Behavioral Marketing - What Is It And When To Use It?

Our online behavior and the way we browse pages can be of great importance to marketers. Behavioral Marketing is a way of drawing internet users' attention to specific parts of your website.

Behavioral marketing or behavioral targeting is directing the internet user's attention to specific content based on their previous behavior. This technique is extremely effective when we want to match our message to the potential recipient as much as possible.

What is behavioral marketing?

Behavioral targeting encompasses a range of techniques and technologies used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the usefulness of advertising to the internet user. This happens on the basis of previously stored information from browsing websites by the Internet user. Behavioral targeting in a special way uses the information collected while browsing websites and portals and assigns it to the behavior of a given individual, displaying appropriately selected advertisements on their basis.

Each time a user visits the website, searches for information, spends a lot of time on the website, this data is saved and allows for the creation of a behavior pattern. It is also possible to create a profile of such a person based on the information searched for and the number of clicks. This profile is associated with the user's search engine. Based on the stored information, the advertiser may use segmentation and group customers in such a way that their advertisements reach only those of them who may be most interested in the services or products they offer.

When a user decides to visit a given page again, obviously using the same search engine, this gives ad publishers the opportunity to use user profiles to share ads with those who seem to be most interested in the products and want the goods to be offered to them. In theory, proper ad targeting determines whether publishing it will bring the desired result, far exceeding the results that could be obtained by accidentally displaying ads, based only on the context of the page on which it is located.

Behavioral Marketing - When To Use?

Behavioral targeting can be used alone, but also in combination with other forms of targeting, taking into account such factors as: geographic location, demography, location of the contextual content of the page. These activities are related to the desire to direct the internet user in such a way that he can only see advertisements on the screen that are likely to interest him. On the other hand, the assumption of people who introduce advertising based on behavioral marketing is the optimal selection of content in such a way as to arouse a need in the recipient.

The goal of behavioral targeting is also to surprise the internet user. Very often, in advertising design, the so-called surprise effect is used, which can attract the recipient's attention in a much easier way.

It is also worth remembering that behavioral ads are rated as more effective than those traditionally displayed on websites. This was confirmed by an eyetracking experiment that investigated the way in which the attention of the viewer is attracted. Two situations have been taken into account. Firstly, presenting advertising in a traditional way on a website and in a context relevant to the product or service. Secondly, the ads were presented based on an unexpected context, i.e. in accordance with the principles of behavioral marketing. As it turned out, advertisements published on the basis of behavioral marketing had a greater effect (by 17%) compared to those published as part of traditional publication, based on the context. Based on the research with the use of eyetracking, it was also found that ads tailored in terms of the behavior and interests of Internet users attracted the attention of recipients much more than contextual ads.

Behavioral Marketing - How To Get Started?

As we already know, behavioral marketing is designed to match the displayed advertisements to the interests of recipients based on previously collected data on their behavior. Behavioral targeting techniques can be used in almost every case, provided that you take into account the possibility of improving the comfort of website visitors, which is reflected in conversion rates.

Usually, this starts with looking at web analytics and behavioral analytics to find common characteristics in user information across all channels. Each of them is carefully checked and this is where a kind of virtual profile is created for it. Having it is actually the starting point for a campaign designer, as it allows you to decide on the content, how to navigate the ads and how the ad should look.

In practice, the display of advertisements compatible with behavioral targeting takes place through platforms specially designed for this purpose. With their help, you can group website visitors based on the cookie ID assigned to them, which allows you to track their behavior on the website. The platform decides what kind of content should be displayed for each audience.

Please note that information about your user behavior may be linked to demographic information or information that matches a person's purchase history. This gives the ad publisher more opportunities to deliver the ad to the recipient of the ad with the exact content that will have the greatest effect on that particular person.

In addition to using data from recording Internet users' behavior in publishing personalized advertisements, behavioral marketing has another application. It is the possibility of using the collected data to build a kind of multimedia advisor who would automatically help the user of the website, for example an online store, make the right decision. Depending on the technology used, such an advisor could send previously prepared pages and thus assist clients.