Behavioral targeting and search seem to share common roots. Both help marketers learn from user patterns and deliver more relevant messages. Search’s success makes behavioral targeting seem a natural foray into more intimate knowledge of the consumer buying cycle. What can behavioral targeting do for your online campaigns? Could it be the next “search?”

Behavioral targeting allows advertisers to track highly targeted consumers at earlier stages in the buying cycle without directly asking for their input. With this data, the advertising technology attempts to learn the behavior of these individuals enough to push only relevant messages, usually rich media ads, throughout the buying cycle in an effort to reduce decision time, abandoned sales transaction and irrelevant searches. With hopes of uncovering new niche markets, marketers have been using behavioral targeting since the 1990’s, with varying degrees of success.

Is behavioral targeting refined enough that any marketer can jump freely into the practice? Should you be matching your search marketing dollars with behavioral marketing dollars?

The same root, but a different tree

Though it shares a few similarities to contextual search advertising, it has even more differences, therefore separating it from the undisputed success of paid search. Compared to search, the technology needs to become safer, easier and more cost-effective to use.

Although behavioral targeting is touted by providers as a key to uncover what consumers are doing before search, tracking behavioral patterns without consumer consent can be sticky territory. With consumer privacy issues are on the rise, marketers must be extremely careful not to risk losing trust.

Debra Aho Williamson, author of the eMarketer report said in an interview, "Tracking online behaviors can be a powerful marketing tool, but advertisers have to be cautious not to overstep their bounds. Behavioral targeting inhabits some gray territory when it comes to consumer awareness and acceptance."

It’s no doubt a very attractive proposition, but one that must be carefully deployed to maintain integrity.

Using the Inherent Data Supplied by Search

Search statistics remain a simple, safe and widely accepted form of consumer behavior tracking that has already proved its value. The explicit nature of the search phrase tells marketers exactly what users seek at the exact moment they’re looking to obtain.

Search statistics uncover behavioral trends of your best current and future customers. It can also help you predict how future audiences might react to specific marketing events and product changes.

Marketers are now familiar with the knowledge gleaned from contextual search statistics. Paid search providers provide historic search data to prove performance and to help marketers tweak campaigns. The goal is always to improve relevance, delivering the most ideal results for specific keywords. But the lessons shouldn’t stop there. Search stats can also tell you what consumers are searching for at your site.

Specific search data can provide insight into how your audience is reacting to your site’s navigational structure, sales, contests, special promotions and other marketing elements. How many take action? Where do they click next? How many searches are conducted before they find what they’re looking for? What percentage of searches for a promotional item resulted in a sale today? Tomorrow? The last day of the sale?

Learning more about your customers’ behavior gives you an inside track on future behavior. Apply the findings to deliver more relevant search results and advertising messages. The pay-off will be clear: improved loyalty and return-on-investment.

- This article has been updated from a previously published article.

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