A Guide to Psychographics for Marketing

The word 'psychographics' is a relatively new addition to the industry. 

 

People understood that merely demographics are insufficient for any effective marketing techniques after the development of psychographic segmentation. 

 

The method focuses on how people think rather than their demographics, and it has the potential to completely reorganize and revolutionize the area of digital marketing. It is one of the most intriguing psychological analytic advances that marketers may use in their marketing.

 

If someone is unfamiliar with this phrase, they are undoubtedly interested in it by now and how it affects the marketing sector. 

 

In this post, we will discuss psychographics and psychographic segmentation in marketing.

 

 

What is Psychographics?

 

Psychographics in marketing refers to the study of customers based on psychological and cognitive characteristics such as beliefs, values, ideals, hopes, and objectives. This field extends beyond demographics such as age, gender, race, geography, and so on to analyze customer behavior over purchasing.

 

The collection and analysis of this data enable marketers, advertisers, and researchers to construct thorough "psychographic profiles" of audience segments, which are then utilized to produce an appropriate message for those segments.

 

This is useful to marketers and advertisers since there is typically substantial variation between people even within precisely defined demographic categories. 

 

Just because two persons are around the same age and have similar annual salaries does not imply that they have similar political or personal ideals.

 

A psychographic profile, among other things, incorporates information on a person's interests, activities, emotional triggers, and lifestyle choices. This might explain why someone buys a certain product, supports a specific cause, votes a certain way, and much more.

 

The diagram below depicts the difference between Demographics and Psychographics.

---

Image: Demographics vs Psychographics

---

Neither data type should be used in isolation. In addition to firmographic data, one may evaluate psychographic data in connection to demographic, regional, or behavioral data. This is very significant for account-based marketing.

 

 

Collection of information for Psychographics:

 

According to CBInsights, in September 2016, Alexander Nix provided the world with one of the first looks at the company's psychographic techniques at the Concordia Annual Summit. There are numerous methods for collecting and analyzing psychographic data. 

 

Traditional focus groups and interviews still play a major role in psychographics, along with surveys and quizzes. 

 

Other than that, website analytics, browsing data, set-top box viewing data, social media, and third-party analytics also help in collecting information for psychographics. 

 

 

Psychographic Profiling

 

A psychographic profile is a one-of-a-kind description of an individual's or group's attitudes, habits, and interests. It's a set of customer beliefs and behaviors that indicate who would be most receptive to their company's product. 

 

Because customers frequently base their decisions on psychographic aspects such as personal preferences or values, psychographic profiling may be quite successful. 

 

Understanding the target audience's psychological characteristics may help them enhance their outreach and advertising approach, helping them to establish an overall emotionally attractive brand.

 

(Related reading: Digital marketing tools)

 

 

Psychographic Segmentation:

 

Psychographic segmentation, like behavioral segmentation, creates groupings based on more personal or individual characteristics. Lifestyle, habits, behaviors, and hobbies are examples of these.

 

Each of these distinct psychological elements has a significant impact on a consumer's behavior. There are several methods for segmenting a market along psychographic dimensions according to blog hubspot, some of which are included below:

 

1. Personality traits:

 

It is very beneficial to know the customers’ personality traits, whether they perform extensive research before buying anything or are impulsive shoppers? 

 

Do they like to stick to regular choices or are they experimental? 

 

Knowing the target buyer's personality attributes might help the company develop language that appeals to them especially. 

 

Some of the personality traits could be: Extroverted vs Introverted, Emotional thinker vs Logical thinker, Spontaneous vs Planner, etc.

 

 

2. Lifecycle Marketing:

 

Knowing where the target consumer is in their purchase lifetime is key to lifecycle marketing. 

 

Is the target consumer familiar with the product or prospective solution? Have they contacted the company? Reach, Acquisition, Conversion, Retention, and Loyalty are the many lifecycle stages. 

 

Knowing where the potential consumer is in their lifecycle will help the company pick which marketing channels to utilize. 

 

A Google ad or an organic content campaign might reach someone who isn't even aware of their condition.

 

 

3. Buyers’ Interest:

 

Involving the interests of the intended audience in the marketing campaign may double the business's profits by a factor of ten.  Although not usually, interests and activities can be closely related. 

 

Other possible hobbies include their choice in music, television shows, and novels. One can also pursue other interests such as design, pet care, and sustainability.

 

(Suggested reading: Native Advertising -Examples and Working)

 

 

4. Beliefs:

 

Knowing your buyer's points of view can help companies build a campaign that appeals to them rather than alienates them. 

 

For example, if a company is running a nutritional product campaign and discovers that their target buyer supports the body positivity movement and believes that "healthy" looks different on different people.

 

They may choose to include photos of people of all sizes who are equally healthy or on the path to healthfulness.

 

 

5. Activities:

 

The term "activities" refers to what the consumer does in their leisure time. The behaviors of a customer can provide information about the activities in which they have previously invested resources, time, and money.

 

If the targeted consumer enjoys yoga and the company is attempting to sell them their nutritional counseling service, they might include yoga-related imagery or offers. 

 

 

Using Psychographics in Marketing:

 

The most prevalent application of psychographics is in market research, especially in the construction and development of comprehensive buyer personas.

 

Wordstream states a few ways to use psychographics in marketing, let us look into that:

 

1. More Refined Social Media campaigns:

 

Knowing the psychographic data can help the company identify its core targeted audience. It can then look for psychographic commonalities including political beliefs, affinity towards brands, etc. 

 

 

2. More emotionally compelling ads:

 

Using emotional triggers in internet advertising may be quite powerful. 

 

Using emotional triggers in advertising is always a delicate balancing act since what one person finds intriguing and alluring may be ethically reprehensible and completely revolting to another. 

 

However, psychographic data may tell a lot about the target market, allowing businesses to craft emotionally effective commercials – negative or positive – that can significantly enhance their conversion rates.
 

 

3. Enhancing A/B tests:

 

Although A/B test marketing collateral is vital, combining psychographic data into A/B testing can yield even more insightful and precise findings. 

 

Because there is no reliable way to detect or define a visitor's psychographic profile at the time they visit the site, segmenting an A/B test by psychographic dimensions is extremely challenging. 

 

However, a psychographic analysis may provide useful insights into why site visitors reacted the way they did to the A/B test.

 

 

4. More content topic areas:

 

"Land and expand" refers to the practice of widening the range of the content themes to include tangentially related issues that are outside the immediate commercial interest but are still relevant and fascinating to the core audience. This is a great example of how psychographic data may be used.

 

 

5. Better conversion pathways:

 

If the marketing team has built up bespoke conversion routes in Google Analytics to track the performance of certain goals and objectives, incorporating psychographic data may be quite useful at discovering why individuals fail to convert and explaining why people drop off at the point in the funnel that they do. 

 

One may study a problem with a lot more emphasis if they apply the psychographic data they've acquired to it.

 

 

6. Better brand values:

 

It is critical to cultivating brand advocacy. Putting the brand values on full show in everything they do is one of the finest ways to persuade individuals to become committed brand ambassadors for the firm. 

 

A simple approach to achieve this is to examine the psychographic characteristics of the company's most ardent fans and ensure that the overall messaging of the brand represents these brand values.

 

Conclusion

 

Psychographic segmentation is becoming increasingly significant as customers divide themselves into smaller and smaller "interest tribes" like Iron Man athletes, Game of Thrones enthusiasts, BBQ smoker cooks, Fortnite gamers, or social justice warriors. 

 

It is also easier to utilize psychographic segmentation as a technique now that individuals express their interests through social media.

 

In the past, marketers could locate buyer matches solely through demographic segmentation such as age, income, gender, or family size. However, demographics alone no longer provide a complete picture of the segment. 

 

(Also read: How AR is used in Marketing?)

 

In this article, we have talked about psychographics for marketing, the difference between psychographics and demographics, psychographic profiling, psychographic segmentation, and ways to use psychographics in marketing.