Behavioral marketing triggers are the secret ingredient to boost your marketing efforts. Several experts refer to them as the low-hanging fruit of marketing automation.

But what is behavioral marketing?

Using behavioral marketing involves targeting customers with messages based on their past behaviors or actions. It helps you to identify the best times to send messages to your audience.

These methods work best with behavioral marketing automation, making it easier to set up processes to take specific actions when customers exhibit certain behaviors.

For example, when someone visits your service pages on your website, you can have behavioral triggers to email them with a demo video automatically.

Why behavioral triggers are important for your marketing

1) More access to information

In today’s world, users have all the information that they need readily accessible on the internet. So, they are more likely to behave in different ways than predicted. This is where behavioral marketing tactics come in handy.

With behavioral-based marketing, you can understand your customers easier and anticipate their needs and wants. That way, you can send them the right messages at the right time, increasing the chances of success.

Furthermore, it enables you to use your resources more effectively. Rather than blindly shoot out messages, you ensure they are better targeted and thus yield better results.

2) Higher competition

In most industries, more and more players are coming up. Many of them offer similar products. As a result, competition is higher.  Therefore, marketers must adjust their marketing tactics accordingly.

Behavioral-based marketing tactics are one of such methods that can yield the best results. It enables marketers to understand customers and thus tailor and personalize messages. 

Personalization is essential for attracting customers. It appeals to their emotions and provides a sense of belonging for them, which is key to establishing trust.

Customers are tired of mass advertising, which often does not address their needs. So, by employing behavioral triggers, you can position yourself as a company that gets it. It provides them with a more engaging consumer journey and experience.

3) Customer patterns

With behavioral marketing automation tools, your business can study and identify customer patterns. Most leads will have similar questions and concerns. And, since they rely less on salespeople for such information, it becomes easier to track their behavior on different platforms.

Your business can thus harness leads faster and more efficiently. Your task is to figure out what information you will need to provide at what stage in the journey. In so doing, it becomes easier to establish yourself as a reliable and trustworthy source.

Common triggers in behavioral marketing 

To effectively use behavioral triggers to supercharge your marketing, you must know the most common ones to use. Most of these are discoverable through behavioral research, salespeople, among others. Some of the most common ones include:

Site usage: How do customers act on your site? How long do they take to take action? Based on what they do on the site, you can now predict what they are more likely to be interested in and act accordingly.

Purchases: What have your customers bought before or added to their cart? With information about your customers' purchase decisions, you can predict what they might be interested in buying. It is also an excellent opportunity for upsells.

Note: Behavioral triggers are most effective when used on the right customers. Buyer needs vary according to the stage they are at on the consumer journey.

A: Top of the funnel leads

Mainly new visitors with limited knowledge. These would benefit most from welcome emails, newsletters, relevant educational content, among others. Usually, they can be triggered by opt-in information or repeat visits. 

B: Middle of the funnel leads

These leads are at a critical stage. Therefore, you should provide them with helpful content to nurture them. It is also best to use a personalized approach to gain their trust and encourage them to buy eventually. Common triggers at this point could be browsing behaviors.

C: Bottom of the funnel leads

They are almost ready to purchase. Common triggers at this stage include cart activity, pricing searches, etc. You should focus on messages that eliminate potential barriers to purchase at this point. Your trigger messages could consist of discount offers, additional benefits-focused content, etc.

How to improve your marketing process using behavioral triggers

Building a solid and reliable behavioral marketing workflow may take some time. You will need to observe customer behavior over time and establish mechanisms that work.

1. Map out the process

Start by drawing out the process that your customers usually go through when looking for what you offer. You can do this with information from behavioral data or even interview customers, or get data from salespeople. This information will give you an idea of what happens at every stage.

2. Isolate the stages

Now that you know all the stages, identify the most common concerns and questions customers have at each point. This will help you understand what kind of information you will need to provide to them. Common questions you may want to tackle include:

How do your leads start and end their search? What actions do they often take at each stage? Answering these questions will guide you to creating the best content. 

For instance, if you are selling frying pans. You may find that your customer goes through something like this:

• Search on google for "best frying pans" or frying pans that can go in the oven, etc.
• Then they consider the different options the search engines give them
• They look around for additional information based on the options. Like, will the missing X feature on this frying pan affect my cooking?

Your task then becomes providing them with the appropriate content at every stage of their search to entice them to purchase.

3. Identify effective touchpoints

Based on the data collected, you can identify the best triggers to act upon. You can tell what touchpoints are the most critical to engaging the customer and encouraging them to purchase.

Best practices to supercharge your marketing process through behavioral triggers

Draft a buyer persona

A buyer persona is a critical component of behavioral marketing automation. It forms the basis for all subsequent actions. When you fully understand who your customers are, you can better draft strategies to guide them along the sales funnel.

Through the buyer persona, you can also understand what motivates your customers. It also supplements marketing automation since it forms a basis for the content you send.

Personalize

Reportedly, 80% of customers are more likely to buy from brands that offer a personalized experience. So, you should use behavioral triggers to provide such experiences. 

You must consider what stage the buyers are at and strive to send content that best suits their needs at that particular time. Many marketers still do mass advertising which can be pretty annoying to customers. So, your well-crafted and personalized messages are more likely to stand out.

Email retargeting

An email is a critical tool for behavioral marketing, especially for eCommerce. Through triggered email marketing, you can encourage customers to purchase by offering discounts, sending product demos, welcome email sequences, among others.

Find the right triggers.

Ensure that you focus on the right triggers if you are to boost your marketing efforts. It starts with the customer information you collect at earlier stages. This information points out the most likely triggers to induce customer purchase or drive leads further down the funnel.

That way, you focus your resources on avenues where you are more likely to benefit. For example, a common trigger for discount offers would be repetitive actions taken on the website or responses to emails in the past.

Consider possibilities.

Whereas behavioral marketing software is useful, it may not always give you a clear-cut solution. So, as you analyze data for your marketing, you must consider it as a possibility. 

For example, if consumers take X action, do they also take Y action?  With such possibility analysis, you can then determine the best possible actions for every behavioral trigger. 

Conclusion

Behavioral triggered marketing is the key to taking your marketing efforts to the next level. Through behavioral marketing automation tools, it helps to deliver engaging and memorable experiences to your customers.

This strategy focuses on understanding how your leads think, allowing you to draft personalized and helpful content to drive them through the journey.

To effectively use behavioral triggers to supercharge your marketing, you must understand your customers and employ the right automation tools.