Psychographics: Definition & Marketing Use Cases

Together, they create profiles you can use to guide research, creative, and product strategy. Each reveals a different side of motivation, from enduring traits to everyday routines. Thoughtful planning helps you reach the right respondents and gather sound psychographic data. They reveal the attitudes, lifestyles, and motivations that drive decisions and help you turn those findings into more effective messages, products, and experiences. It’s most useful for sizing markets, estimating reach, and planning top-level campaigns or media buys.

Alternatively, you could turn to market research companies that operate in your sector, since they can provide much of this same information – though it will cost you more money. Psychographic research reveals what your prospects are most interested in and what things reduce the likelihood that they will buy something from you. You could prioritize outreach within Twitter’s bitcoin community, add Southampton’s boat show to your annual physical marketing calendar, or push your green credentials on your landing pages. As you hopefully now know, psychographics in marketing takes into account the psychological aspects of consumer behavior.

Psychographic data captures interests, attitudes, and psychological characteristics that influence consumer behavior in ways raw numbers cannot. To define psychographics in marketing is to see beyond statistics and into the narratives that guide behavior. Psychographics in marketing describe the inner world of your customers, their values, beliefs, lifestyle preferences, and personality traits. Unlike demographics, which draw the outline, psychographics fill in the color, revealing the deeper patterns behind purchasing habits. That's why the realm of psychographics in marketing is the values, lifestyles, and motivations that shape consumer behavior. When you analyze psychographic data, building effective campaigns that motivate consumers to buy may become easier.

• Businesses can leverage these insights to drive more targeted marketing campaigns, acquire new customers, personalize consumer connections, and more.
• One study found that using psychographic information to target customers was up to four times more effective than using demographic information.
• Psychographic segmentation helps companies clarify who their customers are and why they are as they are.

What Are Real-World Psychographic Segmentation Examples?

It’s a way to learn what they value, how they think, and what motivates them to buy. This information can be used to create highly targeted marketing campaigns, personalised experiences and improved customer service. As AI continues to develop, we can expect to see even more sophisticated psychographic analysis tools that will provide businesses with a deeper understanding of their customers. When collecting psychographic data, it is important to obtain informed consent from the participants and to protect their privacy.

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. Service industries are also getting in on the game, devising their own five-factor models, reaching new clients, and improving their services at the same time. Other automotive companies have expressed the impact of psychographic segmentation across their marketing strategies as well. (This is, as we will see, a common tactic for companies that wish to tailor their psychographic models to industry-specific needs.) Other early companies that use psychographic tactics include Narratrs, Five, StatSocia, and Merchant IQ, among others.

When done well, this process transforms abstract psychological attributes into usable insights that guide marketing strategy. While demographic data tells you the size and shape of your customer base, psychographic insights reveal the deeper forces driving consumer behavior. Simply put, psychographics represents the study of people based on their psychological attributes, including their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria. When you understand what motivates each segment, you stop allocating budget toward broadly tolerable content and start concentrating it on messaging that resonates deeply with people most likely to buy. Psychographic segmentation matters because it closes the gap between knowing who your audience is and understanding what actually motivates them to act.

How to Collect Psychographic Data

The image you choose will depend on the psychographic profile you’ve created for your target buyer. You might pair that with an image of the person your target buyer wants to become. At the end of your ad, you might say, “Your path to a healthy lifestyle starts here — click here to begin.” Last, you’ll include a tailored call-to-action that’s at the intersection of your target buyer’s needs, priorities, interests, and values. You target buyer loves baking, so you’ll want to include healthy baking recipes in your Pinterest, Instagram, and blog. You know that your target buyer spends their free time on Pinterest.

By capturing both behavioral data and qualitative insights, CRM platforms what are psychographics give marketing teams the ability to build richer psychographic profiles that go beyond simple demographic segmentation. This is why psychographics in marketing are essential for building robust buyer personas. By collecting psychographic data and creating buyer personas, marketing teams can craft advertising campaigns that resonate with both. If demographics group customers by age, gender, or income, psychographic segmentation takes it further by clustering people according to their values, motivations, and lifestyle preferences.