In the age of data-driven marketing, agencies are constantly on the lookout for effective ways to reach and engage their target audiences. However, with the impending demise of third-party cookies and increasing concerns around privacy, agencies are facing a new challenge when it comes to audience data: According to Datonics study, 53% of respondents stated that they still rely on third-party cookies for their digital marketing campaigns. It’s time to rethink the traditional approach of buying audience data an shift towards creating your own audiences.
Agencies should gather and incorporate zero-party data into their customers’ advertising efforts. By creating their own audiences, instead of purchasing audiences, agencies will create a consumer-centric campaign and gain valuable consumer insights, serve prospects a better brand experience and ultimately move them down the funnel. This is often done with a sequence of ads that tells a compelling story to each consumer while building cookie-less targetable audiences for the advertiser’s top business objectives.
The goal of creating these custom audiences is to find scalable audiences most likely to engage with the brand and be interested in its offerings. A best practice is to group potential customers into audience buckets based on their preferences, interests and intent, which will ultimately enable the brand to connect with them more effectively.
But where to begin? Let’s break down how to create and leverage these valuable zero-party data audiences.
‘Always-On’ Audience Collection
“Always-on” audiences imply a consistent, year-round data collection process where specific audience segments are continuously expanded upon. To build large-scale, custom “always-on” zero-party audience segments, begin by aligning them with your brand’s primary goals.
As you gather these insights, you can progressively add to this segment. This ongoing accumulation offers a rich dataset, enabling more tailored communication strategies for each preference all year long. Continuously gathering this zero-party data is the key to segmenting them effectively and delivering messaging that deeply resonates with each audience.
Create Audience Insights & Drive Consumers Closer To Conversion
Another value of zero-party data is the campaign-specific audience insights a brand can gather. By using real-time consumer feedback from your advertisements, marketers can segment viewers into intent-based audiences to amplify their messaging to those who are likely to buy, while also addressing concerns or perceptions of those unlikely to buy in future messaging.
Creating these campaign-specific, zero-party audiences can also help drive consumers closer to conversion.
Better Questions Lead To Better Advertising
How do you know what kinds of questions to ask so brands can know their customers better and improve their advertising?
The goal is to create an addressable audience. Zero-party audiences, which are collected in the ad unit, are excellent at optimizing any targeting that is already in place.
If your brand is looking to gauge positive or negative brand sentiment, you could ask a question within an ad like, “What is your perception of our brand?” Those that say positive can be bucketed into future campaigns with relevant content, while those that say negative could also be segmented and served other ad content, like corporate social responsibility creative, to build towards a better perception.
The key is to start by looking at the original intention or goal of the brand or advertising campaign. From there, you’ll be able to create the right questions to build the best audience for your brand.
Transitioning from the conventional practice of purchasing audience data to creating unique audiences allows agencies to tap into a treasure trove of consumer insights and deliver a premium brand experience. Embracing the creation and utilization of zero-party audiences is not just timely, it’s pivotal, as it holds the key to scalable and effective marketing strategies that connect brands with their most engaged and interested audiences.
Cindy Brown is the CRO of ViralGains, a zero-party data gathering and advertising tool.
