Psychographics: What are They and How to Use Them in your Marketing

What Are They And Why Do They Matter?

Psychographic information describes ‘‘why’’ someone buys a certain product, while demographics just explain ‘‘who’’ is your buyer. In this sense, psychographic segmentation consists of dividing the market into smaller groups, considering buyer’s habits, hobbies, spending habits, and values. Taking in consideration information like what really motivates the actions of your public, opens a huge door for the success of your brand.

Psychographics Vs. Demographics

People who fall into the same demographic group don’t necessarily fall into the same psychographic group. There are a few main differences between the information given to you by these two ways of segmentation. And you must be aware of them.

Demographics

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Occupation
  • Ethnicity 
  • Geolocation
  • Education level
  • Religion

Psychographics

  • Personality characteristics
  • Lifestyle
  • Social class
  • Attitudes
  • Principles & beliefs 
  • Activities & Interests

Consumer Psychology

A consumer’s lifestyle, habits, behavior, and interests are the key factors that clients/markets are looking for. This helps in developing in a well-customized marketing strategy. For example, imagine targeting a customer who’s into art and you’re trying to sell on jewelry. The next step is to incorporate aesthetic images into your ads or take special care in picking the picture compositions of your products.

It is not a surprise that everyone is guided by their subjective perceptions when making purchase decisions, that’s why consumer psychology has a huge influence in consumption habits. Psychographics covers such aspects of the buying process, because they’re mainly conducted based on “how” people think and “what” do they aspire their life to be.

How Does It Works?

Demographic segmentation is a great place to start but combining it with psychographics gives marketers greater leverage in influencing conversions. Having both methods ensures you have one of the most effective segmentation strategies. A significant amount of detailed information about a user is accessed by social media websites, search engines, and mobile applications. Once a customer approves an application to access personal information or a cookie on a website, they start leaving their digital chain.

That’s how big data works. This information gets tracked to observe purchasing habits and is used to analyze attitudes, personalities, lifestyles, etc. As a business, you can implement big data methods such as linear or logistic regression to understand and map psychographic traits to customize products according to the tracked psychographic qualities.

 

Benefits

Brands must focus not only on dividing the market based on psychographics, but also on connecting with their target market on the basis of psychographics. Once we understand this, we can see the advantages of this technique. For example:

  • Understanding your clients concerns by analyzing their traits.
  • More precise customization of products and services.
  • More effective than geographic or demographic segmentation.
  • Extension of behavioral segmentation offers options to divide the population based on attitudes or opinions.

So… There you go! Psychographics are an exciting field of study that can be immensely beneficial to us marketers, but especially beneficial for our clients, which matters the most. The goal is always offering better services, and now with such insights. THE SKY’S THE LIMIT.