Beyond the Click: How Behavioural Analytics Can Revolutionise Advertising Strategies

In the early days of digital marketing, clicks were the crown jewels. They were the metrics that made marketers' hearts race. But as the digital landscape matured, so did our understanding of user behaviour. Enter behavioural analytics, a tool that offers a deeper, more nuanced view of user interactions. Let's dive into why this tool is reshaping advertising strategies.

1. Using Behavioural Analytics to Increase Customer Engagement and Retention

In the vast ocean of online users, every click, scroll, and hover tells a story. Behavioural analytics helps us decode this story, offering insights into user preferences, habits, and pain points.

Behavioural analytics gives us a detailed view of how users interact with our platforms. It's not just about which button they clicked, but how and why they clicked it. By understanding these patterns, we can tailor our strategies to cater to individual user preferences, increasing both customer expansion and retention.

Conversion rate is one of the key metrics ecommerce brands obsess over but often do not understand how to optimise. Using behavioural analytics, you can identify where in the shopping process the most drop offs are occurring and where you should be focusing your attention.

A dog training brand I work with noticed that the highest rate of drop offs was at the shipping page. After reviewing user recordings, we realised that customers wanted the product now, and the default standard shipping was stopping them from taking the next step. We tweaked the page to more heavily emphasise the express shipping option and same day dispatch and saw conversion rate take off. We then used that same message throughout advertising and saw a significant improvement in clickthrough rates.

Similarly understanding how customers will use your product and the triggers that may cause them to replace, replenish or simply add, will help you tailor your communications strategy to ensure you are top of mind precisely when they need you.

2. Predict Customer Purchasing Behaviours and Upsell Them

Every marketer dreams of being able to predict the future. With behavioural analytics, this dream is closer to reality. By analysing past user interactions, we can forecast future behaviours with surprising accuracy.

For instance, if a user frequently browses high-end tech products but only purchases budget options, there's an opportunity there. Tailored ads showcasing mid-range products, or special deals on premium items, can nudge them towards a higher purchase value.

I helped a specialist running retailer combine stated (surveys) and observed (product and content engagement) behaviour to predict how frequently a customer would need to replace their shoes based on their estimated mileage. These insights flow into an omnichannel strategy that reduces wastage and more aggressively targets customers during times we expect them to be in-market for new running shoes. This strategy has seen customer retention improve 14%.

3. Help Detect Click Fraud

Click fraud is the bane of digital advertising. It drains budgets without delivering real value. Behavioural analytics, with its focus on patterns, is a potent weapon against this menace.

Real users exhibit patterns – they might read reviews, compare products, or revisit a page multiple times before making a purchase. Bots, on the other hand, behave erratically. Identifying and understanding these patterns can save businesses significant advertising dollars.

Regularly audit where traffic is coming from and what they are doing. Use unique UTMs for each publisher you use so you can correlate where this is happening and put a stop to it. For instance, if you notice a spike in traffic but no corresponding uplift in shopping behaviour, dig into what source drove them there and if their behaviour appears suspicious. If it does, take steps to exclude them from reporting and advertising tools to prevent your tools from reacting to false positives.

4. Going Beyond Conventional Uses – New Initiatives

The true power of behavioural analytics lies in its ability to get to the “why” of customer behaviour. Beyond the conventional uses, it's a tool that can fuel innovation in advertising strategies.

A subscription consumer brand I work with has an incredibly long purchase cycle. The messaging at each stage was roughly the same with very little nuance. However, by observing the behaviour and what they were looking at on their second or third visit, it informed not only what the creative needed to reflect in terms of which products or key messages, but also the different customer profiles. Instead of focusing on product features through the middle of the funnel, we focused on the positive emotional associations with using this brand over competitors. This led to the creation of multiple campaigns targeting different profiles and stages. While the purchase cycle is still long, the engagement at each stage and the final conversion has improved dramatically, leading to an almost 50% reduction in Customer Acquisition Cost.

But that's just scratching the surface.

Behavioural analytics works hand-in-hand with creating a seamless digital experience on your platforms to:

Drive Content Creation: By understanding what users engage with, brands can create content that truly resonates. Such as a skincare brand doubling down on creative that shows what a customer's skin looks like before using their product and after, because visitors who saw that content had an in-platform ROAS of 7.69 compared to 4.89 for those that did not.

Optimise User Experience: From website design to app interfaces, user behaviour can guide optimisations that enhance user experience. Australian fashion retailer, The Iconic, recently did away with homepage banners because they served no purpose other than being a barrier to what customers wanted: browse products.

Inform Product Development: For ecommerce brands, understanding which products users frequently browse but don't buy can inform product improvements or new product lines.

Key Takeaways:

• Deep Dive into Data: Surface-level metrics like clicks are just the tip of the iceberg. Dive deeper to uncover actionable insights.
• Personalisation is Power: In today's digital age, generic strategies don't cut it.Tailor your approach based on user behaviour.
• Stay Vigilant: Use behavioural analytics to detect anomalies like click fraud and protect your advertising budget.
• Innovate and Iterate: Use the insights from behavioural analytics to constantly refine and reinvent your advertising strategies.

Mal Chia, Managing Director, Ecom Nation