This is the summary of an article by Amanda Meuwissen. It talks about behavioral targeting as the heart of marketing success. As the Harvard Business Review puts it, “..targeting individuals with perfectly customized offers at the right moment across the right channel is marketing’s holy grail.” Here’s the link to the original behavioral targeting article: Behavioral Targeting.
A successful business involves satisfied customers who are willing to pay for a great product or service. But exactly who are these people and what do they need? These are basic questions that any enterprising group or individual must know. However, with the constant and rapid pace of online technology, some old-fashioned myths about marketing must first be broken.
A Marketing Myth
Perhaps the most persistent myth about marketing is the “one size fits all” concept. For example, the typical notion of a 32-year-old woman is that of a wife and mother, with two children, and fits into the middle-income category. Given this description, any kind of promotion that aims to target women of this age should bear these traits in mind, right?
Wrong. In reality, a 32-year-old woman could also be single and a highly-paid individual. On the other hand, she could also be a single parent who is struggling to provide for her kids. What’s more, each of these women would definitely have different shopping habits. How often they shop, how much they spend, and which products they buy may be worlds apart from one another! Hence, the solution would be to know their individual preferences and needs. This may seem improbable, but not at all impossible.
How Behavioral Targeting Works
Learning about an individual’s purchasing habits may be determined through behavioral targeting. Simply put, this involves tracing the activities of an online user, namely the specific Web pages that he or she decides to view, the links and elements that are clicked on, and other related movement or information. Through the use of analytical software and other strategies, a profile of the user is made; this, in turn, would be very useful to a business owner or marketer.
Of course, before engaging in behavioral targeting, one must begin by defining his or her business goals and objectives. Once customer information has been collected, the data can then be used for product development or improvement, and eventually in the creation of enticing offers that can be sent to their potential customers.
Making the Best Offers
The information that can be acquired through behavioral targeting can help an entrepreneur make the best offers to his or her prospective customers. As mentioned previously, it helps one to know individual preferences and shopping practices. It can help match a particular user with the specific product or service that he or she would want. It can help determine the best possible way to reach a consumer, whether through email, direct mail, text messaging, or any other means.
As the old adage puts it, knowledge is still the best thing that anybody could have. And for those in the trading, retailing, or marketing business, behavioral targeting is a way of tapping into this knowledge.
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