Using preferences and behavior to target consumers holds the potential for marketers to become incredibly insightful about their audience. When done well, it allows you to provide people with exactly what they desire, precisely at the moment they need it. This approach is becoming increasingly diverse as devices and data become more widespread, leading to more sophisticated marketing segmentation and behavioral targeting techniques.

Here are 13 methods brands and marketers can employ, supported by examples and data, to utilize behavioral targeting and segmentation for crafting more intelligent, cost-efficient marketing campaigns.

Understanding Behavioral Segmentation

Segmenting your audience can be achieved through various characteristics. These include platforms (like social media versus email), demographics (such as age, location, gender), psychographics (values and lifestyle), and more. However, as your marketing campaigns gain momentum, the most effective segmentation method becomes accessible: behavioral segmentation. Behavioral segmentation leverages data derived from how your audience interacts with your business—encompassing lead engagement with marketing campaigns and customer interactions with products—to pinpoint optimal strategies for guiding them through their customer journey.

Image source This encompasses their behavior on search engines and your website, their engagement with ads, landing pages, and emails; their purchase frequency, and much more. For instance, you can pinpoint specific times (daily, weekly, or monthly) when sales dip and implement discounts during those periods. Alternatively, you can cultivate customer loyalty by rewarding frequent or long-standing patrons.

13 Strategies for Enhanced Marketing Results Through Behavioral Segmentation

As previously mentioned, segmenting your target audience enables the identification of diverse paths taken by leads and customers. This facilitates the delivery of highly relevant offers and messaging tailored to each path. Explore these 13 strategies to optimize budget allocation, customer acquisition, and retention improvement.

1. Boost Sales and Upselling with Remarketing

Remarketing represents a fundamental form of behavioral targeting, allowing marketers to leverage prior consumer behavior on their website.

Natalie Lesyk, marketing manager at Ning.com, emphasizes remarketing as “the core and most powerful tool” within behavioral marketing. By constructing remarketing audiences based on specific behaviors, marketers can deploy remarketing ads showcasing previously viewed products or recommending popular items purchased by others. Simon Thalmann, digital marketing manager at Kellogg Community College, exemplifies this strategy. The college targets website visitors who explored specific pages with tailored ads aligned with their browsing history. He explains, “For example, if someone visits our registration page, they might later encounter registration-related messages in ads displayed on various websites, apps, or social networks they frequent.” Dell provides another compelling case study. In a case study, the company revealed high website traffic but a significant portion of visitors leaving without purchasing. To address this, Dell aimed to understand each visitor’s product interests for tailored messaging to encourage sales. By analyzing visit history, Dell implemented remarketing ads featuring products viewed, searched for, or added to carts. The outcome? Dell reported improved click-through rates, conversion rates, and ROI, including a 70% higher CTR and tripled conversion rate for online ads.

2. Implement Income-Based Content Segmentation

Consider the case of travel website Orbitz, which reportedly catered its search results based on whether consumers were using Macs or PCs. Unfortunately for Mac users, Orbitz presented them with pricier hotel options. This stemmed from research indicating Mac users spend up to 30% more on travel and are 40% more likely to book higher-rated hotels, likely due to the higher cost of Macs suggesting a more affluent user base.

An Orbitz representative acknowledged the experiment, clarifying that room prices remained consistent but Mac users were shown different initial options. Users could still sort by price to view budget-friendly choices. An independent experiment by the Wall Street Journal revealed a roughly 11% price increase for hotel rooms on the first page of results for Mac users. However, the revenue impact on Orbitz and the continued use of this segmentation strategy remain uncertain.

3. Achieve Precise Targeting with Psychographics

Understanding consumers beyond their online behavior, delving into their attitudes and interests alongside demographics, is what some term psychographics. This approach can be remarkably effective.

Stella Mikraki, head of marketing at email marketing provider Moosend, highlights that “online behavior, particularly when combined with parameters like geography, enables laser-focused targeting, leading to superior advertising campaign and content marketing outcomes.” GiftBasketsOverseas.com, an international gift basket delivery service, exemplifies this by targeting customers who previously sent gifts to specific countries. Natasha Kvitka, digital marketing strategist, explains, “We engage them with email campaigns reminding them of approaching national holidays in those countries and the limited time to send greetings.”

4. Craft Persona-Specific Campaigns

Behavioral targeting empowers brands to refine their customer profiles. “Marketers can leverage behavioral targeting to construct tailored audience segments,” states Tom Caulton, digital marketing executive and SEO consultant at digital growth agency Dijitul. “This enables the creation of multiple campaigns with distinct personas in mind. In my experience, brands often thrive when they deliver branded content resonating with customers on a personal level.”

Kristie Forsman, director of digital marketing at real estate brokerage franchise network Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, echoes this sentiment. She emphasizes the power of combining behavioral targeting with interest and demographic targeting to construct audience segments. This enables brands to design the most impactful creative for each group. For instance, new homeowners are unlikely to be interested in selling their recently acquired properties. Recognizing this, real estate agencies can exclude them from campaigns promoting home sales. She adds, “This enhances ad relevance, resulting in higher click-through rates and engagement.” For further guidance, explore these non-intrusive and personalized customer engagement strategies.

5. Allocate Budget Strategically to Conversion-Ready Audiences

In another case study, online travel agency Zuji, like Dell previously mentioned, encountered a high volume of website visitors who didn’t convert, coupled with less-than-ideal display ad performance. Zuji decided to test dynamic content optimization and remarketing to entice user return with personalized recommendations based on their search history. Interestingly, Zuji increased bids for these ads to prioritize visibility among users more likely to convert. This strategic budget allocation resulted in a 14% surge in online bookings and a remarkable 100X ROI improvement.

6. Expand Reach to New Customers

Behavioral targeting can be instrumental in uncovering new customer segments. For instance, brands can target consumers who openly express affinity for competitors. This strategy extends beyond direct competitors like Burger King appealing to McDonald’s enthusiasts or Pepsi to Coke loyalists. Marketers can also introduce alternative brands by targeting consumers purchasing products related to their offerings, explains Jacqueline Ryan, manager of integrated marketing at organic candy company YumEarth. As an illustration, a milk brand can target cookie enthusiasts, she adds. When defining targeting strategies, consider cohorts. Fitness enthusiasts might also be drawn to healthy food choices.

An example of Facebook’s extensive targeting options

7. Segment Video Ad Audiences Effectively

Following a 2014 crash, low-cost airline AirAsia sought to rebuild consumer confidence. Their strategy involved it turned to Facebook. AirAsia employed short videos but segmented its audience, tailoring creative for each group:

• Individuals who purchased tickets after the crash
• Those who hadn’t bought tickets since the crash
• High-value customers Leveraging Facebook’s reach and frequency tool, AirAsia controlled ad exposure over a four-week span. Combining their customer data with Facebook’s Custom Audiences, they targeted frequent fliers and users who searched specific cities without purchasing, delivering custom ads. This alone yielded a 30X return on ad spend. Additionally, Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences tool helped identify potential customers resembling existing ones, delivering ads promoting both AirAsia’s values and destinations. This strategy resulted in a remarkable 58X return on ad spend.

8. Optimize Spending by Refining Segmentation

Conversely, segmentation empowers brands to avoid wasteful spending on personas who have expressed disinterest in their products. “Targeting vegans with products tested on animals would be counterproductive,” asserts YumEarth’s Ryan. Forsman concurs, emphasizing that behavioral targeting helps not only in discovering new customers but also in excluding those who won’t benefit from the offering. It’s about avoiding expenditure on unlikely conversions.

9. Develop More Impactful Promotions

On-site behavior offers valuable insights for crafting promotions. Dimira Teneva, content manager of e-commerce analytics platform Metrilo, highlights how brands can leverage information like preferred products, browsing history, and purchase patterns to create personalized offers for individuals and segments with similar behaviors. “Understanding what customers browse and ultimately buy is a treasure trove for bundle offers and category organization,” Teneva states. “It reveals product similarities in the customer’s mind, items that complement each other, those serving the same purpose, and so on.”

10. Uncover Customer Origin Points

Examining the customer journey leading to a website can unveil new advertising avenues. Thalmann suggests, “Analyze your web traffic sources. If a particular social media platform consistently drives traffic to a specific page, consider advertising there or crafting a custom landing page optimized for visitors from that site.” He adds, “Do visitors from certain sites convert or purchase more than others? Do they spend more time on your website? These insights guide marketers in optimizing user experiences for better goal achievement.”

11. Refine Website Navigation for Optimal Performance

Thalmann further emphasizes the importance of understanding how consumers exit your website. “How long do users spend on your website or landing pages? Do they leave after visiting a single page or explore multiple ones? What does their browsing path suggest about their needs, and were they able to fulfill them?” he asks. “Even minor website adjustments—like resizing or recoloring purchase buttons, repositioning contact forms for visibility—can significantly impact user behavior and conversion rates. A high click-through rate or low cost-per-click becomes irrelevant if users struggle to navigate the destination page and make a purchase.” Doreen Brown, head of digital at digital marketing agency Digital Visibility Group, agrees that analyzing dwell time helps brands determine if users are finding what they need or bouncing off. “If your website lacks certain information, use behavioral targeting to develop a content strategy that addresses those gaps for both search engines and users,” she advises.

This involves utilizing Google Analytics to track page views, average time on page, and bounce rate. Brown recommends reviewing pages with bounce rates exceeding 50%. “By doing so, users are more likely to find the information they seek, naturally reducing the likelihood of them leaving,” she adds.

12. Time Your Messaging Strategically

Brands should identify peak traffic times and schedule messaging accordingly for maximum visibility, Thalmann suggests. “Analyze customer visiting and buying patterns to understand their online activity throughout the day,” Kvitka adds. “Email campaigns sent during those periods are likely to see higher open rates, and social media updates will experience greater engagement.”

13. Personalize Messaging Based on Location

In a recent example, lifecycle engagement platform Appboy collaborated with location data company PlaceIQ to enhance mobile engagement for youth-oriented retail brand Urban Outfitters. The strategy involved utilizing real-world behavior for smarter in-app message delivery. Appboy and PlaceIQ reported successfully assisting Urban Outfitters in contextualizing its marketing messages. Consequently, Urban Outfitters witnessed a 75% increase in conversions and a 146% surge in related revenue. “Location-aware insights have become instrumental in decision-making across media, marketing, and business functions,” stated Duncan McCall, CEO of PlaceIQ. “They are central to driving benefits like increased foot traffic and purchases at physical stores. Location data insights can also significantly boost online retail sales. By leveraging this data for audience insights, Urban Outfitters crafted and delivered a resonant campaign that yielded tangible sales results.”

In a release, the platforms highlighted how the rise of mobile facilitates the delivery of campaigns tailored to in-app and web preferences, enabling marketers to better understand and engage users. Through the Appboy and PlaceIQ partnership, Urban Outfitters developed a comprehensive campaign encompassing:

• Dynamic audience filters that triggered messages based on visitation and behavior outside the app, like push notifications promoting party dresses to women frequently visiting bars
• Emoji messaging to resonate with the target demographic
• Deep linking to direct users to relevant in-app pages upon tapping a message
• Conversion events to track push notification-driven purchases Andrew Rauch, senior director of global digital marketing at Urban Outfitters, stated, “Effectively reaching users through this location-specific marketing resulted in a 146% increase in campaign revenue.”