Marketers are always looking for new ways to attract attention. That’s their job after all. With attention comes sales. (Not every look leads to a purchase, of course, but few sales come without at least some prior nudge.)
But attention-getting techniques are limited, especially online. Once you’ve done the obvious, what next? Two options are techniques called Behavioral Targeting and Demographic Analysis.
As with any marketing technique, there are debates about how effective either is. One study suggests only 18% of users respond to behavioral targeting, with demographic coming in at 28%. Compared to 62% who are more likely to purchase based on a contextual ad, that doesn’t seem like much.
That may well be the case, but 18% or 28% represent significant chunks of users and after you’ve done contextual, then what?
Demographic techniques — using zip codes, income levels, gender, and other data — to target users is also helpful. However, the effectiveness varies with all those criteria (and more). Users in the North East US respond differently than those in the West, as do users of different income levels.
Getting that sort of data, even when it isn’t ethically questionable, can be difficult and expensive though, especially for online marketers. Useful as part of the toolbox, but not for the faint of heart.
More than just a buzzword, BT describes a method of tracking and analyzing user behavior in order to encourage higher conversions. Online behavior is monitored, then ads are presented that match a profile built from the data.
There are several concrete ways to do that. Among them are clickstream analysis (recording and viewing what a user clicks on within a site), recording a cookie and matching clicks against purchases, reviewing RSS subscriber lists, and a host of others.
The moral of the story is this. Paraphrasing a line from The Lion In Winter said by Henry II: “Use all your voices. When I bellow, bellow back.”
That ought to get their attention.