Build your audience using FareHarbor GA4 events

Building audiences in GA4 empowers you to move away from generic messaging and deliver targeted campaigns that resonate with specific user segments. This data-driven approach can significantly improve marketing ROI and customer engagement.

Creating audiences with FareHarbor events and user characteristics

Custom audiences are powerful for the following reasons:

• Targeted Outreach: GA4 audiences let you segment your website visitors into highly specific groups based on demographics, interests, behavior on your site (like purchases or abandoned carts), and even predict future behavior. This allows you to tailor your marketing messages to resonate with each group, vastly improving the effectiveness of your campaigns.
• Greater Relevance: Imagine showing discount ads only to people who viewed your product on your site, or sending re-engagement emails to users who haven’t visited in a while (Retargeting). Leveraging GA4 audiences, you can craft highly targeted marketing campaigns that drive increased engagement and conversions. While traditional retargeting using third-party cookies will be phased out by Q1 2025, Google is committed to providing alternative solutions by Q3 2024.
• Actionable Insights: GA4 audiences go beyond just building segments; they provide valuable insights into each audience’s behavior. You can see which segments are most profitable, which ones drop off during the booking funnel, and use this data to optimize your marketing strategy for each group.
• Predictive Power: A unique feature of GA4 audiences is the ability to include users predicted to take a certain action, like making a purchase. This allows you to target high-value users and optimize your campaigns for maximum return on investment. (Prerequisites for predictive audience tool, at least 1000 returning users who have triggered the relevant predictive condition such as purchase or churn within the last 28 days along with at least 1000 returning users who did not trigger that condition in the same timeframe).

To build a custom audience:

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account and navigate to the desired property.
2. In the left navigation bar, click on “Audiences.”
3. Click the blue Create audience button.
4. Select Custom audience from the available options.
5. Define Conditions: This is where you build the audience criteria.
   • To build an audience with the FareHarbor events: Click “Conditions” and choose “Event” from the dropdown menu.
     • Select the specific event you want to target (e.g., “add_to_cart” or “view_book_form).
     • To build an audience with demographic characteristics: Click “Add condition” and choose “User demographics.” Select the desired demographics like age, gender, or language.
     • To build an audience with geo characteristics: Click “Add condition” again and choose “Location.” Define the geographic location by country, region, city, or postal code.
6. Combine Conditions (Optional): You can choose how these conditions interact with each other:
   • “And”: Users must meet all criteria (e.g., triggered “add_to_cart” event, are 24-35 years old, and located in California).
   • “Or”: Users meet at least one criteria (e.g., triggered “add_to_cart” event OR are 24-35 years old OR located in California).
7. Give your audience a descriptive name and click Create audience to save it.

Note: GA4 already has the Purchasers audience built-in. Your custom audiences will be synced with Google Ads ready to use for your retargeting campaigns and lookalike audiences.