Behavioral Retargeting: What’s to Know
Marketing | 23 May 2012
For many years, marketing professionals have been focusing a lot of time and energy on how to up-sell consumers. Not only do they want to sell more to the same consumer the first time around, but they want them to come back time and time again. Easy enough, right?
Well, there is another way to think about things: behavioral retargeting. This approach is all about getting consumers who did not buy the first time to make a purchase or complete an action in the future.
While there are many ways to approach behavioral retargeting, the main idea is relatively simple. The consumer visited your website in the first place because they are interested in a product, service, or some sort of information. By collecting data related to the visit, it is easier to sell to this person in the future as well as others.
What are my Options?
As noted above, behavioral retargeting is not a “one size fits all” solution. This is something you need to experiment with to ensure that you are collecting the proper data, and more importantly, using it to your advantage in the future.
- Retargeting based on the aspects of the prior visit
- Past visits combined with other analytical data
- A focus on the keywords that brought the visitor to the site
What to Look for
With the proper traffic tracking program in place – such as Google Analytics – you are able to learn a lot about visitors including but not limited to: how they arrived on the site, the pages viewed, how long they stayed on the site, and which page they exited from.
As a webmaster, you can use this information to retarget these users the next time around. When they return to the same site or one in a network using the same browser, the “profiles” created can be used to promote targeted ads or other information.
Ever wonder why Google AdSense ads often times match what you were recently searching for? Bingo – it is all about behavioral retargeting. They figure that if you were searching for something on their search engine that you are more likely to click on an advertisement related to that subject.
Consumer Opt Out
It is important to note the privacy concerns associated with behavioral retargeting. When done without the knowledge of your users, it can be considered illegal due to data protection, consumer protection, and privacy laws.
If you are going to get involved with behavioral retargeting, on your own or through the use of a third party provider, it is essential that you disclose your data collection methods. Along with this, some providers, including advertising networks, provide their own opt-out abilities.
Get Help
For those interested in behavioral retargeting but have no clue on where to start, feel free to contact us today. Of course, you can also rely on some of the many tools that are currently available including:
- Google Website Optimizer
- Eloqua
- WebTrends
- AdRoll
- Fetchback
With the right plan and some basic knowledge of behavioral retargeting, you may be able to use this technique to better target your audience and hopefully improve sales and profits.
No related posts.
