This article will give you a run down of behavioral marketing, how it works, a few examples, and most importantly, the benefits to be reaped from implementing a behavioral marketing strategy. Enjoy.
Table of contents:
- What is behavioral marketing?
- Examples of behavioral marketing (B2B & B2C)
- How does behavioral segmentation work? (Advantages & disadvantages)
- Why implement a behavioral marketing strategy?
What is behavioral marketing?
Behavioral Marketing – sometimes coined as behavior targeting – is, in a nutshell, offering targeted content like ads, rewards, messages, emails, even the product itself (think Netflix), based purely on the user’s behavioral profile, and the actions they carry out.
Sounds simple, right? Let’s see it in action
Examples of behavioral marketing
B2C
Companies like Amazon, use behavioral marketing segmentation to create personalized product recommendations for their users based on searches, or what similar users in a behavioral segment purchased to increase revenue opportunities. Think of it this way, ‘User’s who also bought an overnight bag, bought a toiletry bag.’ This type of segmentation also ties in nicely with using social proof in your strategy. But more on that later.
B2B
In B2B, we see Saas businesses like Dribble, use behavioral marketing segmentation to create user onboarding flows, for users who aren’t using their software yet. In this instance, Dribble is using behavioral marketing strategies to increase engagement based on searches, or previous purchases.
Whilst these are just two very specific examples, there are many ways to incorporate behavioral marketing into your digital marketing, product marketing, and customer success strategies.
So how do you know which content to display, when to do it and to what user to target?
This is where behavioral segmentation comes in.
How does behavioral segmentation work?
Behavioral segmentation means grouping users together based on, well, behavioral information as opposed to classic demographic segmentation. It’s kind of logical since having the same age, gender, income, location, etc, doesn’t mean your customers act the same way when it comes to purchasing your product or service.
Instead, companies need to look at the way a user travels online, pages they have visited, what they’re spending their money on, and the resources they use. Rather than focusing on who they are, we are looking at their wants, needs and actions.
Advantages of behavioral segmentation
- When you target the right users, with the right content, at the right time, you are more efficient with your resources and your budget expenditures.
- You can create hyper-personalized content,that is more engaging based on how the customer interacts with your product
- You can suddenly be proactive because you can analyze user behavior – such as analyzing lagtimes in usage to prevent churn
Disadvantages of behavioral segmentation
- It constantly changes because user behavior is subject to many influences.
- It’s qualitative, and therefore makes it trickier to define and measure but, tools like GA4, can also help you focus more on the behavior of a group of users vs. individuals
- It is about the details – not just the where they are interacting with your product, but also the how and why they are interacting with your it
Now you’ve had the chance to understand the basics of what behavioral marketing is, and what it consists of, we’re going to tackle the million dollar question: Why do it?
Why implement a behavioral marketing strategy?
We’ll keep it short and sweet: Product success, and therefore customer success = growth.
It might sound vague so let’s break it down:
Successful customer onboarding
This can be interpreted as actual customer onboarding (think helpful videos, emails and tool tips, recommendations, etc), but ultimately we mean guiding the user to buy your product or service.
Retention & loyalty
Once a user has made a purchase, you want them to come back, buy more, and spend time using your product. The more a customer interacts with your product, the more they rely on it, and the more likely they are to become product champions. And champions, refer their colleagues and friends – which equates to…
High customer satisfaction
This one is fairly self explanatory, but happy customers bring many benefits to your business; guaranteed MRR and less stress on your customer support team. And when you create really happy customers, you can begin to engage them in different, mutually beneficial ways that show you have an invested interest in their success.
Which when you add it all together, and do it multiple times, equals growth for you both.
Now you understand the basics of behavioral marketing and segmentation, it’s time for you to start working on a strategy.
Thanks for reading.
