Behavioral Targeting in Digital Marketing: Making Things Personal

Flexible users are looking for personalization, and today, it is not just an additional benefit; they need it. If you are still simply marketing your customers by age, sex, and where they live, then you are not fully utilizing your marketing opportunities.

What we are seeing is the steps towards a modern behavior-driven marketing strategy that understands how users behave, how they purchase, and how they are engaging with a brand to create high-converting experiences.

As a digital marketing agency adjusting to a world where marketers are communicating with modern consumers every day, take this opportunity to leap from traditional customer segmentation strategies to what is possible with a behavior-based targeting audience.

Behavior-based targeting is a method of segmenting people based on their behavior on the web (which links are they engaging with, how often do they revisit the site, what they abandon in a cart, what they are purchasing, how they are navigating their way around a site, and more).

Let's remove how deeper segmentation means deeper targeting, and how brands might use it to engage with their audience in a richer and meaningful way.

Behavioral Targeting in Digital Marketing: The New Frontier of Personalization

Demographic targeting gives you a starting point, but that is only the beginning and just scratches the surface of what you can gather. Just because two people are the same age and socioeconomic status doesn't mean they will act the same way online.

Behavioral targeting, part of digital marketing, uses actual behaviors instead of inferred interests. This is classified as:

• Demographic targeting: categorizes an audience based on age, gender, income, and location.

• Behavioral targeting: categorizes an audience based on purchase history, browsing behaviors, frequency, interaction, and engagement, and operational/engagement history with content.

So, demographics will tell you enough about who the customer is, but behaviors will provide what they are actually doing, and that is significant and more actionable in terms of conversions.

Key Types of Behavioral Segmentation

• Purchasing behavior

Frequency, value, timing, repeat, versus first-time

• Browsing behavior

Pages viewed, categories viewed, time on page

• Engagement behavior

Email opens, clicks through social, ad interactions

• Usage behavior

Features used in the app, media usage, and timing of sessions

All this data gives marketers a view across nine distinct marketing segments, typically grounded on real need and current habits of their audience.

Crafting Personalized Marketing Strategies with Behavior-Driven Data

Once you have gathered the behavioral data, it's time to execute an approach. A convenient personalized marketing approach takes advantage of real-time engagements to change messages, offers, and even recommendations on what a customer should buy.

Example:

A customer visits your shoe sections frequently but has not gone through with the purchase. A behavior-based message email with a limited offer on shoes, or a listing of top shoes trending, may convert this customer.

Benefits of Behavioral Targeting for Brands

• Improved engagement: Messaging is closely correlated with real interest and actual behavior

• Higher conversion rates: Relevant offers based on user behavior and context increase purchase likelihood

• Increased retention: If users feel understood, they are more likely to engage with content repeatedly

• More efficient spend: Ads target users who are already active and interested, rather than a passive, uninterested audience.

Implementing Customer Segmentation Strategies with Behavioral Focus

Behavioral data can feel complex and unwieldy initially, but the idea is to find the most actionable behavior encouraging conversion and work backward. Here's a way to get started:

Step 1: Be Specific with Your Goals

What are you trying to achieve? Better engagement, more sales, retention?

Step 2: Identify Intentional Behaviors

Identify intentional behaviors, and track 'product page revisits' or 'frequently visits again post adding to cart and/or adding to cart compared to the initial visit'

Step 3: Create Segmentation from Behaviors

Now apply user segments based on intentional behaviors: Frequent Visitors, Engaged but not Active, First-time buyer, among others

Step 4: Personalization of offers and content

You can send emails, show ads, and personalize web content based on the segments you developed earlier.

Step 5: Optimize and Refine

Monitor what works or what doesn't, and refine a marketing segmentation-driven data-based approach; you can gradually make informed data-driven decisions.

Key Metrics to Track Behavioral Segmentation Success

• Click-through rates (CTR) of personalized emails

• Conversion rate by behavioral segment

• Bounce rate by user type

• Repeat visit frequency

• Time-to-conversion improvements

Conclusion: The Shift Toward Smarter Marketing with Behavioral Segmentation

Knowing your customer has always been important. But now knowing your customer, unequivocally, means much more than knowing their demographic information, such as age or income.

It's about knowing their intent, motivations, and preferences; you need to know it through their behaviours. The smartest companies are using behaviour targeting in digital marketing, not to deliver products and services based on what they believe their customers want, but by using intentional choices based on behaviour to create relationships (understandably within the boundaries of privacy protections).

For that reason, any emerging digital marketing agency should be considering advanced customer segmentation and applying behavioural insights in marketing practice.

With behavioral targeting, it is about "how can I leverage an integrated and combined approach?" You can begin with demographics, but behaviour will allow you to delve deeper into the audience around you. The perspective and insight provided by that experience represent genuine personalized marketing strategies that support the targeted marketing campaigns and therefore a real return on investment.

Are you ready to shift your strategy from assumption to action? Behavioral targeting is the new battleground, starting with behavior targeting with demographics are where the winners are made.