Google Customer Match – 6 Strategies To Get The Most Out Of Your Advertising

What Is Customer Match?

Customer match is a powerful Google Ads feature that allows you to target via users email addresses, phone and physical address. 

Basically, Big G takes the data that you upload in a file and sees whether it matches the information that they have in their database about the user. 

If it does, then it adds them to that audience.

So if you’re a business who’s spent hours and hours building a database of customers and are looking to make sure that you get the most out of it, then it’s probably something that is seriously worth considering for your paid activity.

Wait…What about Privacy?
Don’t worry Google has thought about that and any customer information that is uploaded to Google is hashed, or turned into encrypted codes in non-techie speak. 

Once Google has gone through the matching process, they are deleted immediately, so your customer lists are wholly GDPR compliant.

Note: for new advertisers you will have had to spend more than $50,000 total lifetime spend to use customer match, so having some history across the platform is key.

Which channels does it work on?

So, now that we’ve got an idea of what Customer Match is, what platforms can we use it on? Well the answer is that it works across all of Google’s major platforms.  So you make sure you can get in front of customers wherever they are on the web.

The 4 channels Customer Match works on:

• Gmail
• Search
• Display 
• Youtube

Our Best Customer Match Recommendations

But how do you use Customer Match?

Well you can use it in a variety of ways, but there are 6 main strategies that we like to use it for. 

These are road tested strategies that we’ve found help clients to get the most out of their advertising.

1. Establish Authority With Reviews And Case Studies

A potential user lands on your site. They spend time understanding your offering. Understanding what makes you unique. Understanding how good your service-levels are. Understanding how well the website works.

Now what?

If they enjoyed the website journey but are not ready to make a purchase, they may sign-up to the newsletter. 

They may want to know more about your brand, or they may want more specific deals to land in their inbox. 

This is an opportunity to entice users with new ad copy that focuses on your hard-earned customer reviews or the case-study that demonstrates your expertise. 

Effectively, you’re selling indirectly. Your goal now is to build authority and answer some questions your new subscriber has:

1. Are they reputable?
2. Have they worked for people like me before?
3. What is their pricing like?
4. What range of products do they have?
5. What are their seasonal offers like?

Answering some of these questions via your CRM and through a segmented audience of your subscribers can help build the relationship and bring Search users back onto site with more intent.

2. Improve CTR With Personalised Ad Copy

One size does not fit all.

Take a search user who signed up to receive a brochure. This user is in the market and working out their options, but not quite ready to commit to full purchase. 

Chances are, they did this across multiple websites to compare service/products. So they are far from brand loyal. At this stage.

Using Customer Match you could potentially tailor the ad copy to include:

1. A complimentary product to the last one they bought
2. A limited time holiday offer
3. Last minute deals

This will make your ads way more relevant versus the competition who are just using plain old generic copy.

3. Re-engage Seasonal Purchasers

Some customers buy routinely, others save their money and others spend big only during the sales. 

How can you make sure those users who tend to shop once a year do so with you and not a competitor?

It comes down to understanding when those periods are and re-engaging before those periods. 

Create segments of those customers who buy infrequently but buy big one or two typical times a year. This audience can then be uploaded into Google, and you can serve specific seasonal ad copy.

Take Black Friday for example, you’ll want to start in September, and make sure they’re aware of you well in advance of November.

4. Generate Loyalty

Understanding your audience helps establish loyalty. You can segment your email lists so you have groups based on your:

1. Most recent purchasers
2. Past customers who like a particular range
3. Frequent re-purchasers
4. In-app customers

Understanding these audiences and serving tailored ads to these audiences can help make one-off customers, regular customers or even loyal advocates!

5. Tailored Messaging For A Dynamic Audience

Add new Mailchimp subscribers to your Google Ads routinely.

Get current subscribers added to the right content list on Google Ads. Build a dynamic audience flow with an integration that is always up to date. This creates a dynamic marketing funnel, that ensures no lag time between uploading new customer lists.

So those are just a few of our favourite tactics for Customer Match. There’s a really good range that could be applied to almost any industry. Take a look through them and play around and if you struggle and want any help then drop us a message.

6. Get Lapsed Members To Rejoin

Have customers registered a while back but are lapsed?

Annoying, isn’t it?

But you can re-engage them through search. You can send a tailored message and get them to reactivate. These customers may be price conscious, so you can tailor your message which seeks to bring them back to the business with an amazing exclusive deal or new offering.

This tactic is ideal for gym memberships and can really help reduce the cost of membership renewal.

So those are just a few of our favourite tactics for Customer Match. There’s a really good range that could be applied to almost any industry. Take a look through them and play around and if you struggle and want any help then drop us a message.