The Google Ads Customer Match feature is a useful advertising tool for many business goals, from increasing brand awareness to driving conversions. This feature in Google Ads is an advanced advertising feature only available to advertisers that have spent $50,000 on Google Ads over a year period and have been assigned a Google Account Manager. It uses already existing customer data to get as targeted as possible with your campaigns by matching your ads to customers who are already familiar with your business. You can leverage this feature for youtube, google search, Gmail, and the display network by using a CSV file to match customers by information like their emails, phone numbers, and addresses. Think of it like a more targeted version of remarketing, or Google’s version of Facebook Custom Audiences.
To create a Customer Match audience list, use a template, or create your own CSV file with customer data using a combination of the required column headers below of email, phone, first name, last name, country, and zip code. Go to audience manager, then selected audience list, click the blue + button for customer list and go through the steps to upload the CSV file.
It takes two days to process the information you upload and then get back on what customers you can target on your list. From there, you can start targeting your audience with your Google Ads Campaigns using email addresses, first names, last names, phone numbers, and country of residence. You need at least 1,000 contacts for your customer list and Google Customer Match won’t work for everyone in your upload. It only works for users that can be matched with a Google account. The hit rate is usually around 50% for uploads. Second, you can only upload information that you collected—called “first-party data” like web forms, POS systems, and other points of engagement. Lists you buy or download from data vendors cannot be used in Customer Match. There are limits, too, to how specific you can get. You can’t lay data (e.g., geographic locations) on top of your customer lists. Likewise, you can’t target based on “sensitive interest” categories, like health problems, negative financial status, or sexual orientation. Following on from the previous point, users need to be logged in to their Google accounts to be able to see targeted ads. When people are logged out, they don’t see these ads.
- Email address and phone matching: Google keeps track of the email addresses and phone numbers for Google accounts and the corresponding hashed strings for those email addresses or phone numbers. After you’ve uploaded your customer list of email addresses and/or phone numbers, Google Ads will compare each hashed string on your customer list with the hashed string for email address or phone number of Google accounts. If there’s a match, Google adds the corresponding Google account to your Customer Match audience (Customer list).
- Mailing address matching: Google joins hashed name and mailing address data for Google accounts to construct a matching key.After you’ve uploaded your list with hashed customer names and addresses (don’t hash zip and country data), Google constructs a similar key based on your data and then compares each key on your customer list with the keys based on Google accounts. If there’s a match, Google adds the corresponding Google account to your Customer Match audience (Customer list).
With Customer Match you can create new custom advertising audiences for every SKU in your eCommerce store. Or, if you’re advertising a single product or service, you can use the zapier integration to add all your new leads to your target list. The same works in reverse. If you want to stop advertising a product to someone who already bought it, you can automatically remove a contact from a customer list whenever anyone makes a purchase. Another key part of Customer Match is “similar audiences,” which expands your reach to users who resemble those on your list. You can collect information from a customer who purchased an item from your website, from a customer who registered to receive marketing messages through your apps, or from a customer who signed up for your loyalty program in your physical store to use for Customer Match.
Here are some specific strategies for Customer Match lists:
- Sell only to your customers on Google Ads: Targeting existing customers is one of the most efficient forms of PPC advertising. You could run a campaign limited to your customer list to potentially reduce your costs and increase your conversions.
- Exclude existing customers from your ad campaigns: What if you have a product people only need to buy one time? Excluding your customers from your ad campaigns will make your advertising more efficient. Excluding the customers that Google matches should still save us money. The more granular you are with your ad targeting, the more you can improve your results. If your data in your CRM is up to date, Customer Match should result in even more specific targeting. Generally speaking, targeting brand/product-aware consumers should produce your best ROI. So, targeting current customers has the potential to be even more efficient than remarketing.
- Upsell existing customers on a new version of your product, or an add-on
- Offer a coupon or discount to attract shoppers back to your site or store by directly targeting prospects who downloaded an asset from your website
- Outrank the Google Shopping competition on consumables
- Serve video ads to top-funnel prospects researching your services
- Bridge the gap between in-person activity and digital advertising
Here are a few examples of different audiences you can target across available placements with Customer Match:
- On the Search Network and the Shopping tab, you can optimize your campaigns by adjusting your bid based on what you know about your customers’ activities.
- On Gmail, you can reach your customers or similar audiences using personalized ads at the top of their inbox tabs.
- On YouTube, you can reach new audiences, by targeting audiences similar to your most valuable customers.
- On Display, you can reach your customers or similar audiences using personalized ads on the Google Display Network.