Psychographic marketing is the future of marketing. do you wanna know why it is –
The study of consumers, based on their activities, interests, and opinions (often known as the AIOs), is referred to as psychographics. It goes a step further than classifying individuals by the comparatively age-old demographic data, which includes data such as age, gender, and race, among others. Psychographics focuses on cognitive characteristics such as customer emotions, attitudes, values, and other psychological factors.
Marketers and brands utilize this marketing method to create highly personal customer profiles, which help researchers in understanding customer opinions, and motivations that drive communication strategies. Marketers have evolved past blanket advertising methods that made use of emails, TV ads, and billboards.
Psychographic Profiles
Intimate, personal, and detailed customer information about their preferences, personalities, attitudes, values, and lifestyles make up psychographic profiles. With this type of profile, psychographics enables marketers with the understanding they need to generalize what individuals will like and group them with people with similar interests.
Psychographic profiling assists marketers on how best to market and advertise their products to their target audiences, which is made possible through extensive psychographic research carried out by brands. Psychographic profiling also allows brands and marketers to engage with their target audiences with a great focus on personalization, which enables the designing of more suitable products and enhanced marketing.
Psychographic profiles are the result of the construction of unique descriptions of consumer characteristics that are most receptive to a brand’s offerings. This profiling is extremely valuable as customers usually make decisions based on psychographic dimensions such as personal preferences or values.
Psychographic VS Demographic Profiling
To make this simpler, here are the basic characteristics that build up both demographic and psychographic profiles, respectively.
The distinction is obvious, individuals who form on demographic group do not always form the same psychographic group. Each individual may have different preferences, habits, and values, among other factors, which give them their uniqueness that results from psychographic profiles. Individuals often let their attitudes and perceptions make decisions while purchasing, and it is these very aspects of the buying process that psychographics covers. Demographics provides marketers with a generic, broad segmentation and is a good place to start off from, however, to continue further, psychographics is needed as it provides greater leverage during the attempt to influence conversions.
How Psychographic Data Is Gathered
Now that the definition and characteristics are covered, let’s go about how to gather psychographic data. Listed below are a few methods that enable data collection.
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Market Research Organizations
   Image as seen on the Website.
It’s safe to say, conducting market research is unwanted trouble and often burns a hole in the pockets of marketers. This is especially true in the case of smaller organizations and brands that generally look to outsource their work to dedicated market research organizations such as Straits Research. This comes with multiple benefits, the key benefits being the reduced cost to the company and the guarantee of scientific rigorously collected and integrated data.
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Focus Groups
A go-to method used by marketers for psychographic data collection is the conduction of focus groups. Focus groups enable the testing of audiences that adhere to the specifications set by marketers, which include ideal customers of a brand, and established buyer personas. Two drawbacks of this method, however, are the time consumption and the questionability of the information gathered as the pre-set specifications hinder actual happenings.
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Surveys and Questionnaires
Two age-old techniques that work just as well in today’s marketing field are that of surveying and having customers reply to questionnaires. They are relatively inexpensive and can be conducted over the telephone, via emails, traditional mail, and also face-to-face. Another add on is that customers are well versed with how to go about surveys and questionnaires, so it becomes that much easier for marketers. As great as these techniques may seem, there are still a few drawbacks such as limited replies to the questionnaires or data inaccuracy due to answers that may be somewhat aspirational and not completely true.
Types of Psychographic Audiences/ Characteristics
Psychographic audiences comprise multiple varied behaviors that provide marketers with reasons as to why customers like particular products/ services. Marketers can leverage this data to improve their methods of selling, upselling, and cross-selling to customers. The psychographic characteristics that marketers and researchers commonly study are as follows.
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Personalities
It summarizes the collection of traits that individuals exhibit over a period of time.
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Lifestyles
This comprises an individual’s day-to-day activities, which include their associations, where they live, and their spending habits, among others.
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Interests
These include hobbies, pastime activities, social media habits, and other things that occupy an individual’s time.
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Opinions, Beliefs, Values
Each of these is a distinct psychographic trait in itself, however, they are strongly interlinked. For instance, religious beliefs may drive political opinions and vice versa.
How to Use in Marketing?
At this point, the distinction between psychographics and demographics is clear. How, then, do brands apply psychographics in marketing? Well, there are several ways to put psychographic data to use.
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Fine-Tune Brand Values
The way in which marketers position their brand has an immense impact on the quality of connecting a brand has with its users. If the right chords are struck, a loyal legion of brand ambassadors can be established.
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Optimize Landing Pages
Making key adjustments to a brand’s landing pages is one of the most effective ways of improving conversion rates. The psychographic data generated is instrumental in landing page optimization.
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Generate Content Ideas
Although brands and marketers already have a theme, they pivot their content around, marketers must make use of their insights to launch into previously uncharted subcategories. This could result in an increased customer engagement rate and also more shares.
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Keyword Targeting
Irrespective of paid search or organic ads, marketers must choose the right keywords. Psychographics assist marketers in narrowing down the keyword list to ensure highly targeted campaigns.
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Social Media Marketing
Marketers must determine which specific platform their audiences are most active on and drive the majority of their concentration to these platforms. In Facebook ads, psychographic data allows marketers to target customers more effectively.
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Email Marketing
The points addressed in emails and the quality of content significantly influence the conversion rate. If marketers can nail down the customer’s pain points, they can be sure to improve engagement and increase the chance of subscribers taking action.
Examples
Psychographics can be the difference between a great brand and a brand that falls just short in terms of customer satisfaction. Here are a few examples of great brands leveraging psychographics in their marketing strategy.
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Dropbox
   Logo by Dropbox as seen on the Website.
Before its 2017 rebrand, Dropbox carried out tons of research and tracked the results of conversions from its rebrand. Without doing so, it would not have been able to create a brand image that represents the majority of the customers that do business with.
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Porsche
Logo by Porsche as seen on the Website.
‘Engineered for Magic. Everyday’, a campaign by Porsche, efficiently utilizes video marketing that was launched to the market to the psychographic profiles of people who wanted a sports car for their day-to-day use. Ads were redesigned to fit daily commute rather than long winding roads that car commercials generally resort to. A part of the campaign shows a yellow Porsche 911 parked up against a school building with text that readout ‘School Bus.’
Conclusion
Obtaining psychographic data is crucial, but the application of this data in the marketing strategy is how a brand makes it effective. Essentially, brands need to craft their content, messages, and offerings in such a way that they leverage the psychographic data that marketers have so arduously collected. Marketers need to also keep in mind the additional advantage that psychographic marketing provides by enabling the combination with demographic data to create even more personalized customer experiences.
