First-party data refers to the information that a business collects directly from its audience or customers. With an increase in automation within PPC campaigns, we can use first-party data to ‘feed’ this machine learning.
So, how can you utilise first-party data to boost PPC performance and improve the long-term impact of a campaign?
What is first-party data?
First-party data is the data collected about your audience. But this data is not only harvested from a company’s site. You may find it’s collected through one or more of the following digital marketing activities:
- Events
- Email subscriptions
- Form submissions
- Web analytics platforms including Google Analytics
Businesses can use this data to inform campaigns, ensuring they are fully optimised and relevant to the target audience.
How does this differ from second and third-party data?
Second-party data is generally collected by another company that is in the same or a similar industry. This can mean it is less specific to your brand, but still useful when it comes to targeting the right audience.
On the other hand, third-party data is collected from multiple sources and is therefore often less focused/specific to your business than first and second-party data. For example, it is often collected through cookies.
Our PPC first-party data tips:
Ensure your PPC bids and targets are accurate
Google offers Smart Bidding strategies, including Target CPA, Target ROAS, and Max Conversions and Max Conversion Value. We recommend using first-party data to perform a campaign analysis, before refining your smart bidding targets.
Instead of basing CPA/ROAS targets on data reported from site conversions, you can link CRM data with Google Analytics, enabling you set smart bidding targets at a level that accurately reflects the impact of pay per click activity- on the bottom line.
Integrate data sources with Google Analytics
So, we know that data integration is a vital first step to using first party data for PPC optimisation. The source of most company’s online performance data is Google Analytics. This is the tool we’d recommend using to integrate with other first party data sources as an initial step.
GA already tracks standard online conversion data by default, but this does not include reports on:
- The outcome of a conversation a prospect may have with your team
- Whether or not a conversation led to a sale
- The value of any leads your sales team may convert
CRM and Google Analytics integrations will enable you to feed the following data back into Google Analytics:
- The exact sale value of conversions passed to CRM
- Lead score based on CRM activity
- Sales conversion rate
Integrating a data source essentially means that valuable data can be tracked back to a lead directly from your site. Using a data connector or aggregation tool that provides the ability to link CRM data into Google Analytics, will offer you a process with the least manual development input, and the quickest solution.
For this to work, you’ll need to ensure that your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are linked.
Remember, offline conversion data can feed Smart Bidding
As well as setting accurate targets, automated bidding strategies can be fed with post-conversion measures. For example, let’s say you’re optimising a campaign based on conversion value, you’ll want to guarantee that these are accurate. And this is where offline data comes in. Phone calls, for example, can often lead to a sale or conversion; which is not necessarily going to be captured in Google Ads or Google Analytics.
A PPC call tracking tool that utilises first-party data is the definitive way to show that your paid marketing efforts are actually driving new leads and impacting your bottom line. With the right tool, you’ll be able to keep track of lead quality and any sales driven from a call plus the value of those sales.
So, to summarise, in order to improve the quality of your data, your goal values should be based on real data that has been fed into GA with another tool.
What next?
Using machine learning technology can vastly improve the impact of a PPC campaign. But, for machine learning to really work, it is crucial that any data being used is fully accurate. Feeding machines with incomplete data will not generate maximum campaign performance.
For more information on how to leverage first-party data without wasting any time or budget, feel free to get in touch with our PPC team.