What is Behavioral marketing?

Tea Slatkovic
Digital Reflections
4 min readJan 13, 2023
Photo by Tachina Lee on Unsplash

Behavioural marketing is a method by which companies target audiences based on their behaviour, interests, intentions, geolocation and other metrics using web analytics, cookies, search history and other insights. By finely segmenting audiences based on a specific behaviour or definite user profiles, organizations can provide truly relevant content and offers rather than send a general message to their audience.

As marketing automation and machine learning technologies continue to improve, the company can use its incredible database to predict consumer behaviour months in advance. However, data collection is a complex and subtle question, and as listener listening tools become more advanced, online privacy becomes more important.

Consumer data can be used strategically to determine audience preferences and provide relevant coverage. Companies can collect consumer data to create a truly more enjoyable experience for potential customers rather than a more intrusive experience.

The blindness label — consumers’ tendency to ignore ads they find too aggressive — is mitigated by marketing behaviour, as consumers will only process what they’re interested in based on their previous search methods. In terms of removing blindness, retaining messages and content aimed at individuals rather than channels or products is the most effective marketing automation strategy. If the data is collected properly and responsibly used, it may be processed as needed.

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Why is behavioral marketing important?

There are several reasons to pay close attention to user behavior in your marketing operations:

  • Allows you to better customize your advertising. Google Ads and Facebook ads are designed to help you promote your brand and its products and services. These tech giants collect a large amount of personal and behavioral data so that you can better tailor ads to audiences interested in your offerings.
  • This can help you attract more potential customers. Behavioral data allows you to understand where users are on the customer’s path, their preferences, and interests. Armed with these insights, you can find and attract potential buyers who might buy from your company. It will also spend less energy and investment.
  • This can help you increase sales. Behavioral marketing allows you to show products to interested audiences as needed. If your sales team uses user behavior patterns, you can work more accurately and achieve better results.
  • It can help you build a better relationship with your audience. Behavioral marketing involves more than just sales and advertising. Technology also allows you to provide more relevant content to your audience. User behavior tells you who your customers are, so you can use it to give people what they need most.
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How does it work?

Phase 1: Data Collection and Analysis

Data that is used for behavioral marketing can come from various channels, including:

  • social media;
  • search engines;
  • websites;
  • mobile applications;
  • emails;
  • chatbots.

Today, social media platforms, major online retailers, email services and mobile apps collect behavioral data from users. Therefore, companies can use this data to provide more relevant content and offer more targeted content without spending time and money to collect behavioral data.

Phase 2: Audience Segmentation

This is a way of dividing people into groups of people with common demographics and behavior patterns. If there are no audience segments, you can only send the same message to the entire audience.

For some channels, such as Facebook ads, this process is semi-automatic. In other words, you just need to choose the audience you want to show your ads to. Pick up a user’s interest or behavior and the algorithm will automatically segment your target audience.

Google Analytics may collect information about users of your website, how much time they spend on the Internet, and what queries they use. Using this information, they can target their display ads very accurately and target them again.

You can easily share them based on the number of subscribers participating in your email marketing campaigns. You can specifically send emails to users who have never purchased from your brand or who have purchased products in the last month and deliver different messages to that audience.

Phase 3: Applying the Data

In the last phase, you need to create ads, emails, or other messages based on the insights you’ve gained about your audience.

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Tips to improve your behavioral marketing strategy:

  • Explain how you use people’s data
  • Ask users for data
  • Analyze the results and test new tactics
  • Don’t overdo with segmentation

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