According to Harvard Business Review - acquiring a new customer is at least 5 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. It makes sense: you don’t have to spend time and resources trying to lure a new client. Regardless of the advertising strategy a significant part of every marketing budget goes into convincing people who never bought before to actually buy.
If you're working with Google Ads, you know how difficult it is to optimize acquisition campaigns exclusively around newly acquired customers - simply because there is no native way to identify the new buyers and separate them from the repeat ones. Achieving this precision has always been a challenge - trying to differentiate first-time purchasers from loyal, repeat buyers is not something Google Ads offers out-of-the-box.
However, using the Littledata integration with Google Analytics 4 (GA4), enables you to isolate first-time purchasers and use this data to refine your Google Ads acquisition campaigns.
In customer acquisition campaigns, focusing on first-time purchasers ensures you're optimizing for growth by attracting new customers. However, when it comes to tracking conversions - Google Ads lack a native mechanism to distinguish between first-time and repeat buyers. This is where this workaround leveraging GA4’s event and audience features, alongside Littledata proprietary user parameter called purchase_count can make all the difference.
Littledata’s customer-centric data model enriches GA4 events with Shopify user parameters. One of them is the purchase_count, which tracks how many times a specific user has made a purchase. This parameter is your gateway to identifying first-time purchasers.
The challenge? GA4 doesn't automatically label users based on their purchase count. Instead, we’ll use a custom audience and events in GA4 to isolate and track those elusive first-time buyers.
Begin with creating a Custom Audience in GA4 - navigate to the Audiences section in GA4 and click on New audience button:
Select “Add sequence” to ensure only specific user behaviors are included:
Step 1: Define conditions for first-time purchasers by setting the parameter purchase_count to exactly 0 or not set. This ensures you’re capturing users who haven’t bought before.
Step 2: Add an additional condition limiting the audience to users who purchased, i.e triggered the purchase event. Step 3: Exclude users whose purchase_count exceeds 1 at any point. This ensures repeat buyers are filtered out. Step 4: Make sure that First-Time Purchase Event is being logged:
Once the audience is defined, use GA4’s feature called “Audience trigger” to create a custom event. This event will trigger each time a user pops into the First-time purchaser audience. Name the event something clear, like first_purchase.
Step 5: Mark the first_purchase event as a Key Event in GA4: Give GA4 a few days to log a couple of first_purchase events, then go to the Events section in GA4, locate the first_purchase event and toggle it as a key event. This step ensures the event becomes trackable in Google Ads. NB: the first_purchase event will NOT be available/visible in the GA4 events list or report for a few days after creation!
Step 6: Import the Event into Google Ads - follow these steps in your Google Ads account:
By leveraging the purchase_count parameter, you create a highly targeted conversion event for first-time purchasers. This specificity allows Google Ads to focus on attracting new customers who fit your ideal customer profile (ICP), ensuring acquisition campaigns are laser-focused on growth.
With this Littledata + GA4 workaround, you're doubling down on your accurate purchase-tracking while empowering your Google Ads campaigns with precise first-time purchaser data. This small tweak can significantly enhance your ability to optimize customer acquisition, driving meaningful growth for your business.
Happy customer acquisition!