What are Psychographics in Marketing? How to Get Started

Many people within your company will have information about your target customers (like your sales team or customer support team). And with Contentsquare’s built-in AI, creating smart surveys is easy—helping you to ask the right questions to gather the insights you need, faster and with less guesswork. Finally, ask them to discuss how they narrowed their options, who was involved, and what they learned about the solutions they evaluated. (You might spend 5 to 10 minutes learning about their motivations for their decision to buy.)

Companies doing business in the U.S. are sometimes required to collect sales tax at the point-of-sale, and different states have different tax rates. We used this method to bust assumptions and help them better serve a key customer segment. After you’ve done the market research, however, you’ll know what your customers want (and you’ll have direct quotes to back your conclusions up).

Priority initiatives explain why some buyers are willing to invest in a solution like yours and what separates them from those who are fine with the status quo. Interests include hobbies, pastimes, media consumption habits, and what occupies someone’s time. Lifestyle is the collection of someone’s day-to-day activities and includes things like their associations, where they live, and where they spend psychographic factors their time. So, they might want to include images of men enjoying solitude and fishing alone on their landing pages and social media accounts. Does her love of cats or approach to exercise help you influence her choice to try out your project management software? Demographics tend to be quantitative whereas psychographics tend to be qualitative.

Social Class Terminologies

For instance, if they are a parent, they probably have different daily activities and concerns than the average single college student, and both would have a completely different lifestyle to a retired empty-nester. We’re here to guide you through the complexities of psychographic segmentation so you can connect with your audiences in genuine ways. Creating fully fleshed-out buyer personas built with psychographics, demographics, and buyer behavior can take your marketing campaigns, messaging, and conversion rates to the next level. Small companies knew they could be doing it wrong, and if they messed up, they might end up in jail (a psychographic criterion). But, what they learned through interviews was that they needed to segment based on entirely different criteria.

You’ll come up with many insights, but you can’t address them all, so focus on that sweet spot where your product meets what your customers want. Find user quotes (from your surveys, interviews, etc) that support this insight. You can try to counteract these biases by speaking with a range of teams to gather diverse opinions on your buyers. So, your sales team may think that price holds more weight in the buyer’s process than it actually does. For example, buyers often withhold critical information from salespeople and relate price as a critical aspect of their decision as a negotiation tactic.

You can analyze and refine your marketing strategy

• For example, a travel company might target adventurous and open-minded individuals with marketing campaigns that emphasize exotic destinations and unique experiences.
• Demographics provide the foundational data about your audience, such as age, gender, income, education, and occupation.
• Since the traveler likely charges the flight to the company, offering them personally a unique value will likely influence their decision to buy.
• For instance, a company selling outdoor gear might target individuals who enjoy hiking, camping, and other outdoor activities.

The resistance may come from buyers themselves, but it could also come from peers, friends, family, or colleagues. What if the prestige that comes with owning a MacBook Pro, and the feeling its sleek design gives them, matters more than tech specs in the end? Success factors are similar to benefits, but they’re more specific and defined. Priority initiatives aren’t just pain points that your features are designed to reverse.

Limitations of the Psychographic Approach, Overcoming Challenges to Reach Your Target Audience Effectively

This can guide the tone of your messaging and inform the type of products and services you offer or emphasize in marketing. While it’s not out of the ordinary for target audiences to be diverse in this sense, others will attract audiences that line up along particular belief systems. When people feel like you recognize and speak to their unique style of being human, they usually respond well to it. When you understand which personalities are attracted to your products and services, you can cater your messaging toward them in a way that drives positive engagement. You might even buy ad space in channels that your target audience engages with. If you find that your target audience has considerable overlap with a particular hobby, sport, pastime, or fandom, reference it in your messaging.