National Public Data / Data Brokers

Now that your social security number and phone number are linked together and available for purchase on the dark web, one can use their imagination as to what could possibly go wrong?

Many of you who are catalog-centric readers have used data brokers for three decades. One of you sent them parsley, one garlic, others oregano, peppers, olive oil, salt, pepper, red wine vinegar. The data broker puts it in a food processor, blends it, then sells you chimichurri sauce. You supplied them free data, they supplied you with customers, they made money.

All of you who are e-commerce employees leverage a different kind of data broker ... two modern ones ... Google and Facebook ... Alphabet and Meta.

I had a reader send me a nasty gram last month, wanting "actionable tactics" and less talk about "community". "Where is the information I can use today?"

Let me be really clear about something.

If your brand builds communities outside of old-school data brokers and modern digital data, you manage the relationship with the customer. Yeah, you. It might mean you host a loyalty program where you have a direct relationship with your best customers as opposed to a brokered relationship with a third party who just might slip up and cost you your personal data. It might mean you host a forum on your own platform instead of paying a third party money for access to a customer that the third party might carelessly abuse.

So, no, I'm not here to give you "5 Tips To Make Money Off of Google and Facebook".

I'm here to ask you to own the relationship with (checks notes) your own darn customers.

How is that a bad thing?