Psychographics 101: How to Think Like a Customer

Psychographics covers those aspects of the buying process in greater detail. Demographic segmentation is a great place to start, as it divides your market into broad strokes, but psychographics gives marketers greater leverage in influencing conversions. Psychographic information includes subjective data like belief systems, values, goals, and attitudes. Demographics include objective data like gender, age, income, and marital psychographic status.

Travel and adventure apparel company Kathmandu has a unique example of this with the launch of the “world’s first adaptable all-weather wedding dress”. The psychographic data that you’ve gathered is a rough blueprint for the directions your business could undertake. Use people and interest targeting on Business Manager (for Meta Ads) or TikTok ads to utilize psychographics to reach your ideal customer. Analyzing your social media presence may reveal that your demographic and psychographic audience is interacting most with Instagram Stories rather than Facebook.

Tech company Snapchat really got what young people wanted from a messenger app – pioneering a quick, fun and fleeting form of communication. For example, a customer might care more about online reviews (behavioral) because they’re driven by peer validation (psychographic). Merging behavioral data with psychographic data can reveal why certain touchpoints matter more to specific segments. With a deeper understanding of what resonates with different customer segments, businesses can allocate resources more efficiently. Psychographic segmentation allows businesses to shape products and services that integrate seamlessly into a customer and prospect’s life. Psychographic segmentation offers businesses a nuanced understanding of the intrinsic motivations, desires and lifestyles within their target market.

Harley Davidson isn’t just selling motorcycles; they’re selling an experience steeped in freedom, adventure and community. Their “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign challenged consumers to consider the environmental impact of their purchases, advocating for buying less and instead extending the lifespan of each item. Here are some of the best examples of brands developing unique understandings of their segments to create marketing campaigns and industry-changing products. It should come as no surprise that many of the world’s most successful brands are masters of psychographic segmentation. Psychographic segmentations do tend to have a longer shelf life than many other types of studies, but don’t take that for granted.

Applying the Theory: Psychographic Segmentation in Marketing

Social media analytics lets you identify trends in interests and attitudes, and even use sentiment analysis to help dig a little more deeply into psychographic attitudes. In an excellent HBR article, Alexandra Samuel outlines how technology has enabled us to collect psychographic data more easily. How do you learn about the psychographics of your target market? This is one of the most important areas in psychographics. Have you noticed an increase in brands displaying their opinions and values? Activities are what people do—things like skiing, reading, fishing, weightlifting.

• However, which ingredients are required to make successful psychographic segmentation examples?
• They help you build robust user personas.
• Psychographics are important—not just for messaging strategy and emotional targeting in your ads and on your site, but for how and where you acquire customers.
• A focus group brings together a carefully selected, demographically diverse set of potential clients for a guided discussion about a product or service.

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These have been behind many great psychographic segmentation examples. In terms of psychographic segmentation examples, they can be a great way to gather initial insights to refine your data collection strategy down the line. Are you ready to take the first step in creating your own psychographic segmentation examples?

Let’s say your company specialises in providing equipment for home fitness enthusiasts. Whichever research tools you employ, gather data from a large, representative sample of your target audience. Following that, we’ll talk more in-depth about applying psychographics to your marketing efforts, as well as the different methods available for data collection. Let’s walk through step-by-step instructions on how to create psychographic segments for your audience. On the flip side, their marketing for economy flights focuses on the holiday destination rather than the on-board customer experience. For example, Qantas markets luxurious first-class services with priority boarding, focusing on in-flight perks to appeal to upper-class travellers.

Not only does it have a detailed analysis of your audience demographics, but you also have the option to refine further to see psychographics. Some religions prohibit specific kinds of food or alcohol, and people will inevitably have contrasting attitudes towards modesty and social etiquette. This includes things such as where they live, whether or not they have children, whether they are in a relationship or not, and if they’re someone who lives to work vs. someone who works to live. The Big Five is a great method to return to when you’re collecting psychographic data and looking to assess who your target customer could be.

Reviewing Existing Information

A psychographic profile is a unique description of the attitudes, habits, and interests of an individual or group. That said, it’s hard to tell the exact difference between psychographics and demographics. In marketing, psychographics are used in conjunction with demographics to understand and market to consumers' purchasing habits. If this sounds like you, it's time to focus on producing relevant marketing content — and to do that, you'll need psychographics. Their success in psychographic segmentation lies in tapping into these deep-rooted emotions and values, ensuring that their marketing and products resonate with the dreams and aspirations of their audience.

How To Use Psychographics: The Marketer’s Guide

Psychographics have been applied to the study of personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. As a result, you’ll generate more qualified leads than you thought possible, increasing ROI from your marketing campaigns. A consumer's activities can tell you about the things they’ve already spent resources, time, and money participating in.

Definition of Psychographic Segmentation

The main types of psychographics are interests, activities, and opinions. Even at a micro level, it’s nice to know your audience’s demographics and which demographics make the best customers for your business—especially when you’re ramping up ad spend. There are many different ways to segment a market along psychographic dimensions, but there are a few you’ll want to include from the start. A focus group is a group of people, typically not affiliated with your company, who participate in a discussion about your brand and your products. The brand understands that their target audience don’t just see bikes as modes of transport, but as symbols of a distinct lifestyle.

You can make an educated guess of someone’s lifestyle by identifying key behaviors and working backward. A very basic way of categorizing your potential customer’s personality is the “Big Five Personality Traits” theory. By combining both sets of data, you can garner a detailed picture of potential customers within the market, and those that may have interest in what you have to say but haven’t yet discovered your brand. The most efficient way to create an accurate buyer persona is to combine both the demographic and psychographic information together in order to understand what makes your target customers buy. This is why psychographics is essential in successful marketing. When it comes to data, psychographics represents the qualitative side of understanding individuals.

Marketers could also differentiate between groups of consumers based on their buying priorities, social class, and more. Let’s take a look at some popular psychographics examples below. The image you choose will depend on the psychographic profile you’ve created for your target buyer.

Examples of Psychographic Characteristics

An expert at entrepreneurship, he started Foundr — a global media and education company that reaches out to millions of people across the world. Use psychographics to find the why, and watch your business become an empire. Start broad with demographics, and then begin honing in using psychographics. You can promote current trends or upcoming events, reinforce your company values and beliefs, and notify customers of relevant changes in the business.

Parents who focus on minimizing screen time (“limiters”) gravitate towards software and devices that support their kids’ literacy, math, and academic skills. But their reasons for purchasing are much more closely tied to parent psychographics. Take a user persona based on a mix of demographic and psychographic data. However, as Samuel explains, the internet has made psychographics more actionable and easier to access. In fact, the best user personas contain demographic, psychographic, firmographic, and behavioral data. Social media monitoring is hugely valuable, too, since the organic conversations that emerge online may help you spot emerging issues or psychographic clusters.”