Have you ever felt bombarded with irrelevant ads, untimely emails, intrusive phone calls, etc.? Well, we’re here to tell you that you are right. More traditional push marketing methods have led to so-called banner blindness, where consumers ignore any ad they perceive to be too aggressive. From that, a more subtle form of marketing emerged, known as behavioral marketing, which is aimed at gathering data on consumer behavior to segment and target audiences accordingly. Rather than studying audiences in bulk, it focuses on individual behavior patterns to better match the intent, interest, or needs of your target market.

This is why product-led growth companies, like FROGED, have proven to be so successful for small and medium enterprises related to Cybersecurity, FinTech, and eLearning. We’ll explain how product flows can be used as a guiding feature for users as well as a medium to gather behavioral data. For example, you can detect passive users or those that get stuck along the consumer journey so you can develop more accurate retargeting campaigns.

In this article, we’ll answer the following questions:

  • What is Behavioral Marketing?
  • Why is Behavioral Marketing important?
  • Examples of Behavioral Marketing
  • How can I use FROGED in my Behavioral Marketing strategy?

What is Behavioral Marketing?

Behavioral marketing is a strategy adopted by companies to target audiences based on observed behavior. This behavior is defined according to their interests, purchase intention, geolocation, as well as other web-based data collected through cookies or search history. This form of marketing is the best way to profile customers and provide them with a truly personalized experience.

Although the way you segment your customers depends on your business goals and target market, there are five general factors that you should always include in your segmentation.

Geolocation and device

Nowadays, we all make sure to have the GPS location activated on our phones, which makes sensitivity tracking truly accurate. Companies can easily access information on the country, region, state, and sometimes even the street the user is on. This has made local targeting possible and any user can benefit from getting the best bikini deals if they happen to be in the Maldives or the best places to eat pasta if you’re searching close to the Colosseum. To top it off, this can also help companies understand the device used to optimize content for mobile.

Occasion or timing

Behavioral marketing is also based on the occasion or timing that users will engage with a business. For example, Black Friday is a great occasion to target users’ FOMO (fear of missing out). A discount on a subscription plan or an online course will have more effect on Black Friday since we know that this particular deal has a shorter expiration date.

Consumer journey stage

If you’ve mapped your customer journey the right way, you’ll have better control over each customer journey stage. This helps you adapt the message depending on the stage the user is in or is expected to be in. This personalized experience is the best way to ensure there are conversion opportunities at every point of their journey and lets you know where users may get stuck, so you can focus your marketing efforts there.

Purchasing behavior

Any user who purchases your product or service is more likely to be interested in repeating a purchase. Purchasing behavior includes data on the number of purchases, the value of each purchase, the type of product purchased, and the time of purchase. Purchase behavior-based segmentation provides a detailed view of how your customers behave throughout the decision-making process.

Benefits sought

It’s one thing to define what your product benefits are, and it’s an entirely different thing for prospects or customers to decide why they use your product. User motivation and intent are gathered through the research stage in the journey. For example, most companies ask customers to fill out surveys or ask them to rate their satisfaction with a product based on specific features.

Why is Behavioral Marketing important?

As we mentioned before, no one likes to feel pushed into doing anything, even less being forced to pay for something that has little perceived value. Businesses can now use AI-based tools to collect consumer data in a less intrusive way. The result? A more comfortable and satisfactory experience for your prospects and lead. We can summarize the main benefits into the following:

  • Improve engagement. Since you can target audiences based on their behavior, the ads they are exposed to are genuinely relevant, which directly increases the chances that they’ll engage with that ad.
  • Increase conversions. If you’ve mapped your customer journey, then you’ll also know when and how they’ll act. As we mentioned before, behavioral marketing is more appealing and relevant to users, so users will either request further information, show purchase intent or move on to the loyalty stage.
  • Enhance customer experience. If we can agree on the fact that we usually enjoy browsing when we find relevant suggestions, then we can also agree on the fact that the browsing history is key in providing a quality customer experience. 
  • Better MRR. Think about it this way: if you can predict what a user’s next step will be, there are more chances you’ll successfully guide users into taking action. You can send an alert on upgrades or remind users about completing an action that they have abandoned.

Examples of Behavioral Marketing

Geolocation

Apart from helping people have healthier skin, Neutrogena is ahead of the game when it comes to behavioral segmentation strategies. For example, Neutrogena used segmentation according to the timing and geolocation to target users on a hot summer’s day. They used Facebook Ads to showcase their new sunscreen. In just a few months, they increased awareness by 63% and purchase intent by more than 40%. 

Consumer Journey Stage

Flows are a great feature offered by SaaS tools to gather behavioral data throughout the customer journey. For example, flows can give you insights into what users do in your app or platform. More importantly, you’ll be able to learn how or why they get stuck within the platform or what features are used the most. In essence flows can serve your onboarding, retention and customer support needs all based on user behavior.

How can I use FROGED in my Behavioral Marketing strategy?

FROGED incorporates various features to help you obtain behavioral data on timing, consumer journey stage, and benefits sought. For example, you can create a product flow to onboard users, test a new feature, or gather general feedback. This type of data can help you understand the consumer journey and target them according to the stage they’re in. 

Through FROGED, you can also segment users based on their unique behaviors within the platform. What’s great is our platform also offers the necessary tools to target specific behavior through triggered pop-ups, progress bars, or notifications on product offers and updates.

As privacy concerns arise and subscription-based platforms rely on AI technology to further enhance behavioral segmentation, one thing is clear, companies need to be transparent with their customers about data privacy and security.

To learn more about FROGED’s unique end-to-end encryption, read our section on securing customer success tools.