Behavioural Analysis – Targeting with Google and Facebook

In this next blog, I am going to look at behavioural targeting, what this is and how it impacts my role at Protyre. Behavioural targeting refers to presenting people with advertisements based on their internet use (Salomon et al. (2019, pp.184). Behavioural targeting allows you to segment your audience based on their interests as exhibited in their online behaviour so is very much linked to the consumers behaviour. By gathering data, segmenting and targeting your audiences by behaviour you are able to significantly increase your conversion rates and sales while also increasing customer loyalty. It also enables you as a marketer to get more relevant and detailed targeting out of your ad campaigns. In this example we looked at the Google and Facebook ad campaign strategy at Protyre which uses behavioural targeting to capture new visitors and conversions for Protyre.co.uk.

Google Similar Audiences

Google offers behavioural targeting advertising campaigns via its Lookalike audiences in Google – lookalike audiences is a concept that was first introduced by the Facebooks advertising tool. Google stores a mass amount of data on its users that it has collected across the internet, including how they interact and it looks at this data to help you find new customers for your campaign that you have not yet targeted, you are also to add your own customer data to the platform by uploading your customers email addresses why you have permission.  By connecting lookalike audiences to Google display ads and search campaigns you can boost your impressions, clicks and conversions significantly and expand your target audience. It’s a simple method to find new customers that are likely to engage with your ads and help you generate more sales. This process works very well for Protyre and we are able to expand our customer targeting to drive more sales via the protyre website.   

Facebook Lookalike Audiences with Behavioural Targeting

Similar to Google, Facebook Advertising looks at the people who followed your business’ profile to get a feel for your target audience. Then, it would create a lookalike audience of people with similar profiles, interests and other attributes. One of the main benefits of Facebook ads is the ability to target a particular group of users. At Protyre we serve Facebook ads to our existing customers to book MOTs. As we know there MOT due date, we are able to start serving them with an ad up to 6 weeks before there MOT due date, the idea being that they will see the ad many times on an impression basis and it starts to put the MOT into their thinking and they book their MOT a head of the expiry date. This behavioural targeting works very well, and we are able to upload lists of our customer s email addresses to match them. As the majority of the UK now has a Facebook account, the match rate is very high. We are then able to take this one step further and look for lookalike audiences, so users that have a similar demographic behaviour – this is very good for build prospects lists of customers to target. A couple of example adverts run are below.

Retargeting

This is when an advertiser shows ads multiple times across different websites. Retargeting is effective as it often takes multiple times of seeing a brand before someone buys, so keeping your product in the shop window is very important and re-engaging with audiences that have already shown an interest in your brand is key to getting the sale. Building visibility of the brand, products and services is very important. At Protyre we use retargeting to help bring our users back to the Protyre website, we do this by partnering with the Google Display Network (GDN) to show our adverts once the user has been to Protyre.co.uk and abandoned. We are effectively following them around the internet and our advertising banners can feature on up to 2 million websites, videos and apps where Google Ads can appear. There is a cost to us running this as a form of advertising but the costs are normally based on a cost per 1,000 impressions rather then per click like Google Adwords and so it can be a more cost effective way of advertising and a good way of re-engaging with your prospective customers.

Example of a Protyre retargeting advert below. This display advert targets user that have visited protyre looking for an MOT or service and is displayed across the Google Display Network.

Conclusion

If your looking to understand your audience better and their behaviours and want to grow your customers, then behavioural targeting is a great way of generating new visitors and conversions from your website at an acceptable cost per sale with a positive return on investment.

Thanks for reading! I hope you have found my own experiences interesting and how I have related these subjects to my job role. Please leave a comment, I would love to get your thoughts.

Bibliography:

Solomon, Michael R, 2019. Consumer behaviour: A European Perspective, Pearson Education https://r3.vlereader.com/Reader?ean=9781292245461 (Accessed: 11^th February 2022).

Lotame. (2018). What Is Behavioral Targeting? How It Works (in 4 Steps). [online] Available at: https://www.lotame.com/what-is-behavioral-targeting/#:~:text=Behavioral%20targeting%20is%20a%20marketing. (Accessed: 11^th February 2022).

Google Display Network Targeting – Google Ads. [online] Available at: https://ads.google.com/intl/en_uk/home/resources/reach-larger-new-audiences (Accessed: 11^th February 2022).