Knowing your audience is the goal of every marketer. Yet it turns out most marketers are missing this vital part of the process. Just 42% know their basic demographic information, and even fewer are aware of factors like their customers’ preferred channels or purchase history. Having a first-party data strategy can help fill in the gaps in a brand’s knowledge while still respecting its users’ privacy. Gathering information about your existing customers can show you how to retain your customers for the long term and acquire some new ones. Both help to increase your conversions as long as you have a first-party data strategy in place. This article is Anchor Digital’s guide to the role of first-party data in marketing and how you can successfully go about first-party targeting.
What Is First-Party Data?
Data is the information created when customers use and interact with your brand and your site, and it helps you to understand and better engage with your demographics. There are different kinds of data you can draw upon from these customer experiences, including personal (email address, birthday, etc.), behavioural (product usage, cart abandonment, etc.), engagement (which pages on your site they visit and which posts they like and share) and attitudinal (their perspectives, collected from surveys, call centre notes or other applications).
Second-party data is collected by another company and shared or sold as part of an agreement. Third-party data is collected and sold by companies other than the one that initially collected it.
First-party data is data that users are sharing with your business themselves. It includes all the information you’ve gathered with consent through forms, newsletter sign-ups and loyalty program applications: email addresses, demographics, purchasing history, website activity, interests and behaviours and more. In the marketing industry, first-party data is one of the most valuable assets a brand can have.
Because it is collected directly from consumers themselves, first-party data is generally seen as more accurate than other forms of data. The further data is from its original source, the harder it becomes to verify its accuracy. According to Google, 92% of leading marketers believe using first-party data to understand what people want is a critical growth strategy.
How to Use First-Party Data in Marketing?
Marketers have some popular tools at their disposal for collecting first-party data. These include Google Analytics and other analytics platforms, customer data and feedback platforms and online survey platforms like Mailchimp and SurveyMonkey.
Some common ways that marketers collect first-party data include:
- Implementing analytics platforms on websites to analyse metrics like page views, bounce rates and time on the site.
- Encouraging users to create accounts and gathering information like names and email addresses.
- Incorporating newsletter sign-up and contact form information into your site.
- Creating surveys and feedback forms to gauge customer satisfaction and preferences.
- Integrating social media platforms onto your website and monitoring likes, comments and social shares.
- Implementing cookies to gather information about customer preferences and behaviour.
Some data points and key metrics you can use to learn more about your customers include bounce rate, conversion rate and time on the page. You can also collect crucial information that allows you to better target your approach to your customers, like location, age, gender, interests and purchase history. These pieces of information help you build a profile of the kind of customer that uses your services.
First-person data helps you appeal to your customers using a number of methods, including:
Retargeting
Many online advertising platforms use tracking pixels to log someone’s IP address when they visit your site. This lets you direct targeted advertisements at them and retarget customers who have already bought from your brand.
Personalisation
Personalising your targeted messaging means better brand experiences and more specific tailored content, messaging and recommendations.
Customer engagement
By looking at your customers’ metrics, you can see where they’re dropping off in the sales funnel and why they aren’t engaging at certain points. This allows you to adjust your approach going forward for a more compelling messaging strategy.
Decision-making
The accuracy of first-person data takes the guesswork out of strategy and optimisation and gives you some hard facts to drive your future decisions.
Creating a First-Party Data Strategy
How you use first-party data in marketing depends greatly on the nature of your business and marketing goals. But here’s a general step-by-step guide to creating a winning first-party data strategy:
Decide on your long-term goals
Rather than focusing on your desire for immediate results, consider your long-term goals, whether shortening your sales cycles or optimising your conversion rates. Figure out what your customers need as well as what your biggest challenge is right now to find the way to solve both with first-party data.
Identify the data you need to collect
Look at the data you have and then examine where the missing pieces are to find out what kind of data you still need to gather.
Look for gaps in your internal resources
It’s important to examine the current gaps in your internal resources. Do you have the right in-house team to manage data, and does your current infrastructure support large-scale data analysis? Asking these questions will give you a clearer idea of how well-equipped your company is to harvest new data.
Collect the data
Make sure you follow best practices and prioritise marketing data security. Control who can access your data and store it with proper encryption.
Analyse first-party data in combination with other data
A first-party data strategy can also include analysis of second and third-party data to fill gaps in your strategy and drive results. Combining your own collected data with data shared, purchased or aggregated by other parties allows you to build a more enhanced and integrated customer profile better suited to targeting your customers.
Test and repeat
Like any other approach, a first-party data strategy requires regular testing, optimisation and audits.
The Benefits of Using First-Party Data
Using first-party data for marketing has both advantages and challenges, with some of the biggest benefits being:
- More effective marketing methods and enhanced personalisation.
- Enhanced customer retention and loyalty
- More efficient allocation of your marketing budget for the best returns.
- More precise segmentation and targeting of advertisements.
- Easier to comply with privacy regulations as the data is collected with users’ consent.
- Control over your customer data and how it’s used.
- Ongoing insights as customer preferences evolve.
Boost Your Marketing Strategy with Anchor Digital
First-party data strategy is one of the many ways to craft a successful marketing strategy. We help you gain clarity on what you want to communicate and how you want to communicate it. Then, we look at the best techniques for the task, which can include third-party data collection.
Performance marketing is a crucial element of your website’s success. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and Anchor can help you ensure that impression is powerful with a winning combination of search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC).
To find out more and to use first-party targeting as part of your own business approach, contact the Anchor Digital team.
