There has been a lot of talk about Facebook ad performance lately. Between the decline of cookies and their penchant for removing targeting options, advertisers are certainly feeling the frustration.
The reality is, this has been a long time coming and unless advertisers start thinking outside the box, it isn’t going to get much better.
Cookies aren’t coming back. Click IDs aren’t coming back. The Facebook pixel of 2018 isn’t coming back.
Without abundant user data and a need to focus on privacy, ad platforms have turned to AI to create audiences they think will work.
And that’s the thing – we’ve trusted the ad platforms to find the right people because they have. But not anymore.
It’s time for advertisers to take matters into their own hands and this starts with first-party data and advanced segmentation techniques.
The Rise of First-Party Data
We don’t need to dive too deep into the whys and hows of first-party data but we’d be remiss if we didn’t discuss its importance.
First-party data has always been the gold standard. After all, it’s your data to do what you want with (with privacy in mind of course).
The thing is, for many advertisers, especially those on the agency side, access to first-party data has always been varied. Some clients may give it to you but not all. Hence advertisers’ reliance on third-party data, tools, and experience.
With third-party data on its way out and the unreliability of ad platforms, collecting first-party data has become a priority for many.
According to a study from Acquia, 88% say first-party data is more important to organizations than two years ago.
Clearly, people are realizing they need first-party data and they are figuring out ways to collect it (here are a few pre-cart abandonment strategies that also help you collect first-party data).
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First-Party Data & Audience Segmentation for Facebook Ads
What’s the saying? It’s not the tools in your toolbox but how you use them.
The same goes for first-party data.
It doesn’t matter how much data you have if you aren’t utilizing it appropriately.
For Facebook Ads, this means segmenting your data for better audience targeting.
Let’s take a look at a few examples of how you can use first-party data for better ad performance:
Retargeting Audiences
As we’ve written about in the past, retargeting really took the brunt of the privacy updates. Here are a few posts that dig into the issue:
- How to Recover Ad Retargeting Audiences After iOS 17
- Future-Proofing Your Meta Ads Retargeting Strategies
- Facebook Retargeting Isn’t Dead. It Just Needs a Jump Start
- Revolutionizing Facebook Advertising: The Top 7 Ad Hacks for 2024
That doesn’t mean we should simply forget about retargeting, it just means we need to go beyond the Facebook Pixel.
See where I’m going with this? First-party data!
Using a website visitor identification tool like Customers.ai, you can capture 20-30x more users than the Facebook pixel and segment your visitor data into custom audiences.
And with our official Meta partnership, you can then send those audiences directly to your ads campaigns.
These audiences can even be used in conjunction with the Facebook pixel.
The point being, by directly capturing website visitor data, you are not relying on the ad platform to build your audience for you.
You are creating much larger retargeting audiences that specifically feature users who have visited your site!
Want to go even deeper?
We can create specific audiences based on intent and even website visitor demographics.
Customers.ai doesn’t just capture visitor data, we enrich it, giving you insights into who the person is beyond their name and email. We also track the customer journey, so we know what pages they visited.
With this data in hand, our ability to create custom audiences is limitless! We can create audiences for people who visited certain pages or categories, we can create audiences for people who fit a certain demographic, we can create audiences for people who are existing customers but haven’t bought in two years, etc. etc.
We can make retargeting work like it used to. We just have to help it along.
Don’t believe us? One customer added 58k new people to their Facebook retargeting audience in a week using website visitor identification and Restore!
Custom Audiences
Custom audiences, in my opinion, are one of the best features of Facebook Ads.
With all of the targeting options that have been removed, this is our best chance of reaching people we know we want to reach.
The thing is, much of the first-party data we have is that of customers or people who are already familiar with us. What about new customers? What about people who don’t know our brand? How do we reach them?
There are certainly ways to do that through the platform but as most of us know, it’s nowhere near as precise as it once was.
That’s where our intent-based consumer directory comes in.
Especially for B2B organizations, the ability to source audiences based on attributes like occupation, income, etc., is extremely valuable.
Consumer Directory gives you the ability to build audiences based on demographic and intent-based targeting data.
These audiences can be turned into custom Facebook audiences and used to reach new customers.
Advantage+ Audiences
Are Advantage+ audiences amazing? Not really. Are they good enough? Sure.
What if you could make them better?
Look, one of the biggest benefits of AI is its ability to learn and improve. The more data you can give it, the better.
That’s where your first-party data comes in.
Create a custom audience from your CRM – names, emails, etc. of high-value customers – and add it to an Advantage+ audience.
These are the types of people you want Advantage+ to find. Give it the data it needs and improve your overall ad performance.
Make Facebook Ads Work for You
We know there are a lot of issues happening with Facebook Ads but we also know that it still has so much value for advertisers.
We encourage you to keep iterating, keep pushing, and don’t overlook first-party data.
First-party data is going to help you be successful across all channels and with the right segmentation in place, you can build some really strong multi-channel campaigns.
Interested in learning more about how Customers.ai can help restore your retargeting audiences?
Request a demo and our sales team will be happy to show you just how amazing this really is.
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Important Next Steps
- See what targeted outbound marketing is all about. Capture and engage your first 500 website visitor leads with Customers.ai X-Ray website visitor identification for free.
- Talk and learn about sales outreach automation with other growth enthusiasts. Join Customers.ai Island, our Facebook group of 40K marketers and entrepreneurs who are ready to support you.
- Advance your marketing performance with Sales Outreach School, a free tutorial and training area for sales pros and marketers.
