Psychographics in Marketing: How to Use It + 7 Examples

In her annual newsletter, CoreHealth founder and CEO Anne Marie Kirby predicted that artificial intelligence, psychographics, and personalization would be key sites for innovation for companies like her own in 2018. CoreHealth Technologies is a corporate wellness software company and platform that provides services to over 1000 companies (including Fortune 500 companies like Cigna and Sun Financial), representing more than 2 million employees worldwide. To see how this works in practice, let’s look at one company using psychographic modeling to revolutionize the health services industry — an industry that, according to Deloitte, has been moving from volume to value to compensate for revenue pressures and declining margins. Bethke’s sentiment illustrates the extent to which the ad techniques a company uses have become an important part of its own messaging campaign.

Start by asking who your target audience is and why you want to reach them. The most important thing, though, is to consider the rationale for why you are focusing on a particular psychographic segment. The most important thing is to gauge how your products and services appeal to your target audience. Your primary focus should be how psychographic data translates to a group’s primary motivations and behaviors.

Behavioral segmentation focuses on visible action, such as buying a salad. Psychographics focus on internal motivation, such as wanting to live a healthy life. When your brand aligns with existing interests, resistance drops. This includes hobbies, content they consume, and topics they follow. Buyers often see themselves as budget focused, mid range, or premium. A suburban parent prioritizes convenience, reliability, and family focused products.

By analysing the responses, you can identify common themes and patterns among different psychographic segments within your audience. When it comes to collecting psychographic segmentation data, it’s useful to get familiar with and use all the methods, tools and techniques available for getting the best insights into your target audience. And for busy professionals, you can focus on the space-saving and time-saving benefits of your equipment, showcasing its ability to deliver effective workouts in limited time and space. Let’s say your company specialises in providing equipment for home fitness enthusiasts. Methods like purchase behaviour analysis, sentiment analysis, cluster analysis, and factor analysis combined can help you uncover actionable patterns and group respondents based on similar traits. Whichever research tools you employ, gather data from a large, representative sample of your target audience.

• Successful marketing hinges on delivering products aligned with customer desires.
• This multi-faceted approach ensures that your marketing strategies are based on robust, reliable data, leading to more effective campaigns and better ROI.
• As full-time workers, we might infer that they’re likely to seek out activities that help them unwind and disconnect from work—like yoga, meditation, or outdoor pursuits.
• AIO is a type of psychographic segmentation based on the activities and interests of the target audience–ultimately, the things they care most about.
• This can prompt the company to showcase the makeup product range in their ad campaigns to meet the interest of the customers.

Using this information and more, brands can customize messages and tones accordingly. This includes emotional responses and motivations; moral, ethical, and political values; and inherent attitudes, biases, and prejudices. Demographic data — which includes race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, age, occupation, income, social class, and education level — used to be the most valuable kind of information for marketers looking to improve their audience targeting. Gather psychographic data quickly with our Usage & Attitudes solution, and find out more about consumer segmentation with a bit of help from SurveyMonkey. For the eco-conscious segment, you’ll point out your eco-friendly practices. For example, if your company makes trendy shoes out of recycled materials, you'll emphasize the How are psychographics used in marketing? styles for the segment who consider themselves trendsetters.

Improved customer segmentation for targeted campaigns

Psychographics can help you develop loyalty programs and retention strategies that align with the psychographic preferences of your existing customers, which can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Just as you need to market your company to attract new clients, you must also retain those already doing business with you. Collaborating with influencers whose psychographic profiles match those of your target audience can enhance the authenticity and effectiveness of influencer partnerships. Successful marketing hinges on delivering products aligned with customer desires.

You now understand what is important to your buyer, so you’ll know just how to motivate them. As your needs become more sophisticated, you can then consult with a major company such as NielsenIQ or Qualtrics. You can collect the data you need from companies that have already carried out research in your target vertical. If you already have a good idea of what your target audience looks like, you can use that information to do research on your own.

One way to effectively find your target audience to boost engagement and increase conversions is with customer segments. Try Shopify for free, and explore all the tools you need to start, run, and grow your business. Join millions of self-starters in getting business resources, tips, and inspiring stories in your inbox. However, five variables include attitudes, lifestyle choices, psychological traits, ethics, and personal interests. For instance, a psychographics focus group may reveal that many of your customers share a trait like conscientiousness or empathy. Use psychographics to identify new customers who align with the values, lifestyles, cognitive attributes, and behaviors of your existing client base.

Now imagine you’re sending a marketing email to a list of 1,000 people. Gates was analytical and systems-focused, while Jobs led with emotion and design. Instead of basic outreach based on job titles, you can build targeted campaigns that address real pain points and purchase reasons.

By developing psychographic segments, you can spot opportunities for new offers that grow your business. You could highlight how your company empowers team members to take time off and focus on hobbies outside of work. Key points include knowing consumer values and attitudes, having detailed profiles of your target audience. Traditional ways to make psychographic profiles include focus groups for group discussions. It guides marketing strategies to align with audience preferences.

For example, if you are launching a quirky t-shirt company, your core audience may be high-school students who have an interest in trending memes. These tools aim to help brands move beyond surface-level targeting by identifying motivational drivers behind consumer behaviors. Its methodology has been featured in industry podcasts focused on marketing, branding, and sales strategy. Marketing strategies are therefore focused on a customer persona of a woman in her early 50s who manages medications for her children, herself and her spouse, and her aging parents. Understanding these psychographic variations among likely consumers allows marketers to fine-tune keyword targeting to appeal to these distinct sub-groups.

Frankly, we believe the sooner Facebook and other companies are subject to democratically accountable rules on this the better.” — Rob Leathern, Director of Product Management, Facebook Facebook’s efforts to offer greater transparency into its advertising policies was further undermined in December 2019, when an internal memo from company executive Brian “Boz” Bosworth was leaked to The New York Times. Moreover, there is a relatively enormous time lag between ad and “purchase” (voting) in political campaigns. “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.

By understanding these deeper aspects of consumer behavior, businesses can create more targeted and effective marketing strategies. Psychographic segmentation is a powerful tool that allows marketers to divide their target audience into groups based on psychological characteristics. Remember, the key is to use these insights ethically and responsibly, always respecting your customers' privacy and preferences. This alignment can foster stronger emotional connections and brand loyalty among your customer base. For example, if you discover that a significant portion of your audience values environmental sustainability, you might create content highlighting your brand's eco-friendly initiatives or products. Psychographics isn't just a buzzword—it's a powerful tool that can transform your marketing strategies.