Psychographic Profiling: The Secret to Enhanced Marketing

It’s no secret that good marketing works on the basis of understanding your customers’ wants and needs. But how well do you know your audience? Do you know exactly what makes them want to buy from you?

Traditionally, marketers would answer these questions by studying demographic data, such as age, gender and education. However, it’s time to admit that this data alone won’t cut it. 

Your customers are real people with real emotional needs, individual quirks, their own desires, and unique beliefs. To truly engage your customers, you need to resonate with these characteristics - and that’s where psychographic profiling comes in. 

In this guide, we’ll help you learn how psychographic profiling can enhance your marketing activities and take your brand in the right direction. 

What are psychographics?

In marketing, consumer psychographics reveal the customer’s beliefs, values, and goals based on their psychological and cognitive characteristics. Psychographics and demographics are used in marketing to understand and market to consumers' buying habits.

Psychographics go beyond surface level characteristics. It aims to understand more granular information about individuals. For instance, psychographic profiling would not only ask ‘what’ customers like, but also ‘why’ they like it. 

As an example, a brand selling non-dairy milk alternatives could target their marketing towards vegans or lactose intolerant consumers to some success. But by profiling customers through a psychographic approach, they could identify and target vegans who care deeply about animal welfare, or understand why lactose intolerant segments prefer a particular dairy milk substitute.

By understanding these intentions, brands can develop precisely targeted communications that speak closely to customers and address their needs.

Psychographics vs demographics: what’s the difference?

Demographic profiling has long been used in marketing to segment customers into subgroups. Psychographic profiling does a very similar thing, except on a much deeper level. 

Demographic data usually involves factors such as age, gender, occupation, ethnicity, geolocation, or education level. However, psychographic data would involve factors such as personality characteristics, lifestyle choices, habits, views, beliefs, interests and behaviours. 

Taking a more qualitative approach to understanding consumers, psychographic profiling can help businesses benefit from a more individualised understanding of their customers on a level that demographic profiling cannot provide. For example, just because a customer segment all share the same age, does not mean that they share the same beliefs, or have the same interest. However, it is useful to use demographic and psychographic data alongside one another to develop a fuller understanding of customer segments. 

By tailoring communications to segmented groups at a psychological level, customers are more likely to engage, interact and convert. This can of course be a much more cost-effective way to market to customers, often resulting in increased ROI. 

What is psychographic profiling?

So, we’ve talked about what psychographics is, but what is a psychographic profile?

A psychographic profile is a unique view of a customer segment according to their values, interests, hobbies, principles, preferences, beliefs, behaviours, and other cognitive characteristics.

This is similar to a buyer persona, except the psychographic profile uses real data from customers to develop a view of that customer segment. Using real data, marketers can be reassured that the information in the segment is accurate and representative of the customers that fall within this subgroup.

Psychographic profiles are used by businesses because customers always buy something for a specific reason. Whether it’s a purchase they have made because of a want or need, there is a decision-making process behind every purchase, and these intentions are understood within the profile.

This kind of data is not only valuable for understanding audiences' psychological attributes and sending targeted communications, but also for creating emotionally relatable brands. Take a look at how we can help you get started with our psychographic profiling services. 

Psychographic factors

Personalities - our personalities are totally unique. However, there are several characteristics that can be used to link individuals together by similarity. For instance, the difference between extroverted and introverted consumers. 

Lifestyle - lifestyle factors can help brands understand how a customer views themselves and interacts within society. For example, certain customers might live very active lifestyles in comparison to others. 

Habits - habits are behaviours that form part of a customer’s daily lives. A good example would be individuals who have a daily skincare routine. Skincare brands would generally find success marketing to customers within this habitual segment, as opposed to customer segments who do not have habitual skincare routines. 

Attitudes and beliefs - beliefs are the integral attitudes that we hold toward particular matters. A popular attitude and belief that has emerged in recent years is the rise of veganism. As a result, brands have become more invested in understanding the motivations behind consumers’ vegan beliefs. 

Interests - interests and hobbies relate to the activities that customers engage with. Common examples include things like art, football, music, and many other areas.

The benefits of psychographic marketing

The benefits of psychographic marketing are unmatched. It helps brands connect with customers on a level that truly speaks to their emotional wants and needs. 

As consumers, we are completely driven by emotion. Even the most mundane of purchases have an emotional intention behind them. A kitchen mop, for example. We might buy one for the completely utilitarian purpose of keeping the kitchen clean. But, we wouldn’t want to keep the kitchen clean if there wasn’t an emotional motivation to do so. We want a clean and tidy space because it helps us live happily, think clearly, and stay organised.

Considering this, psychographic marketing can be hugely beneficial to any business. 

1. Motivate buyers based on emotional wants and needs

Psychographic profiling allows businesses to identify exactly what makes their customers tick. By addressing these desires, brands can motivate buyers based on things they will actually find beneficial to their lives. 

Doing this before the competition can be particularly powerful. If you can tailor your brand to customers’ psychological preferences before other brands, you’re onto a winner.

2. Resonate with your customers’ lifestyles

Brands are more than just a logo and a name, they are entire entities carrying meaning, perceptions, and even their own personalities. They have the power to form parts of our everyday lives, and express parts of our identity.

Clothing brands are a perfect example of this. The saying goes, ‘you are what you wear’, and this is definitely true when it comes to branding. More and more clothing brands are appealing to customer segments that value sustainable living, for example.

Let’s look at UK supermarkets as another example. The ‘top’ UK supermarkets include Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons, Aldi, Waitrose and M&S. Each supermarket uses unique branding and pricing strategies to appeal to different segments of society.

Tesco and Asda appeal to customers as everyday brands that will help buyers save money on their shop. They sell on the benefits of low prices and convenience. Let’s look at their slogans:

• Tesco - “Every little helps”
• Asda - “Saving you money every day”

On the other hand, Waitrose and M&S appeal to customers as high-end brands that provide high-quality products. They sell on the benefits of feeling good and enjoying food. Their slogans are:

• M&S - “This is not just food, this is M&S food”
• Waitrose -  “Food to FEEL GOOD about”

3. Tailor your call to action

Call-to-actions (CTAs) are essential to any marketing campaign. They tell the buyer exactly what to do in order to take action and engage with your brand. Hubspot reports that personalised CTAs perform 202% better than non-personalised CTAs. 

But, a personalised CTA can only be effective if you know how to personalise it the right way. And this relies on psychographic data.

An example of a generic call to action is ‘find out more’. However, a personalised call to action would be more detailed than this. 

Take a brand that sells health vitamins, for example. If they wanted to target customers who are struggling with tiredness and want to have a healthier lifestyle, but don’t have much time to cook and eat nutritional meals, a personalised call to action might be ‘get back on your feet, the easy way’. 

How to find psychographic data

Gathering psychographic data can be game-changing for your marketing activities. Psychographic profiles can be used to enhance every channel of marketing, and even your wider brand strategy.

So, let’s take a look at how to get psychographic data.

1. Questionnaires and surveys

One of the most common ways that brands can find out more about their customers' wants, needs, opinions, lifestyles, beliefs, and other psychographic characteristics, is to interview customers.

Many brands use questionnaires and surveys to find out psychographic information about their customers. This can be a useful way to get started and build up psychographic segments. 

You might want to ask customers for feedback on why they made a particular purchase, for example. But, it’s important to ensure you don’t come across as too invasive in this kind of survey. Instead, keep your questions to a minimum, asking only what is necessary. Customers might not feel comfortable being asked so many specific questions about their lifestyles or beliefs.

2. Analyse campaign and website data

Your website content can be a sanctuary of useful psychographic information. On top of demographic data, analytics tools can reveal useful psychographic insights about your audience. 

Take a look at your content performance, and the performance of any previous campaigns and analyse what worked, and what didn’t. What motivated people to engage with your brand or make a purchase? Do you have particular content pieces that perform well?

If you don’t often take a look at your analytics, chances are you’ll find some useful insights that tell you more about your audience.

3. Interview focus groups

Focus groups are groups of people who volunteer to participate in an interview or discussion about your brand or products. These groups are not usually associated with your business, but are usually reflective of your general target audience.

Interviewing focus groups can help uncover useful psychographic insights about how they perceive your brand, what would drive them to engage with you, and how your brand could resonate with their lifestyles.

4. Hire psychographic profiling experts

If you don’t quite have time or resources to do the heavy lifting, there are data experts out there who can put together psychographic profiles for you. We offer a market-leading psychographic profiling service, for example. This provides you with detailed customer insights about your customers, with access to a huge range of data points to provide granular profiles, giving you an in-depth understanding of your customer segments.

Conclusion

Psychographic profiling is perhaps one of the most powerful tools in marketing when done right. It can improve every single aspect of your brand and marketing strategy, and is applicable across all channels, making it a method worth considering.

Bring your customers to life with psychographic profiling

Get to know your customers with our psychographic profiling services. Leaders in customer analytics, we help you understand your audience and harness the power of data. Find out more about our data services and contact us to begin.

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