Behavioral targeting has been in the media of late for all the wrong reasons. It has caused privacy advocates worldwide to raise red flags. But for the moment, none of the governments in the world has banned behavioral targeting. As a result, there is a lot of opportunity for you as an online retailer to benefit from this. This article will provide the small online retailer on how to have this big tool in their arsenal and benefit immensely from it.
What Is Behavioral Targeting?
With the advances in Internet technology, it has become possible to track the exact behavior of a user on the web. Tracking their behavior is almost like being their shadow. Whatever they look out for, you know. So what you can you do with this information? A lot. To begin with, you can find out the relevant products and services that they might be interested in and sell them the same.
The whole emphasis is on making your efforts more concentrated and more acute. Focus is the mother of all success.
How Does Behavioral Targeting Work?
Behavioral targeting basically works through cookies on your browser. Each time you go to a website, they send cookies to your browser. These cookies then keep a log of the websites you have visited and try to develop an approximate personality. More often than not, these personalities are shockingly accurate and thus sales are expedited.
For instance, if they see three logs one of a football site, one from the site of gadgets and accessories and another one from a car manufacturers website, they reasonably assume that it is a boy within the age group of 20 to 30. Then based on even closer tracking of your behavior, they reach a conclusion with regards to what the products are that you are most likely to buy.
Behavioral targeting has been extensively used by social networking websites, publishers and advertisers. It has also been used by companies such as eBay and Amazon, which is why you see your username logged in, even if you have not even signed in. They know the computer that you generally log in from and they assume that its you.
How Can Online Retailers Benefit From Behavioral Targeting?
The question should actually be in the negative. How can online retailers not benefit from behavioral targeting? Of course, there will be numerous benefits. If you shadow each of your customers, observe their behavior and come up with a reasonable guess of what they wanted, would not your sales just go through the roof? But since so many retailers ask this, lets try and enumerate some of the benefits. This list mentions only some benefits that readily comes to ones mind and is by no means exhaustive:
Direct Selling: the first and most obvious benefit that behavioral targeting provides is that it can help increase sales manifold. Since you know exactly who is looking for what product, it then becomes childs play to find the best deal and give it to them.
If you study the Japanese concept of "lean management," you will find out that approximately 60 percent of all costs that you incur do not provide any value to the customer. Rather, they are they cost of the so-called "necessary evils" like inventories, inaccurate forecasts, etc. With behavioral targeting, once you remove these costs, you will have a much leaner organization and you will be in a position to provide much better prices than your competitors can. You will be leaner, meaner and more competitive than your peers.
Most organizations that have become highly successful over the Internet have used behavioral targeting over the web. Just go to the cookies in your browser and you will find the proof.
CRM: We all know the benefits CRM can provide the concept of customer lifetime value and how customers should be the focus. We must concentrate on needs as demands from products come and go and without the relevant basis; it seems to be quite erratic. But think about the inputs behavioral targeting can provide for your CRM. If you have a look at the log of what they buy online and from where, can not you just source a better deal for your customers and let them buy from you, increasing both your present sales and forthcoming ones? Studies have shown that behavioral targeting provides the best input for one to one marketing.
Branding: This is what the original reason for the evolution of behavioral targeting was. The story began with frustrated advertisers, publishers and consumers. Advertisers were not getting enough conversions, the rates for ads were dropping and customers were tired of the unnecessary chaos ads had created in their surfing experience. But then behavioral targeting came along as a win-win situation. Advertisers would get a focused audience, who would be more likely to make a purchase.
So you can basically find out what are the webpages on which your target spends maximum time and goes with maximum frequency. The idea is to advertise on those pages and constantly expose them to your communication. This way, as and when the need arises, they will most likely choose you because you will be the first one standing in front of them, no matter where they are over the Internet.
Tracking competition: This is one of the very lesser known benefits of behavioral targeting. As an online retailer, you can find out the customers who did not make the purchase. Then you can check whether they made the purchase at all and if so from where. This reveals a lot about the competition and their strategies. Particularly over the Internet, the competition is virtually unlimited and you cannot keep a track of all your competitors. All you need to do is to keep a close look at your customers and they will take you to the competitor. Then using this knowledge you must quickly come up with an unbeatable offer and drive the customers back to purchase from you. It is the most important tool that you will need to track the competition and to stay ahead of them.
E-mail marketing: Have you ever wondered why the Internet screams that e-mail marketing has the highest ROI, but for you there is no return at all. A large number of small businesses that use e-mail marketing do not know how to do it. They simply create a list and then shoot uniform mails to everybody. On the other hand, the big corporations keep track of who opens the mail, who clicks the link, who buys or subscribes and so on. Once such information has been captured, future promotions are sent accordingly.
Author Resource:-
Wholesale forum is the first online discussion platform for dropshipping, dropshipping reviews and dropshipping list. Join wholesale forum today to know about ebay wholesalers, wholesalers UK and much more.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.articlemarketinghome.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites