How to Use Psychographics: The Marketers Guide

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L.L. Bean’s psychographic research revealed that its target market’s top priority was not beating their personal best or following fashion trends — they wanted to share their experiences and the joy of the great outdoors with those closest to them. “Our customer file was aging so we reassessed our target audience,” said Director of Brand Engagement Kathryn Pratt, speaking at the Association of National Advertisers’ 2019 Brand Activation Conference. In an attempt to better understand the next generation of customers, the company launched a research project to identify commonalities between various demographic groups.

This level of understanding empowers you to connect with them profoundly, foster brand loyalty, and drive successful marketing campaigns. Interests and hobbies provide a window into what captivates and engages your audience during their leisure time. We'll explore these components in detail to help you gain an understanding of your target audience. By delving into the factors that influence behavior and leveraging psychographic insights, you can connect with your audience authentically and drive exceptional results in your marketing endeavors. Psychographic segmentation involves dividing your target audience into groups based on their psychological and lifestyle characteristics. In this guide, we'll demystify the art of connecting with your audience through their values, lifestyles, interests, and personalities.

It can be expensive for many businesses, but it is also time-consuming. Even though psychographic segmentation helps businesses unlock pivotal information, it does come with its limitations. By knowing what emotionally appeals to your target market, your ads will be even more compelling.

Target Market and Product Sales

C) Like to drink wine in the great outdoors in the company of others. Knowing which members of your target market are adrenaline junkies would be super helpful. Build your buyer persona to segment your target audience and create personalized content that speaks directly to them. Start by gaining a deep understanding of your target audience’s psychological characteristics. Behavioral segmentation analyzes consumer behavior such as websites visited and products purchased.

Motivate buyers based on their needs

Brands use psychographic segmentation to create personalized marketing strategies and as psychographic characteristics market research when designing products and services. Geoff’s industry experience spans senior roles with Telstra, Royal Sun Alliance, and St. George Bank, as well as founding and managing a successful small business. By going beyond surface-level data, psychographic segmentation allows marketers to tap into the underlying motivations that inspire action, creating strategies that resonate more deeply and drive stronger results.

• When creating persona profiles, understanding the psychographic characteristic of personal goals about your target audience necessary as well.
• These conversations reveal the problems they’re trying to solve, what influenced their decisions, and how they evaluate value or satisfaction.
• And existing loyal customers engage with exclusive offers, loyalty programs, and referral rewards.
• Quizzes test your expertise in business and Skill tests evaluate your management traits
• This offers a fuller, richer understanding of their target audience, and can help businesses to anticipate future needs and desires.
• Using the same psychographic variables, you can evaluate your competitors’ target market.

Psychographic insights also help brands update their marketing materials to better connect with their audience. By analyzing psychographic data, brands can create campaigns and marketing strategies that resonate with current and prospective customers. For example, business professionals often form a distinct segment with personality characteristics such as high conscientiousness and openness, which marketers can target with tailored messaging. This segmentation helps create personalized marketing strategies, build stronger customer connections, and enhance brand loyalty. Psychographic segmentation divides audiences based on psychological traits such as personality, lifestyle, values, interests, and attitudes, allowing businesses to better understand what motivates their customers. You can promote current trends or upcoming events, reinforce your company values and beliefs, and notify customers of relevant changes in the business.

Meet them where they’re at.

Within the broad segment of Leisure Travelers, for example, travel brands can use psychographic segmentation to drill down to identify individuals as 'novelty-seeking' versus 'familiarity-seeking' consumers, and then customize campaigns based on the most relevant travel style. Similarly, a retail drugstore chain uses a combination of segmentation to identify a super-user who is motivated by a sense of responsibility for family. Understanding these psychographic variations among likely consumers allows marketers to fine-tune keyword targeting to appeal to these distinct sub-groups.

What Are Their Priorities?

Learn about psychographic segmentation, a type of market segmentation that helps marketers understand the psychological characteristics of their audience. Learn how Contentful can help your business manage content chaos, once and for all, and set you up for future success. Psychographic segmentation helps brands better understand their customers and what motivates them, but it can be more challenging to implement than other types of segmentation.