Ways To Use Behavioral Data For Targeted Advertising

my competitor and i launched identical linkedin campaigns. same budget, same audience, same product category. i crushed him 8:1 on deal conversion. he was confident going into the test. better product. stronger brand recognition. more funding. bigger team. we both targeted VPs of sales at 500+ person companies. same demographic criteria. same ad creative quality. $10K budget each. month one results: me: 47 deals closed. him: 6 deals closed. he was convinced i got lucky with better prospects. "let me see your targeting strategy," he asked. i pulled up my dashboard. "i don't target demographics at all." "what do you mean? you're running linkedin ads." "i target behaviors." i showed him my approach: instead of job titles, i track content consumption. instead of company size, i monitor website journeys. instead of industry filters, i watch engagement patterns. "i built an audience of people who've consumed competitor content in the last 30 days. downloaded sales automation guides. attended webinars about pipeline management. visited pricing pages of tools like ours." my "audience" wasn't demographic. it was behavioral. "linkedin lets you upload custom audiences," i explained. "i upload lists of people who've shown buying behavior. then i target those lists with ads." he was targeting people who might need our product. i was targeting people actively shopping for our product. "how do you identify buying behavior?" he asked. "third-party intent data. website pixel tracking. content engagement scoring. competitor analysis tools." i showed him my process: week 1: identify companies researching sales tools. week 2: find individuals at those companies consuming content. week 3: build custom audiences from behavioral data. week 4: launch ads to pre-qualified prospects. "demographics tell you who someone is," i said. "behavior tells you what they're doing." he was advertising to VPs of sales. i was advertising to VPs of sales currently shopping for solutions. same title, completely different mindset. my prospects were already in buying mode. his were just scrolling linkedin. the conversion difference made perfect sense. he rebuilt his entire approach: behavioral targeting instead of demographic filtering. intent data instead of job title assumptions. shopping behavior instead of profile characteristics. next month's results for him: 52 deals closed. 9x improvement over his original campaign. the lesson was clear: demographics describe who people are. behavior reveals what people need. target the behavior.

We’ve been using Reddit ads not just to drive traffic, but to figure out where our audience actually hangs out. Here’s how: 1. Start by installing the Reddit Pixel. - This allows us to track which Reddit users visit the website and sets the foundation for retargeting. Anyone who hits key pages on your site can now be grouped into Reddit audiences. 2. Run a retargeting campaign. - We launch broad retargeting ads across Reddit. We are not limiting placements to specific subreddits. Instead, we let Reddit determine where to serve the ads, as long as the user has previously engaged with our site. 3. Now here’s the interesting part: analyzing subreddit-level performance. - Using Porter Metrics and Looker, we can plug directly into the Reddit Ads API to pull subreddit data by campaign. This gives us a very granular view of spend, clicks, and CTR by subreddit. It not only gives us performance insights but also tells us exactly where our website retargeting is hanging out and on which subreddits. 4. This gives us real behavioral insight. - Every user in the retargeting pool has two things in common: they visited the website, and they spend time on Reddit. By analyzing which subreddits are most common in that pool, we learn where our audience naturally spends time, even if it is not in the subreddits we originally expected. For example, with a cybersecurity client, we assumed r/cybersecurity would dominate. But we found better engagement in r/AWS and r/IAM. That tells us a lot about who we are really speaking to. 5. We take action on that data. - If a subreddit consistently performs well, we run dedicated campaigns there. If irrelevant subs show up, we exclude them. We also use these insights to shape outbound targeting and inform content strategy. Reddit gives you behavioral signal most ad platforms cannot. It shows you which communities actually matter to your audience, based on real engagement, not assumptions. If you are marketing to a niche and technical audience, use Reddit ads to not only engage your audience, but also learn about them.

Last yr, I went to Joshua Tree and saw a 70-year-old grandma driving a Harley-Davidson. Why does this matter to DTC?   Most DTC brands blindly focus on the demographics and lifestyle profiles of their customers.   (Grandmas, young, male, household income.)   . . . When what is more predictive is their behavior.   "Who are our customers?" Think actions: ➝ Acquired through Google. ➝ Visited our site 3 times before purchasing. ➝ Haven’t been back in 4 days. The more you focus on behavioral segments first, the easier it will be to grow your business. Three reasons why behavioral profiling gives you an edge:   1️⃣ More predictive. Who is more likely to buy from you in the future: The person who last visited your website yesterday or the person who last visited two years ago?   Recency matters.   Who is more likely to buy from you in the future, the customer who bought from you once before or the customer who bought from you ten times before?   Frequency matters. This is why at PostPilot, we build most retention campaigns on a Recency Frequency (RF) basis.   2️⃣ More helpful in selling to your existing customers. Two guys: Steve (household income of 20K) and Joe (household income of 200K).    Poor Steve’s bought from you before. Rich Joe hasn’t.   In Steve’s case, he bought a jump rope from you before. You want to sell more stuff to your customers. Based on what you’ve seen from your customer base, people who buy jump ropes ultimately buy kettlebells.   So your next offer to Steve is a kettlebell. And maybe a warm-up band.    Like many of your customers before, Steve buys the kettlebell as the natural second purchase.   And Joe still hasn’t made a purchase yet.   The behavioral record will help us increase our CLV from Steve, where demographic information won’t do that. 3️⃣ Behavioral segmentation is WAY more actionable. It doesn’t help me to know that the typical customers on my website might read Time magazine or live in New Jersey or are an average age of 51.   But if I know... ➝ Products they’ve purchased before ➝ Last time they opened an email ➝ How they were acquired . . . And all kinds of behavioral factors, I can act.   I can set up rules in tools like Klaviyo and PostPilot, and I can market to them differently and sell to them differently. It’s much more actionable. And automate-able.   BTW. . .    I’m not arguing that demographic segmentation is useless.    Certainly, it’s helpful.    (Really, the Holy Grail is when you can combine behavioral with demographic segmentation.)   But RF(M) behavior should be your first and consistent focus.    And direct mail can help there. We build all the following campaign types around RF: ➝ Winbacks/VIP winbacks ➝ Second-purchase campaigns ➝ Cross-sells & upsells ➝ Subscriber reactivation ➝ Replenishment reminders   Set yourself up and drive repurchases from your own Harley Grannies.