the user sees and feels, the more comfortable they are with sharing their data - and even giving more. It’s about showing that what they provide creates a better experience for them, not just a gain for the company.” – Mariusz Gasiewski, CEE mobile and gaming apps lead, Google
What: People are far more willing to share their data when they clearly see the benefit.
How:
- Make privacy understandable: use plain language and friendly UX to explain why data is collected.
- Educate without being overwhelming: use visuals, examples, and progressive disclosures.
- Position data-sharing as a value exchange: ‘You give us insight; we give you relevance.’
- Use preference centers as a brand engagement space – personalize content and show tangible outcomes of consent.
- Be creative: use your brand’s tone or humor to make privacy relatable.
Why: “The more value the user sees and feels, the more comfortable they are with sharing their data - and even giving more. It’s about showing that what they provide creates a better experience for them, not just a gain for the company.” – Mariusz Gasiewski, CEE mobile and gaming apps lead, Google
What: Equip teams with the right skills, tools and culture to activate privacy-led strategies end to end.
How:
- Create cross-functional privacy squads combining marketing, legal and data experts.
- Define emerging roles, such as privacy engineers, consent UX designers and data ethicists, to drive innovation.
- Remove silos between marketing and data protection officers (DPOs); collaborate on campaign design and data activation.
- Hold marketing-specific data training to identify essential versus excessive data collection.
- Use social listening and customer interviews to uncover what data feels intrusive versus helpful.
- Share success stories internally – highlight attribution improvements or brand trust gains linked to privacy efforts.
Why: “Success in Privacy-Led Marketing depends as much on storytelling inside the business as on execution outside it. Marketers can’t assume stakeholders understand the shifting world of Privacy-Led Marketing. You have to bring them with you – explain why ROI is changing, how measurement works differently, and always anchor the story to the customer.” – Heni Hazbay, marketing director, Argos
What: Analyze and quantify both business and brand effects of privacy-first practices
How:
- Track opt-in rates, drop off at content points, preference engagement, and the volume of first-party and zero-party data across campaigns.
- Customer trust indexes, brand sentiment around transparency, or ROI from consented data journeys are also useful.
- Compare against industry trust benchmarks.
- Build a privacy performance dashboard combining analytics, sentiment, and compliance metrics.
- Use surveys or polls to measure how customers perceive new privacy features or consent experiences.
- Celebrate and communicate improvements – e.g., ‘+25% opt-ins since new consent design.’
Why: “If you really want to measure impact, don’t just count conversions and short-term revenue; calculate the lifetime value of the people you’ve lost through unsubscribes or rejections. A true net calculation tells you not just what you gained, but also what you sacrificed.” – Chad Wollen, co-founder and managing partner, The Privacy Experience Agency
What: Shift focus from third-party data reliance to first- and zero-party sources.
How:
- Offer valuable exchanges – learning materials, webinars or loyalty rewards – in return for consented data.
- Add an onboarding phase that invites customers to share preferences for more tailored experiences.
- Follow up after key touchpoints (purchases, events, demos) to gather zero-party data with clear benefit statements.
- Use preference centers to enable continuous, self-directed data sharing.
- Audit your tech stack to ensure it supports privacy-safe, first-party data activation and audience segmentation.
Why: “Use first-party data to target customers in a more contextual, relevant way – so it feels helpful rather than intrusive.” - Ajay Keerthy, head of marketing, wealth and personal banking, UK, HSBC
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