In the digital age, of course, brands have a lot of advantages that businesses of the past never even dreamed of. And one of the most powerful of these advantages is first-party data — the information that your brand itself collects directly from its customers (and prospective customers) using its website and other owned media assets.
When harnessed and employed properly, this forceful and informative tool offers you a highly reliable and easily accessible way to generate a broad range of valuable insights about your target consumers.
Consider these eight business-boosting benefits that first-party data can deliver for your outdoor brand:
1. More personalized consumer experiences
Your outdoor brand should harness first-party data such as a customer’s browsing history, purchase history and demographic information. By doing that, your outdoor brand can tailor online experiences, offers, marketing messages and other consumer communications that speak directly to the particular consumer and his or her interests and needs. And such personalized and relevant experiences, of course, can more effectively capture consumers’ attention and interest — and drive more conversions, too.
2. Stronger customer relationships
In addition to piquing consumers’ interest, the above-discussed personalization efforts can also help brands foster stronger connections with their prospects and customers — as all of us are more likely to warm up to people and businesses that make the effort to get to know us better. As a result, harvesting and employing first-party data can help your outdoor brand build and maintain stronger relationships with its customers.
3. Advertising advantages
First-party data can also help you execute more targeted advertising campaigns. For example, if a brand that sells hunting gear generates a list of customers who purchased a particular bow, it can target these same consumers with ads for accessories for that specific bow, or ads for complementary offerings like bow releases, arrows, stabilizers and quivers. And using customers’ browsing history, the same retailer can target consumers with ads for products they’ve shown an interest in but never purchased. Such hyper-relevant ads, are more likely to find more receptive and intrigued consumers when they’re served, making them much more likely to be effective.
4. Added audience insights
By analyzing the online activities and interests of consumers with similar traits, your brand can gain powerful insights on things like the products the group’s members most often purchase, the content they’re most interested in and the offers they’re most receptive to. Then, your brand can harness this knowledge to drive more interest and conversions among look-alike audiences. Such audience insights can also help your outdoor brand better understand things like what content on your website is most popular with consumers, what website or app features are most and least popular, and where consumers are spending the most and least time on your website. All of those can be leveraged to help you improve the consumer experience.
5. Increased accuracy
Data from outside parties — and especially data derived from third-party cookies that track users’ activities across multiple domains — is notorious among marketers for being less-than-trustworthy … and often simply inaccurate. But when your brand can collect data directly from consumers, as is the case with zero-party data and first-party data, you can have much more confidence in its accuracy. And when targeting new consumers or otherwise leveraging consumer data, accuracy is critical to effectiveness.
6. Elevated predictive knowledge
By using predictive analytics, brands can anticipate what consumers are likely to do next based on similar consumers’ previous activities and choices. For example, by analyzing the paths visitors typically take before making a purchase on your brand’s website, you can better understand which pages and product information those who are most likely to convert visit and view before making their purchase decisions. And with this knowledge in hand, you can optimize the purchase path with tailored messaging along the way regarding product offerings, sales, special offers, etc. that might increase the likelihood of conversion.
7. Significant cost savings
Effectively harnessing and using first-party data can help your outdoor brand save money, too … in various ways. Among them, first-party data can be harvested by your business free of charge — it must simply be collected and employed. Further, by helping you optimize the targeting of your marketing campaigns, the aforementioned advertising advantages that first-party data can deliver can greatly increase your campaigns’ return on ad spend (ROAS), effectively lowering the costs of those marketing efforts and saving your brand money.
8. Enhanced regulatory compliance
With online privacy regulations increasing worldwide as a result of the passage of various pieces of privacy-focused legislation, it’s imperative that businesses avoid running afoul of these new laws, as doing so could result in serious legal and financial consequences. And by focusing on first-party data sources to gain added insights into your target customers and their preferences, you can sidestep the potential risks that leaning on third-party data can introduce.
Looking to use your outdoor brand’s first-party data more effectively — and to leverage it to boost consumer interest and drive more conversions? The data-driven analytics professionals at TBA Outdoors are adept at capturing this valuable data and putting it to use — and we’re always here to help.
Further, as a fully integrated marketing firm, TBA Outdoors can cover any and all of your outdoor brand’s marketing efforts — from analytics and creative to social media, e-commerce, public relations and much more — all in one place. To explore how we can help your outdoor brand with its analytics efforts and more, reach out to our team of marketing professionals today.
