If there’s one rule that proves the importance of psychographic research, it’s this:
People in the same demographic or behavioral group don’t always have the same psychographic profile.
You post about your product on social media, and you see some engagement, but no one is buying your product.
If you produce marketing content that is relevant to your audience, you will need to use psychographics.
What are psychographics
Psychographics are psychological and cognitive attributes that reveal consumer’s beliefs, values, and goals. In marketing, psychographics are used with demographics to understand and market to consumer’s purchasing habits.
Your buyer persona is a detailed picture of the audience you serve now or would like to serve in the future, which is informed by the combination of demographic and psychographic information.
By understanding your audience and your product, you can more effectively target customers and create marketing campaigns.
Psychographics vs Demographics
The difference between demographics and psychographics is that demographics are objective facts about a person while psychographics are subjective opinions or attitudes about a person.
Psychographics is a more effective way to segment your market than demographics. For example, demographic information might tell you a person’s age, but psychographic information will tell you that the person is just starting a family and is in the market for baby products.
Psychographics
Personality Characteristics
Lifestyle
Social Class
Habits
Beliefs
Behaviors
Interests
Demographics
Age
Gender
Occupation
Ethnicity
Geolocation
Education Level
Religion
Targeting specific groups with tailored content allows marketers to convert prospects into customers more cheaply and easily.
What is psychographic research
Psychographic research is the study of a person’s values, desires, goals, interests, and lifestyle choices. It is often done alongside demographic and other types of research to get a better understanding of the target audience.
Personality
Question: How would you describe yourself?
Sample answers:
- I’m a risk-taker.
- I find that I’m easily swayed by other people’s opinions.
- I like to challenge and push myself to be the best I can be in life.
- I like to stand out in a crowd.
- I tend to make decisions quickly and based on ‘gut feeling’.
Self-perceptions
Question: Which of the following attributes do you possess?
Sample answers:
- I’m creative.
- I’m more affluent than the average.
- I’m adventurous.
Lifestyles
Question: Which of the following best describes your lifestyle?
Sample answers:
- I tend to buy the premium version of a product.
- I’m very career-orientated.
- I like to pursue a life of challenge.
Desires:
Question: What do you desire from life?
Sample answers:
- Money.
- Respect from my peers.
- To be knowledgeable.
Values & Opinion:
Question: What do you value most in life?
Sample answers:
- My appearance.
- To better myself.
- To better society.
- Value for money.
- Family.
Since consumers are very unique and complex, it is important to have in-depth and accurate research when it comes to their psychographic information.
Psychographic Profiling
A psychographic profile is a description of the attitudes, habits, interests and values of an individual or group. It is a collection of consumer behaviors that tell you who would be most receptive to your organization’s offering.
Your advertising will be more emotionally compelling if you take your audience’s psychological attributes into account.
Demographic Profile:
- Female
- Aged 45-65
- Married
- Has children
- Household income $100K+
Psychographic Profile:
- Dealing with issues of unintended weight gain, diabetes, lack of energy, and hormonal imbalances
- Concerned with health and appearance
- Wants a healthy lifestyle, but doesn’t have much time
- Enjoys going online in the evenings and is a big fan of Pinterest
- Tends to favor quality over economy
- Finds fulfillment in her career and family
- Values time with a small group of friends
The two lists mentioned are of demographics and psychographics. It is easy to see that you need both in order to have a clear understanding of your audience. Demographics only give you a rough idea of your audience while psychographics gives you more in depth insight.
Where psychographics fit on the data spectrum
Psychographic research is not usually done alone. Most brands will use other first or third-party analytics (such as website analytics or social listening data) to validate or extend the research.
Demographic information provides details about who your target audience is, while behaviors reveal what they do. Psychographics explain why they act in certain ways.
Market research often hails psychographics as providing the most crucial insight because it can have the biggest impact on creative ideas, strategies, or marketing campaigns.
By combining demographic and psychographic information, you can build highly sophisticated profiles of consumer preferences that give you a much clearer picture of who they really are.
Quantitative vs. qualitative
Behavioral and demographic data that marketers gather from website analytics is quantifiable, but there is a misconception that psychographics are only qualitative.
When psychographic data is analyzed properly, it can provide a more subjective and nuanced perspective than traditional research.
This method is often used by marketing and advertising professionals to understand their target audience’s psychological factors.
Active vs. passive data
Active data refers to information that is provided willingly and knowingly by an individual, for example through surveys. Passive data is collected through online tracking technology, such as analytics tools. Neither type of data reveals the identity of the individual it came from.
Data that describe demographics (such as age, gender, income, etc.) and behaviors (such as purchasing habits, web browsing habits, etc.) can be collected automatically, without the need for people to take any action. However, data that describe people’s attitudes, interests, and opinions (psychographic data) can only be collected through active methods, such as surveys. In order to get a full and accurate view of consumers, both types of data must be collected and combined.
Baking psychographic research into your strategy
Companies are being asked to design models that revolve around the consumer. Our latest research reveals one of the overarching reasons behind this shift:
Consumers want more personal relationships with brands.
Here are 5 ways to achieve this:
Build detailed audience segments
Psychographic segmentation is a way of dividing a population based on psychological factors. This can include things like personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyle. Psychographic segmentation is an important element of marketing because it allows you to target your message to specific groups of people who are more likely to be interested in your product or service.
Psychographics can deepen your knowledge of your target audience. They can also affect your targeting strategy.
Construct accurate personas
When creating a persona that accurately represents your target audience, it is important to base it on facts.
The persona-based data will help you better understand what motivates customers, what drives their purchase decisions, and what kind of lifestyle they live so that you can build a brand that resonates with them on a deeper level.
Invest in the right channels
You might be aware that your target consumers are active social media users, but you may not be sure what they use it for. Determining the reasons they use it will give you significant insight into the type of marketing campaign or strategy that will effectively engage them.
Tell emotionally compelling stories
Consumers are looking for brands to provide a more personalized experience, one of the key elements of which is being able to tell stories that will capture their attention.
If you know the personality traits and inner workings of specific groups, you can more effectively convert a prospect into a customer. Agencies that know more about their client’s audience than the client does are always more attractive to potential clients.
Adapt your brand and product strategy
Psychographics, which refers to consumers’ psychological profiles, should be taken into account when deciding the direction of a brand. This involves understanding what customers want from the brand on an emotional level in order to create a consistent message.
Psychographic Factors
Psychographic factors are things like personality characteristics, lifestyle, social class, habits, behaviors, and interests. Segmenting your audience means dividing it up into groups based on these factors.
Personality Characteristics
Determining the personality characteristics of people in your target audience can help you tailor your marketing campaign more effectively. By understanding how they interact with the world, you can better target your messaging.
Lifestyle
The way a person views themselves in society (lifestyle psychographics) can be influenced by things like relationships, job, and other major life decisions.
Social Class
There is no official social class system in the United States, but people sometimes group themselves into lower, middle, and upper classes. People usually make purchasing decisions based on the class they see themselves as being a part of.
Habits
Habits are defined as the things that people do regularly, without thinking about them. Because people are so used to their habits, it can be difficult to break them. For this reason, marketers put a lot of thought into creating campaigns and advertisements that will appeal to people’s habits.
Behaviors
How a person behaves is a significant factor in predicting that person’s consumer behavior. This includes factors such as a person’s buying patterns, product usage, and how often they purchase a product.
Interests
How a person is interested in a brand can influence how that person interacts with it. Usually, people who are the target audience for a product will have similar interests, so advertisers can use those interests to create marketing campaigns that will produce a desired reaction.
Behavioral segmentation separates groups based on their actions, while psychographic segmentation separates groups based on their personal interests and beliefs.
How to find psychographic data
What are psychographics and how can we get them? Psychographics are demographic characteristics that describe a population’s personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. There are several ways to acquire psychographic information about a population.
Interview existing clients
If you have a good relationship with the person, you can tell them exactly why you want to know and be more direct. If you are not in a business where you have that kind of relationship with customers, try to find some friends who are like your ideal client and ask them the same questions.
When you ask the right questions, you can find out what they do for fun, what their budget is like, what motivates them, and what their personal goals are.
Investigate website analytics
If you haven’t been monitoring your analytics carefully, you may need to do some experimentation. Ultimately, this approach can be very successful, as it allows you to observe people’s actual motivations by their actions. They may not consider themselves to be bargain hunters, but if a discount code enticed them to buy, then that shows their preference for deals.
Use focus groups
A focus group is a group of people who are not affiliated with your company who discuss your brand and products. The participants should be as unbiased as possible and closely align with your target market.
To get the most out of focus groups, create a questionnaire that covers the needs and wants of your target audience.
Collect data from market research companies
You can collect data from companies that have done research in your target area.
This option can become expensive, so we recommend trying a free or low-cost market research tool first. As your needs become more sophisticated, you can consult with a major company such as NielsenIQ or Qualtrics.
Psychographic Marketing
We’ve gathered some hypothetical data using the techniques outlined in the previous section:
Motivate your buyer based on their needs
Now that you know what is important to your buyer, you can figure out how to best motivate them. Keep in mind what they need to make a purchase decision, and offer accordingly. Remember that deep discounts may not always be the best approach.
Meet them where they’re at
If you know your potential buyer spends their free time on Pinterest. You can, therefore, save money by not investing in Facebook, YouTube, newspaper, and magazine ads.
Share tips on how to save time around the house and with meal prep on your Pinterest for Business account. Give your followers ideas for fun activities to do with family and friends.
Capitalize on their priorities, hobbies, and interests
If you want to appeal to your target buyer, try to learn more about their hobbies and interests. For example, if they love baking, make sure to include healthy baking recipes in your Pinterest, Instagram, and blog. This will help you choose what topics to write about and what images to use in your next ad.
Include a tailored call-to-action
What you include at the end of your ad should be something that speaks to what your target buyer needs, wants, and values. You might say something like, “If you’re ready to start your journey to a healthier lifestyle, click here to get started.”
Takeaways for psychographic marketing
If you want to fully understand your audience, you can’t just rely on demographic and behavioral data. You’ll also have gaps in targeting and leaks in media spending.
Psychographics allow you to target your audience more precisely and build better brand experiences for them.
Psychographic data, when combined with passive data, gives you the information you need about your audience’s habits and preferences in order to create an effective customer journey.
The best way to gather psychographic data on a large scale is by conducting surveys. The large samples collected from surveys give your data validity.
Psychographics can be used to guide media spending, creative direction, product development, new business pitching, and brand purpose.