How to Master First-Party Data: Your Secret Weapon for Targeted Marketing

[Music] I'm Ben I'm an ongoing  strategist here at webfx  
first party data is basically any piece of  information you're collecting from individuals  
that your business owns and essentially  once you've collected that information  
you can use that for marketing for reaching  out to customers but really the key is it's  
data personal identification that you have  collected as a company and you own internally
a lot of privacy regulations have been  rolled out a lot of us have heard about  
cookies and how those are used to essentially  track someone's behavior on the web that's  
personal information from the individual  and the main goal of these regulations is  
to protect the consumer and individuals and  their right to protect their own personal  
information and as a result these regulations  have forced businesses to adapt how they're  
collecting information on people that are  visiting their products a good example would  
be Facebook apple and even Google they've all  been adapting their platforms to adapt to this  
privacy regulation rollout and that's forcing  customers and marketers to adapt how we are  
actually using and collecting information  on people and how we need to Market to them
first party data is really impactful because this  is information from users that you know they've  
actually provided to you because they're showing  interest in your company your service your product  
and with that there's a lot more of an intent  to actually purchase and the characteristics  
of those individuals are typically in line with  your demographic that you're targeting and it's  
extremely powerful to leverage that because  one since we own that information and they've  
willingly provided it to us they're open to  hearing our Communications and they're open  
to being educated on what we can do for them to  solve their problems or provide a service to them  
third party day is a little bit different  because this is essentially tracking  
characteristics of individuals and maybe  Intense or maybe finding characteristics  
on those people that would show they  might be interested in what you have  
to offer but they're not actually reaching  out to you asking for that information so  
you're kind of pushing your Communications  out to them and in some cases that can be  
impactful and it could capture their attention  but it's not going to be as powerful as far as  
converting people as actually reaching out to  someone who showed interest in your product
in the past we might not have needed to rely  as much on first party data because a lot of  
companies maybe weren't collecting it and some  of those push strategies were more effective  
because there weren't as many platforms to get  in front of people so you weren't fighting for  
as much attention and there weren't some of the  Privacy regulations out there that would protect  
the consumer from getting unsolicited marketing  and messaging from companies so as we you know  
for grass and things modernize and uh personal  information is uh valued more and protected more  
as a company as a business you need to adapt  to that and right now in the current climate if  
you don't have first party data if you're not  collecting that information it's going to be  
really hard to function as a company or a business  it's going to be hard to sell your products
absolutely when it comes to promoting a new  product third-party data can be really helpful in  
narrowing down an audience you want to communicate  with that could benefit from your products the  
real difference now is it's just anonymized it's  not really as granular as the individual that  
might be interested in your products essentially  what a lot of the platforms are doing is grouping  
everyone into cohorts of similar interests or  intents and what we can do is tap into those  
interests or intents if they align with what our  product can do or solve or or help so essentially  
you know at the end of the day if you have a new  product out there you're trying to grow a business  
a lot of us do focus on middle and bottom of the  funnel and first party data lives there but in  
order to kind of brand a company in order to bring  awareness to maybe a new service that you have  
third-party data can be very powerful in getting  in front of a lot of people but it's really  
important that once we get that initial exposure  that we're putting strategies in place to start  
to collect information from those people and then  Market to those people that get them the purchase
first you need a method to collect that first  party data that could be a website with a form  
on it where someone could fill that out to reach  out to you directly but there's also other methods  
of collecting first party data if you're at a  trade show someone could literally write down  
their information to reach out to them later that  is first party data they're giving you permission  
to reach out to them and communicate to them  about your product or service but essentially  
you need some sort of method of some sort of  mechanism to collect that first and foremost  
once you collect it we need to put it somewhere  and a spreadsheet can work but it really isn't  
that easy to manage and it's not easy to kind  of plan marketing and follow-ups with something  
like that so really you need some sort of CDP  or a customer data platform and essentially a  
customer data platform is a piece of software  that you can buy there's a lot of those out  
there that you can put a lot of your first  party data in and manage that information  
you could create audiences from a platform like  that that could be used for marketing automation  
or can be used for sending uh emails to people  it could be used to maybe develop campaigns  
in social media or Google ads and then we can  also use a CRM CRM is a customer relationship  
management tool and that is fantastic for taking  that first party data and actually taking action  
on it whether it's automated follow-up emails if  it's prompts to your sales team or yourself to  
call those people uh to keep top of mind and  help them move down the sales funnel [Music]  
to get a customer to give you their information  you need to provide something back and that really  
comes down to reciprocation reciprocation  could be monetary you could say hey I'm  
giving you dollars for a service or a  product back in this case when we're  
collecting first party data our reciprocation  typically is something that would benefit the  
user or help them in their journey of  discovering a solution to their problem  
so when it comes to our website white papers are  fantastic resources to help them make a decision  
it could be promotions for discounts on the  products that you offer essentially we need  
to give them something of value back that really  is going to resonate with the user and it's going  
to be attractive and typically something  that might be hard to find somewhere else
first and foremost it's important to make sure  that the user coming to your site understands  
that you're following the rules and regulations  of the country or state that you do business in  
and you're transparent with that you're  showing that information to them that could  
be in a privacy policy that could be in the  module that pops up that asks for their email  
giving them some information on what you're  going to do with that and also linking them  
to where they can learn more information about  how you follow those rules and regulations build  
a lot of confidence for the user that it's  okay to give them give you their information
that really does depend on the business  you're in I think the most important thing  
is to understand your customer life cycle when  someone does give you their information what  
do we typically see from your past customers  that move them to making a decision what's  
the time frame that typically happens what  information do they need and that's going  
to allow you to start to craft a strategy  regardless of what channel you're investing  
in to actually nurture that first party data  in a way that drives revenue for your business
the first thing that I typically see is really  from the sales side what are we doing to reach  
out to those people if they're not unsure about  what they want to do if they want to work with you  
to get them to make that decision simply following  up with them when they reach out to you and they  
give you their email their phone number the  faster you can reach out to them with a phone  
call or an email message the more likely they're  going to buy from you so first and foremost just a  
human interaction act on those leads that you're  getting the second thing would be nurture those  
leads there's a lot of great tools that can be  manual like a salesperson being reminded to call a  
lead over time but we can automate a lot of those  tools with something like a workflow with email  
marketing where we have a specific Cadence we put  in place based on your customers life cycle based  
on the purchase process of your business that  engages with that user and helps move them down  
the sales funnel so by the time they're ready to  make a decision they're more educated it's a lot  
easier to close that sale the third thing would be  outside of reaching out to those customers through  
automation or manual processes we could use that  data to actually send to our ad platforms outside  
of just email to actually continue to Market  and say top of mind with those users so we can  
take that first party data and develop audiences  for social media marketing we could use that to  
stay top of Mind through display marketing or to  connect to TV there's a lot of options in the ad  
platform world out there that allows you to  harness that first party data to just truly  
stay top of mind with those customers and then on  top of that we can take that first party data and  
develop modeled audiences from that the first  party data like we said earlier has a ton of  
characteristics about them that show that they're  really a good customer and a good fit for you so  
if you can develop audiences with all that first  party data of your best customers you can then  
use that to develop modeled audiences based off  the thousands of data points that they have have  
and a lot of the the platforms out there on the  web really have a lot of information that allow  
us to then develop modeled audiences that are  similar to your current customers to continue  
to grow your branding your awareness and  drive more people into your sales funnel  
we talked about a lot of different options use  your first party data and that can be overwhelming  
so if you're not doing anything with it just  doing something's better than nothing if it's  
simply just tracking it if it's simply  just understanding where they're coming  
from or if you're just using it to email  customers that's great that's better than  
nothing what's most important is that you're  incrementally making improvements over time  
so start simple and grow from there you  don't have to do it all at once [Music]
here at webfx we have a software platform  called marketing Cloud FX and really from  
its birth years and years ago the main goal  was to help us manage all the leads in the  
first party data that customers were getting  and tracking back where they simply came from  
and over time that's evolved into a very robust  platform that allows us to really take action on  
our first party data whether it's email marketing  whether it's programmatic advertising whether it's  
developing modeled audiences for social platforms  and paid advertising through Google there's a  
lot of opportunity there and then through our  partnership with nutshell we have a full CRM  
platform so for those clients who need a better  solution or don't have one right now they're just  
using a spreadsheet nutshells here to help you  really prop up a great CRM system that's fully  
integrated with marketing cloud and that way  you can really harness The Best of Both Worlds
yesterday
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