Follow the Queen Bee!

Behavioral targeting is hot. Psychology combined with marketing technology predicts personal preferences and/or behavior better, leading to contextually personalized offers with higher conversion rates. It’s not the holy grail, but it works quite good.

Still, apart from the biggest web retailers or the big advertising networks, many retailers fail yet to make use of this persuasive technology. Now the distance starts to grow even larger when retailers with experience in behavioral targeting start making use of Behavioral Group Targeting (BGT).

First let me define Behavioral Group Targeting: It is a strategy to create a model of the behavioral dynamics and beliefs of a distinct group so it can be used to successfully offer tailored products/services to the group, such with the goal of realizing significantly higher conversion rates than offers to individual consumers would deliver. If a brand understands who are the Key Group Influencers (KGI’s) and how and when they are capable of influencing other group members in their buying decisions, then making use of this knowledge can cause multiple sales in a relatively short time. On top of that, it generates group loyalty to brands ‘endorsed’ by the group, enabling ‘safe choices’ for group members looking for group recognition. Behavioral Group Targeting is so new that I did not find a lot of cases yet. Yet, my own experiences are very promising. I’ll share a particularly interesting case with you: ‘Follow the Queen Bee’.

Essentially, (female) shoppers searching for fashion/luxury items are social shoppers. For many of them, group approval and confirmation about shared beliefs are crucial in the selection process of which brands and which products to purchase. The dynamics of members influencing each other in such a group is quite complex however. Yet, some groups of (young female) shoppers seem to have an (implicit) leader who leads in brand selection and product approval: the Queen Bee. The presence of a Queen Bee provides specific opportunities, since dynamics follow more predictable patterns. My case describes two steps for companies or brands on how to profit from the Queen Bee-model: a specific application of Behavioral Group Targeting.