How to Use Customer Match in Google Ads to Grow Your Business?

Customers are the bloodline of a business. But do you know the number of your existing customers you can target using Google Ads? If you’re like most people, it’s probably a no – and that’s no issue. Google can help out with that.

Aside from the number of existing customers, you get to find out the number of customers you can find on the Display Network, Search Network, Gmail, and YouTube. And the process is known as Customer Match. Customer Match is a process that allows you to use customer data during Ad targeting.

In this guide, you’ll learn easy ways of using customer match Google Ads to grow your business.

What is Customer Match in Google Ads?

Customer match helps you use both your online and offline data in reaching and re-engaging with your customers across Gmail, Shopping ad, Display, YouTube, and Search. Using your customer’s information, customer match Google Ads helps you target your customers and potential customers who share a similar interest to your existing customers.

Whether you’re looking for a reliable way of boosting your brand awareness, or you want to drive conversion, customer match Google Ads will help you achieve your business goals. If you’re still skeptical of customer match Google Ads, here are examples of how to target various audiences using the strategy.

• On your Shopping tab and Search Network, you get to optimize your campaigns. To do that, you have to adjust your bid using your customer’s activity.
• If you desire to reach new segments on YouTube, you’ve got to target segments that are similar to valuable customers.
• Reaching existing (or potential) customers on display can be done via personalized ads. And these ad types are found on the Google Display Network.

How Does Google Use Customer Match Data?

Your customer data files will be used to match the Google accounts with your customers. It’s also a way of ascertaining that your Google Ads Customer Match Campaigns comply with the policies. By using industry-leading standards, Google Ads will secure your data and keep them confidential. This way, your user’s data will be protected.

When it comes to the actual emails, Google doesn’t receive them. Instead, the Google system converts information like emails and phone numbers into hashed codes – and that can be achieved with the hashing algorithm SHA256. The hashing algorithm SHA256 is a hashing mechanism encrypted by Google.

Here’s a quick overview of how Google treats data files that are uploaded.

• Limited data use

Google Ads will use your data files primarily for the creation of customer match audiences, and to ascertain that it complies with the policies. When it comes to enhancing and building your customer profile, Google Ads will not use your data for that.

• Limited data access

Google Ads only shares your data files with the teams created for your Customer Match audiences, and it ascertains that it complies with the policies. But how does Google protect the data from unauthorized access? Well, it uses employee access to do that.

• Limited data sharing

Third parties like other advertisers won’t have access to your data files. However, when it comes to meeting governmental requests, legal processes, regulations, or laws, Google is most likely to share your data.

• Limited data retention

Google Ads retains your data solely for the creation of Customer Match audiences, and the compliance of its policies. After the completion of the process, Google Ads deletes your data files.

Google Ads ensures that the system for the storage of data files is reliable and secure. And their dedicated security engineering team helps in the protection of the system against external threats.

When it comes to the protection of your data from unauthorized access, Google store does that using an encryption format. A Google user being in your Customer Match audience does not mean that Google will enhance or build on the profile of such user – and they won’t share the user in your Customer Match audiences with other third parties, and that includes other advertisers.

If it comes to the generation of similar audiences, Google compares profiles of existing Google users in the Customer Match audience to the profiles of other Google users. Just like other Google Ads products, information gotten from the Customer Match ads’ clicks and impressions can be used to improve Google Ads. Improvement on other Google products and services can also be done using the same information.

How do You Set Up a Customer Match?

By now, you probably know that Customer Match Google Ads uses data shared by the customers to target ads to potential customers. You can start by creating a CSV file that includes the customer data and upload it to Google Ads. The incorporated data will be used to refine your Google campaign targeting. You have to ascertain that the file format is correct. If not, you may have issues using the customer data file.

To correctly upload the customer data file, you need to carefully follow the steps below.

• Sign in to a Google Ads account
• In the navigation menu of Google Ads, click on the tools icon
• Under the Shared Library section, click on the Audience manager
• On the left side of the page menu, select segments
• To create a new segment, click the plus icon
• From the drop-down menu of your screen, choose the customer list
• Select a name for the new segment
• Upload the new CSV file. The process of identifying whether your data is unhashed or hashed is automatically done by Google. And it’s done after the data is uploaded to the platform
• You will see a box next to the “This data was collected and is being shared with Google in compliance with Google’s Customer Match policies”. Check the box, if you agree
• Set up your membership duration. The default duration is unlimited – but there’s room for customizing the time limit
• Click the upload and create button
• To access your progress, take a close look at the “Audience lists” section. Typically, completion of the process could take up to 48 hours
• When the upload process is complete, an upload success page will be displayed on your screen. Information on the number of rows that were successfully uploaded will be displayed. You also get to see the match rate percentage.

What is the Benefit of Customer Match?

1. Build a deeper relationship with existing customers or acquire new ones:

• Connect loyal customers with existing products or services that can solve their needs
• Acquire new customers that are similar to your existing customers
• Reach out to existing customers using special messaging and offers
• Re-engage dormant customers

2. Alternative audience strategy that is easily scalable:

• As the world of cookie-less Ads is gradually unfolding, you get to use Customer Match lists to attract the most valuable users. It’s also a vital tool to help you properly manage your audience without much reliance on traditional tag-based web visitors.

3. Important signal in Smart Bidding and Optimized targeting:

• In Smart Bidding and optimized targeting, a Customer match list is used to get the best performance
• When using Smart Bidding or optimized targeting, the Customer Match list can be used to improve your campaign’s performance. And different campaign types include a customer list at various times.

Monitor your PPC Campaigns Effectively With Smart Tool:

The primary objective of any business owner is to generate quality leads. When running campaigns, you’ve got to keep a close eye on your campaign performance. This way, you get to determine if your campaign is generating the desired result or not.

When it comes to monitoring your campaigns, you will need a tool like the PPC Signal tool. The tool helps you notice what’s wrong with your campaign. This will, in turn, help you optimize your campaign for improved performance. The PPC Signal tool helps eliminate the work that comes with manually optimizing your campaign.

The tool comes in handy for business owners who may be running multiple campaigns from a single Ads account. With the tool, you get to easily optimize your campaign and come up with other ways of boosting your Ads performance.

Let’s say you manage a campaign where clicks are one of the metrics you’d be looking out for. Clicks help you know whether you’re attracting the right people or not. And if you’re not getting enough clicks, then your customers are probably not interested in your Ads.

From the PPC Signal dashboard, choose your preferred metrics to get the automated signal displayed on your screen. This way, you get to know what’s wrong with your campaign, and other factors that are probably affecting your campaign performance. You can take a step further by exploring your campaign. By clicking on the Explore icon, you get to gain more insights into your signals.

From the first signal, you get to observe the anomaly in your data. You’d notice an increase in your clicks does not generate the needed conversions. To reverse it, you have to work on some elements of your campaign like the landing pages or call-to-actions (CTAs). Improving on these elements will help you boost and optimize your conversion rate.

There is also the tabular representation of the data.

The signals help you identify what’s happening, and take action before committing more time and resources to the campaign. For instance, there is something wrong with a campaign that generates 180 clicks with only 3 conversions. For such a campaign, you’ve got to add more relevant keywords to the landing page and make other adjustments.

With the PPC Signal tool, you get to optimize your campaign in less time, and pretty much maximize your resources and time.

FAQs:

How big does a customer match list need to be?

The customer match list should be created in a .csv format, and should not be larger than 17MB. It’s good to note that these email addresses don’t have to be Gmail-only.

What is eligible for customer match?

To be eligible for customer match Google Ads, you’d need 90 days of Google Ads history, and over $50,000 lifetime spend. Aside from the customer match Google Ads, you’ll be eligible to target and observe similar audiences for the Customer Match. These options also appear in the Exclusions and manual bid adjustments.

How Does Google Customer Match Work?

Customer Match Google Ads uses offline and online data to re-engage and reach customers across Gmail, the Shopping tab, Display, Search, and YouTube. Using the information shared by customers, you get to target your customers and similar audiences.

What’s the benefit of using customer match audience solutions?

Since you’ll be able to target potential customers who share similar interests with your existing customers, it would be easy to reach and expand your business operations. This way, you get more people to get to see your product or service offering.

Wrap Up:

Customer match Google Ads is a sure way of building goal-oriented and solid campaigns — and it also yields a good return on investments.

Aside from the high conversion rate and conversion value, Customer Match Google Ads is pretty easy to use. And marketers of all skill levels get to generate good results by using the tool.

But managing multiple campaigns from a single account is somewhat difficult – and that’s where the PPC Signal tool comes in. With the signal tool, you will get a stress-free way of managing your campaigns without losing much sweat.

Now you understand everything about the Customer Match Google Ads, how will you use it to grow your business?