Have you ever heard of the term “Data is the new oil”? That’s because Data is one of the biggest drivers of a successful marketing campaign. Many businesses have lost opportunities to increase their profitability simply because they don’t make use of the right data or maybe they don’t know how to get it.
Keeping that in mind, let’s dig into the different types of Data and how you can gain access to it, and use it to improve your marketing impact and business performance.
There are three types of data
- First party Data
- Second Party Data
- Third Party Data
First Party Data
This is the data (information) you get directly from your client and it is generally thought of as the best type of data. This type of data is very easy to collect and manage. Privacy concerns surrounding first party data are minimal because you know exactly where it came from, YOU OWN IT OUTRIGHT. As a marketer, if you are not collecting first party data, you are leaving money on the table.
If you want to monetize, learn from or deepen engagements with your audience, first party data will help you. By studying your first party data, you’ll be able to understand the type of people patronizing your business and why. This will in turn, help you create content or products specifically for those audiences.
How to use First Party Data
- Predict future patters: You can predict your audience behaviors with confidence. If they usually click on video ads more than a static image, then you know you’ll have to produce more video contents.
- Personalize content and advertising: The first party data you collect on a visitor will give you insights into their needs, interests and thereby, allowing you serve them personalized content.
- Gain Audience insights: With first party data, you can analyze the traits your audience have in common which will afford you the opportunity to target the same people in your advertising.
How to collect First Party Data
There are two ways you can collect a first party data. First, you can request for it by telling people to sign up for newsletters or when they buy a product from your website. Alternatively, you can enable a pixel on your website. This tool receives data about visitors’ activities on your site and can come from various sources.
Second party Data
This is basically someone else’s first party data. You purchase this data from the person that owns it. For instance, you contact the local chamber of commerce and offer a 20% discount to all members who sign-up for saloon services in the next 1 month. In turn, they agree to allow you email their curated list with your offer. Soon, you find your list grows to thousands of potential clients and quite a number of them might even turn into paying clients.
How to use Second Party Data
- Add to your existing data: You can request for second party data to increase your overall database. Adding second party data can boost your campaign reach and impact.
- Predict behaviors: Just like with first party data, you can use second party data to predict future patterns surrounding customer behavior specifically related to your target audience.
- Build relationships: To obtain second party data, you’ll need to form relationships with companies that own/have access to it. This process can lead to new partnerships and collaboration opportunities with businesses that could complement yours.
Where do you get second party data
You’ll need to find companies that own or have access to the data and buy it directly from them. You can also. enter into partnerships with other businesses that could be beneficial to both parties and share resources. As described in our example above, a barter system is a great example of a partnership – granting customers a discount in exchange for access to data is just one of several ways you can acquire data.
Third Party Data
This is the data you buy from external sources who are not the original curators of the data. It’s the data you access through online companies like Google, Facebook etc; to improve your insights and audience targeting, without actually owning the data. More recently, 3rd party data is bought and sold using mostly automated systems, which means it happens rapidly and generally on a large scale. This type of data is beneficial because of the large volume and broad scope. The major down side is that you may not be able to identify the original source of the data.
How to use third party data
This data is powerful when combined with first party data. You can use it to expand your audience and gain more insights into their interests and behaviors. It can be used to:
- Discover new audiences: looking at broader data might reveal audiences who might be interested in your products or services, but who were previously unknown to you. It can also be used to develop new products that appeal to new audiences.
- Expand your audience: Due to its scope, third party data gives you access to more people than first or second party data. This is why it is so useful when you are trying to expand your business or service offerings.
- Enhance your first party data: third party data will help provide context for your first party data, givingadditional insight into your first party data.
How do you get third party data?
You can source for and purchase third party data from data merchants and other data providers. There are several public data providers you can explore; a simple search engine query can help with finding them. These days, social media sites are particularly adept at providing data insights to help guide advertising placement and patronage on their sites.
Access to and the effective use of available data could be the determinant of business success or failure in the digital age. If desire to grow your business and take things to the next level and you haven’t started using data to guide those changes, its about time you looked into it.
I hope this article helps you achieve that and if it does, please drop a comment to support or contact us here.