With so much focus placed on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and performance on search engines, it’s easy to forget that nearly 2 billion websites exist on the Internet. Needless to say, search engine platforms don’t provide the only way to reach online customers. Once an online user navigates away from a search engine, how can you best reach them? Better yet – SEM strategy allows you to target visitors based on user profile qualities as well as things like past search history, common behavior, and more. But what if you could leverage even more advanced information outside of search engines?
Behavioral Targeting allows you to tap into the online behavior of prospects beyond search engine activity. This strategy tracks and analyzes the search and browsing patterns of people visiting websites with content similar to yours. It also allows you to advertise your dealership to those prospects, regardless what step of the customer journey they are on.
- For example, someone who is interested in purchasing an RV may visit a blog about tips for planning a great camping trip. Within the content of the blog article there may be keywords about RV models, brands, parts, and/or accessories that match what you sell at your dealership – and therefore matching keywords on your site.
- Or, perhaps that person is visiting a website with details on local campgrounds in his area. He may conduct a search on that site using keywords that match those on your dealership site – for example, “best campsite size for a travel trailer.”
- In both cases, Behavioral Targeting is at play to identify an online user demonstrating interest in units like the ones you sell at your dealership. Behavioral Targeting uses that demonstrated behavior as context to serve advertisements that match your dealership’s offerings to the customer’s interest.
This tool is especially powerful in marketing to those on a longer customer journey. This usually applies to customers on the hunt for big-ticket items such as motorcycles, RVs, boats, equipment, and the list goes on. These people are likely to spend extra time browsing, researching, and comparing models and prices before making a purchase decision or visiting a dealership in person. Behavioral Targeting creates the opportunity to reach prospects throughout the customer journey at different points and entice them to buy based on the information they read and search for on their own.
An online user’s search engine activity can provide a lot of insight into their intentions, but it’s even more insightful to continue following their behavior as they navigate away from the search engine to other websites. Behavioral Targeting gives your business a unique opportunity to advertise to highly qualified leads and earn more conversions to prospects demonstrating specific behavior that matches your dealership’s goals.