3 totally legit ways to get more (useful) first-party data

The headlines are everywhere.

"The death of the cookie is coming!" - Media mongers

"Google to depreciate 3rd party cookies! (lol, if they ever stop pushing it back)" - Everyone

"HOW WILL WE EVER TRACK ANYTHING EVER AGAIN OMG!" - Some marketing person somewhere

When you see these - you're left with 2 primal options.

Fight or flight.

er.

React or evolve (yeah, that's better).

You COULD, freak out about creating new tracking tech to circumvent the depreciation of the cookie and end up in front of your board looking like Charlie talking about how you're going to 'beat the man' and track those users anyway.

OR...

You could look into the future and ask yourself:

"What can I do right now that gives me a competitive advantage in my marketplace that has nothing to do with cookies?"

The answer: More first-party data.

What is first-party data and why do you care?

"First-party data is information a company collects directly from its customers and owns. First-party data (also known as 1P data) is part of the mosaic of data [that] marketers have at their disposal. It can complement, enhance, and reduce the need for other types of data."

1P data includes things such as:

• Name
• Email
• Phone

But the real leverage points come when you collect other data too, like:

• Indicators about future product need
• Likes/dislikes (read: testimonials & product feedback)
• Demographics
• Interests
• Motivators
• etc.

These 'extra' data points can help give you and your company invaluable insight into what your customers actually want (and more importantly, WHY they want it).

Not only can this information be extracted to write better website/ad copy, it can be modeled into the 'perfect customer'. The perfect customer who always matches XYZ criteria.

That subset of customers can be used to populate lists in ad and email platforms, create look a like audiences, and otherwise centralize sales' focus on.

Learn who the BEST of the BEST are, and model your marketing off of them, and only them.

So, 1P data is awesome, that's inarguable. But what if you don't have that much of it?

Well, here are...

3 totally legit ways to get more first-party data

1. Add (relevant and non-invasive) form fields - There's a good and bad way to do this. Good way: If you're a FinTech company only asking "first name, last name, email" on your forms, try adding things like "fiscal budget", or "biggest financial challenge", or "primary data source to integrate". Something that'll add extra context to your user, but is also relevant to your product. Bad way: Asking for name of children and social security numbers for no good reason.
2. Send customer surveys - Multiple times per year, send surveys to your customers asking new questions to learn more about them. The premise is the more you learn the better you can assist in their needs. Don't give them 20 questions all at once, but 4-5 questions, 2-3 times per year can make a big difference.
3. Update your sales scripts - Sometimes forms are too impersonal. Talk to your prospects regularly? Make sure your sales and account folks are asking a key set of questions and (more importantly) logging that information into designated and reportable fields in your CRM.