WiseBlog: Using Your Own Customer Lists in Paid Advertising

We are exposed every day to a huge amount of advertising across different channels. Most of it we decide to ignore – either consciously or unconsciously.

Using your own customer lists in paid advertising (e.g. Google Ads, LinkedIn, Facebook/Instagram) enables more precise targeting, which significantly improves the effectiveness of campaigns and helps you stand out from the noise.

A high-quality CRM makes it possible to collect your own customer list in many ways. We’ve previously written about how a customer list can be used, for example, for sales segmentation. In addition to that, it’s smart to take the use of your own data to the next level and combine it with paid advertising.

In practice, the customer list is exported from the CRM system, for example as an Excel file, and then uploaded into the paid advertising platform.

Before trying out uploading a customer list, it’s good to be aware of a few limitations. Especially for new companies and in B2B, the challenge may be the minimum size of the customer list, which depending on the campaign type is between 300–2000 customers. With fewer than that, campaigns simply won’t run, or the results won’t be optimal. Sometimes, it just takes a while for the customer list to fill up.

There may be other requirements as well. For example, Google Ads requires that a certain amount of money has been spent on ads in the account, and that the account is at least 90 days old.

If the requirements are met, using your own customer lists in paid advertising is a fantastic opportunity that shouldn’t be overlooked!
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The use of your own customer lists can mainly be divided into three categories:

1. Targeting specific contacts and companies directly

Meta Ads: You can upload a customer list to Facebook (Meta) and create Custom Audiences. After that, you can target ads directly to these people or create Lookalike Audiences (explained in more detail in section 2).

Google Ads: Google allows uploading customer data through the Customer Match feature. You can target ads, for example, on YouTube and Gmail.

LinkedIn: Among paid advertising platforms, LinkedIn allows you to target ads to specific companies, organizations, and their employees of your choice. Targeting is significantly more precise than on other platforms, but advertising is also more expensive, with cost-per-click rising to several euros.
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In paid advertising, the quality of CRM data is crucial for success. The more comprehensive the information, the better the platform can target the ad to the right audience. For companies, the minimum requirement is the company name, but more precise targeting is possible if the columns also include the company’s LinkedIn profile (LinkedIn only), website address, industry, and other similar details. In searches targeting individuals, in addition to the name, having their email, employer, and country or region can significantly improve the accuracy of the ad.
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2. Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike Audiences create an entirely new audience based on your existing customers. This method uses algorithms to find new potential customers who resemble your current ones. In this way, you can effectively expand your advertising target group and reach new people who are more likely to be interested in your products or services.

However, it’s not wise to leave everything entirely up to the algorithm — you should monitor and analyze whether the new audience is actually working or not.

3. Remarketing (or retargeting)

The idea of remarketing is to create an audience from people you either want to sell more to, or who visited your website but didn’t convert into paying customers. These could, for example, include those who subscribed to your newsletter.

Lists can also be used in reverse. As important as it is to reach the right audience, it’s even more important to know who you don’t want your ads to reach. Every company should exclude their current paying customers from advertising audiences, unless it’s about upselling or another campaign specifically targeted at existing customers. Why waste money on people who are already your customers?

Create a Positive Cycle

Paid advertising and CRM data feed into each other. Customers gained through paid advertising enrich the customer data in your CRM and make your customer lists even more precise. When you provide more relevant customer data to the paid advertising platform, your ads can be targeted even more effectively. In addition, through Lookalike Audiences you’ll discover new groups of people who may be interested in your product or service. The cycle is complete!

In Conclusion

Using your own customer lists in paid advertising is an effective way to improve campaign targeting and achieve better results. A good CRM system combined with the right strategy enables significant improvements in advertising performance. However, always remember to comply with legislation and ensure the proper handling of customer data. This way, you can make the most out of your customer lists and grow your business responsibly and effectively.
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Emmy Suoranta

Digital Marketing Manager
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