Behavioral targeting can play a special role for products and services where need is dictated by life stage. Here's how you might carve out a role for BT in your organization.

As I sat in childbirth class with my wife and five other couples expecting their first child, one thought that crossed my mind (among many others) was that I would get to actually experience some of the targeted sampling programs I had worked on in the past. 

I know, it's probably a bit insulting to my wife to be thinking about marketing when I was ostensibly learning about how she's supposed to breathe when she goes into labor, but bear with me.

Among the topics of discussion was the application of a certain diaper rash ointment that I worked on a few years ago. I tuned out because I probably knew more about the product than the RN did. While I was tuned out, I thought a bit about products where the need was triggered by a lifestyle change or a significant milestone event.

In my lap was a cheap diaper bag emblazoned with product logos and filled to the bursting point with branded information packets, product samples and coupons. I thought to myself that just a year ago, all of these products didn't mean a damned thing to me. (As a consumer, I mean.)

Of course, now that there's a pressing need, it's actually interesting to see advertising for things like diapers, baby formula, infant seats and baby furniture. But 12 months ago, my brain filtered it all out.

Online, we have some pretty good ways of determining when someone has reached, or is about to reach, one of these life stages that trigger product and service needs. When I worked on the diaper rash ointment a while back, I found out how many health and women's content sites collected due dates for things like pregnancy calendars. That's a pretty good indication of need right there.

If your product or service makes use of life stage marketing -- or is desirable only when need is triggered by a specific life milestone -- behavioral targeting should be playing a special role in your advertising plans. Interactive media represent a unique opportunity not only to identify people entering new life stages, but also to eliminate waste from your media plan by keeping the ads away from people who aren't in or approaching that life stage.

For instance, if you're selling online legal documents (like I see LegalZoom doing on television), you could spend a fortune fighting with other advertisers over contextually relevant online ad inventory. Or you could be much more efficient by working with behavioral networks to look for certain behavioral cues that indicate a change in life stage. 

Many people either establish or revise their wills after they get married. Maybe targeting people who visited wedding sites several months ago, or who booked their honeymoon on travel sites, might be a good targeting tactic.

You can probably think of a dozen web behaviors off the top of your head that indicate that someone has recently been married. Targeting those behaviors rather than buying contextually relevant environments can save a lot of money.

I'd be willing to bet the reach potential is higher, too.

To succeed, certain brands need to be able to spot the life stage change coming from a distance. By way of example, a realtor probably wants to establish ties with someone before they put their house on the market. Looking for behavioral cues that herald the arrival of a prospects next stage in life would probably make sense. In that case, targeting ads to someone looking for job listings in another geographic market might be a good targeting approach.

If your product or service maps closely to a specific life stage, it might be wise to map out a strategic role for behavioral targeting in your communications plans.

Tom Hespos is the president of Underscore Marketing and blogs at Hespos.com.