When building Facebook campaigns, marketers are often limited in their targeting choices by Facebook’s native targeting. Marketers can choose to reach consumers by their age, interests, relationship status, and location. What’s missing is your audience’s shopping habits, income bracket, and professional responsibilities—data that enriches a marketing campaign for accurate targeting.
LiveRamp’s IdentityLink Data Marketplace offers a third-party data solution with over 65 Data Marketplace providers who are approved for Facebook. Incorporating third-party data into Facebook campaigns allows marketers to take their campaigns to the next level by taking into account how much consumers are typically willing to spend and where they shop.
We recently invited Amanda Grant, managing partner and U.S. Head of Social for advertising giant GroupM to join us in a webinar on how using third-party data can help you learn more about your audiences and optimize your Facebook campaigns to complement your existing Facebook strategy.
Here are three ways different industries can benefit from third-party data:
Incorporating third-party data supports weak first-party data.
Often, first-party data may not directly correlate with your campaign targets. If you’re looking to target B2B, your target audience may not like other company pages, or have interests on Facebook that directly correlate to marketing to their needs. However, now you can augment additional third-party data, such as conferences they recently attended that may be relevant to your campaign targeting. This extra facet gives you an opportunity to engage with them on a larger scale in a privacy-conscious manner.
Marketers in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry especially feel the pain of these blind spots. Historically, the CPG industry has relied on retail partnerships and third-party data. While native targeting is commonly deployed, it may not be as effective. A consumer may like a brand’s Facebook or Instagram page because they like photos of dogs and the images shared on the brand’s page. But the venn diagram of those who like cute puppy and cat photos and those who are actual pet owners may not completely overlap. Having more accurate insights that are tied back into purchase-type behaviors also plays a critical role for this category.
Third-party data allows for predictive modeling for longer purchase cycles.
The automotive industry is a great example of an industry with a longer purchase cycle. It’s also a very data-rich vertical. For consumers who are making purchasing decisions of $30,000 or more and don’t make purchases as frequently, additional context is so important to go beyond the likes of the brand’s page to see where a consumer is in their purchasing cycle. Having third-party data enables predictive modeling and in-market signals, such as whether or not a consumer has actually recently purchased a vehicle, helping narrow down qualified leads. When the purchase cycle is as long as it is for the automotive industry, it’s important to shut off advertising for those who aren’t going to buy soon.
Access hidden pockets of data that aren’t shared on Facebook.
For an industry like financial services, complementing offline data along with life event data that is available on Facebook is a targeted approach to narrowing down your campaign audience. A consumer who notes on their Facebook life events that they have just bought a home, and also matches with third-party data indicating they have filed for a renovation permit, will most likely be looking for a remodeling loan.
These use cases and many more are now available to marketers.