How to Use GA4 Audiences to Reel in High-Value Customers

Tired of spraying your marketing budget across the web and praying for results? Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Audiences are your precision-guided missile. In three sentences: GA4 lets you build hyper-specific user segments—like "Cart Abandoners from Texas on Mobile"—based on their real-time behavior. These powerful lists automatically sync to your ad platforms (Google Ads, etc.), allowing you to craft campaigns so targeted they feel like a direct conversation. This is how you stop wasting spend and start maximizing your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

Three Essential Audience Builds

Here are three powerful, non-abandonment-focused audiences you can create in GA4, along with their marketing applications.

1. The High-Value Engaged Prospect

This audience targets potential customers who are serious about buying but haven't pulled the trigger yet. They've spent a lot of time researching but haven't converted.

GA4 Audience: Prospects_High_Time_No_Purchase
Goal: Identify highly interested users ready to convert.
Inclusion Condition: User includes Event page_view AND has a Session Duration metric $\mathbf{>} \mathbf{90^{th}}$ percentile (e.g., 5 minutes).
Exclusion Condition: User permanently excludes Event purchase (or generate_lead for B2B).
Marketing Use: Target these users with highly persuasive ads focused on social proof (customer reviews, testimonials) or a first-time buyer discount code to overcome the final hurdle.

2. The Potential Churn Risk (Loyalty Savior)

This audience is critical for subscription or recurring purchase models. It targets existing, previously high-value customers who are showing signs of disengagement.

GA4 Audience: Customers_High_LTV_Dormant_30Days
Goal: Prevent valuable customers from leaving (reduce churn).
Inclusion Condition: User includes Event purchase $\mathbf{>} \mathbf{2}$ times AND User has a Lifetime Value (LTV) metric $\mathbf{>} \mathbf{\$100}$ (or your average LTV).
Exclusion Condition: User permanently excludes Event session_start in the last 30 days.
Marketing Use: Target this audience with a "We Miss You" campaign, offering exclusive early access to a new product, a highly valuable piece of content, or a specialized retention discount to drive a re-engagement session.

3. The New Customer Seed List

This audience is the fuel for your prospecting efforts. It identifies users who just converted and have proven their value, making them the perfect template for finding new customers.

GA4 Audience: New_High_Intent_Purchasers_7Days
Goal: Create a high-quality seed list for Lookalike modeling in Google Ads.
Inclusion Condition: User includes Event purchase AND the purchase event includes a custom parameter $\mathbf{`transaction\_value`} \mathbf{>}$ (a high-value threshold, e.g., $75).
Exclusion Condition: None needed, as we want to find new people like them.
Marketing Use: Push this audience to Google Ads, and tell the system to Find New Users Like This Audience (Optimized Targeting/Lookalike). This is your most efficient way to scale customer acquisition with confidence.

Using Audiences in Digital Marketing Platforms

The true magic happens when your GA4 audience hits your ad platform.

1. Google Ads (The Primary Destination)

• Remarketing Campaigns: Apply your Prospects_High_Time_No_Purchase audience directly to a Display or YouTube campaign to show highly personalized ads.

• Bid Adjustments: For your New_High_Intent_Purchasers_7Days audience, you can create a campaign that bids higher for users who belong to the Lookalike audience derived from this list, because you know they are statistically more likely to convert and spend more.

• Exclusion Lists: Apply your general All Purchasers audience as an exclusion list to all of your standard Acquisition Campaigns. This ensures you never waste money showing "Sign Up Now" ads to people who already bought your product.

2. GA4 Reports (For Internal Analysis)

• You can use any of these audiences as a Comparison filter in your standard GA4 reports (e.g., Engagement, Monetization).

• Example: Compare the Customers_High_LTV_Dormant_30Days against the All Users default to see if their drop-off is unique to a certain device, country, or traffic source. This informs why they are dormant.

By mastering these varied audience types, you shift from simply reacting to user actions (like abandonment) to proactively driving the customer journey (like nurturing loyalty and efficient acquisition).