Behavioural Targeting: Personalise Offers & Earn Big

With 10,000 ads we see daily, breaking through digital noise becomes one of the biggest marketing hurdles. Unfortunately, you may not be able to overcome this challenge simply by creating useful and visible content – you also need something that helps you deliver this content at the right time to the right reader, viewer, or listener: behavioural targeting. 

Behavioural targeting enhances your digital advertising across the board, from personalisation to traffic generation to conversion rates. Every consumer gets what they need when they need it.

Read on to learn how behavioural targeting works and how you can implement it within your business model.

What Is Behavioural Targeting?

Behavioural targeting, a component of behavioural marketing, is the personalisation of user experiences across touchpoints based on their past interactions. For example, for prospects who recently visited a life insurance site, you can display life insurance ads on Google.

The cornerstone of behavioural marketing in general and behavioural targeting in particular is user tracking software, such as Phonexa’s HitMetrix. By capturing and visualizing user website interactions, HitMetrix makes it so much easier to deliver the right content to the right consumer.

Likewise, HitMetrix helps address UX pitfalls, such as suboptimal button placement or an excessively complex shopping cart, thereby simplifying clients’ journeys and elevating your lead-to-customer rates.

 

Book a demo to learn how Phonexa’s HitMetrix can help personalise your performance marketing strategies. 

Behavioural Targeting Benefits

More accurate customer profiles	You build your ideal customer profiles (ICPs) based on genuine interests, not just clicks. It allows you to define and target new audience segments with specific campaigns.
Increased relevance	Personalising your ads makes them more resonant and increases click-through rates (CTRs).
Drawing on seasonal activities	Behavioural insights reveal how users behave during holidays like Christmas and Halloween, enabling you to tailor your campaigns accordingly.
Behavioural retargeting	As you explore items left in shopping carts, you gain a better understanding of how to promote products that are just a few clicks away from being purchased.
Improved customer lifetime value	Behavioural marketing can impact purchase frequency, average order value, and customer retention, leading to repeat business.
ROI maximization	With behavioural personalisation, you rely on informed marketing strategies instead of “posting and praying,” increasing the return on every penny invested.

Behavioural Targeting in 4 Steps

1. Data Collection

First of all, collect your prospects’ behavioural data using

• Cookies: Files stored on users’ browsers to gather data across websites
• Tracking pixels: An invisible piece of code embedded in sites or emails to log user information
• Analytic platforms: Software that records page views, time on sites, and click paths
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: Databases with users’ past purchases and interactions

First and Third-Party Data

Third-party data is sourced from across the web and reveals how your prospects interact with other domains – their most frequent queries, the amount of time they spend in specific marketing channels, and more. Third-party data enables granular campaign adjustments by exposing customers’ interests and intents from top to bottom. 

Next, there’s website data you can collect and use:

1. Spot an issue: Leverage behavioural tracking software to identify friction points within your website
2. Develop a solution: Devise several fixes for your issue, such as two to three variations of button placements
3. Test results: Conduct A/B testing and measure the metrics of each variable to determine which performs best

 

2. Audience Segmentation

Once the data is collected, it’s time to put it into action and segment your audience into groups based on:

Category	Users who have
Browsing	Visited websites to acquire, for example, financial assistance or plumbing services
Purchase history	Bought specific products
Engagement level	Expressed interest in certain content or offers
Lifecycle stage	Abandoned shopping cart, bought repeatedly, or became new visitors

3. Shaping Offers

Each segment of your audience should receive a behaviour-based message through one of the following channels:

• Google Ads: Promote products or pages that users have expressed interest in
• Emails: Engage with your audience by addressing their interests and intents
• Website: Display relevant pages and offers and promote “recently viewed” products
• Social media: Leverage dynamic creative optimisation (DCO) to retarget users interested in specific offers through Facebook or Instagram ads.

Imagine you’re a company that operates different types of loans. With behavioural insights, you can discover prospects who search for student or business loans, which allows you to promote relevant services through Google Ads or email campaigns.

“You don’t have to have a huge audience to be successful – you just need to have an engaged audience.” – Jeannine Crooks, from Amplify Webinar

4. Campaign Optimisation

Once your campaign is live, start collecting feedback and adjust your strategies based on these insights. 

If you want more granular optimisation, explore Lynx reports, which record audience behavior so you can analyse clicks and conversions. With Lynx, you can quickly narrow it down to the best-performing demographic segments.

 

Take a product tour or book a demo to learn how Phonexa empowers behavioural targeting. 

Behavioural vs. Contextual Targeting

Contextual targeting is another effective personalisation tool that focuses on the page’s context rather than the user’s past actions. Although it’s not as comprehensive as behavioural targeting, it’s cheap, while its effectiveness depends on the content of your page and the complexity of your marketing strategy. 

Here’s how it differs from behavioural targeting:

Feature	Behavioural targeting	Contextual targeting
Focus	User’s past behaviour	The context of the current page
Relevance	Based on long-term interests and genuine intent	Based on immediate interests
Drawbacks	Privacy concerns and reliance on cookies	Less effective personalisation and results

Established businesses can pair strategies by promoting cheaper items through contextual ads, while behavioural ads handle more considerable purchases.

Challenges of Behavioural Targeting

Over-Targeting

Here’s the thing about behavioural marketing – whenever it’s overused, it starts repelling customers rather than generating them.

Source: SmartyAds

It’s crucial to find an advertising balance and avoid invasive types of personalisation. However, if walking the line is your style, be sure to track the consequences so that you don’t harm your business.

Lack of Comprehensive Data

Customer journeys are complex, and it might not always be easy to track them from top to bottom. As a result, you might not factor in all switches and experiences.

Example: A user conducts product research on a PC, then proceeds with more in-depth queries, such as reviews of specific offers, on a phone. Since you don’t have a full search history, you build targeting based on PC activity, which may be suboptimal.

You may also receive inaccurate behavioural data due to missclicks, which, for instance, occur when a person pockets a turned-on phone and makes numerous accidental taps. On the bright side, missclicks can be revealed with software like HitMetrix due to their frantic nature.

Privacy Regulations

As Google moves towards discontinuing third-party cookies, an increasing number of marketers are concerned about their campaigns, particularly those based on consumer behavior.

And while the phasing out of cookies is still a distant prospect, you have other matters to consider, such as obtaining permission for behavioural data collection following the GDPR.

There’s also a CCPA, which applies to companies operating in the US. With its “opt-out” model, you should prepare for users to stop sharing their behavioural data at any moment.

Elevate Your Performance Marketing With Phonexa’s All-in-One Software Suite

While HitMetrix pushes the boundaries of personalisation, your business has other areas for improvement. Leave them to Phonexa’s all-in-one software suite – a multifaceted solution that enhances businesses across the board:

• E-delivery: Segment your email recipients by behaviour, split test templates, and address deliverability concerns in real time
• Cloud PBX & Call Logic: Measure your agents’ productivity through scores, set up interactive voice response, and eliminate pitfalls in your callers’ journeys
• LMS Sync: Analyse your leads to adjust campaigns and create custom-set configurations to distribute leads as you desire.

 

Get Phonexa’s all-in-one performance marketing software suite at a single price:

Build your plan, or book a demo to learn more about Phonexa.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is behavioural data?

Behavioural data is information about a user’s past online actions gathered by tracking tools. The time users spend on websites, products in their shopping carts, and frequently visited pages are all examples of behavioural data.

What’s the difference between third-party and website behavioural data?

Third-party behavioural data is gathered across the entire user’s web activity, enabling granular ad personalisation. Website data, in turn, contains users’ digital behaviour within your domain, making it suitable for CRO.

Can you build ICP with behavioural targeting?

You can use behaviour targeting to understand how different consumers react to specific marketing scenarios. Then you can analyze the best-performing groups and build your ICPs.