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Picture this: You’re running specials every week on Facebook, discounting your three-day, in-house nutritional counseling program more than you can afford ... but still, no one is buying your amazing, anti-aging, weight-loss product.
What gives? Is no one interested in losing weight, lowering their cholesterol, and feeling younger? We doubt that's the case. What could really be at work here is that you're probably ignoring psychographics.
To give you a clear definition of what psychographics are and some ways you can use psychographics to support your marketing efforts -- with a specific example, to get you familiarized -- continue below.
What are psychographics?
The best way to define psychographics is this: Demographics explain who your buyer is, whilepsychographics explain why they buy. Demographic information includes gender, age, income, marital status -- the dry facts. Psychographic information includes things like their hobbies, spending habits, and values.
You can only effectively reach your target audience when you understand both their demographics and psychographics. The combination of both sets of data starts can form a clearer picture of your buyer persona.
To give you an idea of how psychographics play a part in developing your buyer persona, let’s create a very basic persona, based upon what we know about the ideal customer for a nutritional counselor.
Demographic Information:
- Female
- Aged 45-65
- Married with children
- Dealing with issues of weight gain, diabetes, lack of energy, or hormonal imbalance
- Household income of $100K+
Psychographic Information:
- Concerned with health and appearance
- Wants a healthy lifestyle, but doesn’t have much free time
- Enjoys going online in the evenings (big fan of Pinterest)
- Tends to favor quality over economy
- Finds fulfillment in her career and family
- Values time with a small group of friends
Looking at the two lists above, it’s easy to see why you need both to put together a complete buyer persona. Use demographics alone, and you have only a very hazy outline of your audience. You understand her challenges, but not where to find her and what really moves her to action. Psychographics gives you so much more insight.
How do you obtain psychographics?
Now that we understand what psychographics are, how do we go about acquiring them? We outline two major methods below: interviewing your current clients and investigating you website analytics.
1) Interviewing Existing Clients
Take five seconds to think of your best, current client. Next time you talk to them, ask them some questions that can give you a clearer picture of who they are and what they want.
For instance, you can ask if they've seen any good movies lately (maybe they prefer TV shows or watching videos online?), found any great holiday deals (what's on their shopping list this holiday season?), or made any New Year’s resolutions (what are their personal and professional priorities this year?).
Depending on your relationship with the person, you can tell them exactly why you’re asking and be more direct. If you’re not in a business in which you have that kind of relationship with customers, do you have any friends who are similar to your ideal client? You could ask them the same questions.
The point is, when you ask the right questions, you can find out what this client does for fun, whether they're a bargain-hunter, what motivates them, and what their personal goals are.
Want a larger sampling? Send out a customer survey and be honest. Tell your customers you want to better understand what they care about. Most people are more than happy to share when companies reach out to find out more about their wants and needs.
2) Investigating Website Analytics
Prefer a more behind-the-scenes kind of investigation? Look at your existing site content and previous special offers. What has moved people to click, call, or buy in the past?
If you haven’t been paying attention to this, it may require some testing, but it can be extremely effective, as people’s true motivations are revealed by the actions they take. They may not think of themselves as bargain-hunters, but if that discount code really worked for them, it’s good for you to know.
How do psychographics impact marketing?
Getting psychographic data is important, but applying it to your marketing is how you make it effective. How would you do this? Let's continue with our ongoing example about the anti-aging, weight-loss product. We've gathered some hypothetical data using the techniques outlined in the previous section, so now let's apply our data to our marketing strategy.
Once you understand what is important to your persona, you’ll know where to find her and how to motivate her. You’ll know how to give her what she wants and learn what she doesn't want -- in other words, that offering deep discounts isn’t going to get her to buy. Instead, she wants to hear that your nutritional counseling service has worked for others and how it will give her better health without a huge time commitment. So, make sure you highlight customer comments to that effect.
For example, if she’s spending her free time on Pinterest, you can stop spending money on Facebook or newspaper and magazine ads. Instead, use her love of Pinterest to your advantage by sharing time-saving household and nutrition tips and giving her ideas for fun things to do with family and friends.
Then, you can watch what your persona repins and analyze what that tells you about her. Did she love the one about the smiley-face veggie platters for an after-school snack? Give her more ways to help keep her kids eating well. If the "girl’s night out" inspirational quote went over big, give her more ways to have fun with her friends. If her career and family are important to her, share articles highlighting the impact that good health has on job performance and ways to make exercise fun for kids.
Knowing more about your persona's hobbies, interests, and values will help you develop or adjust your overall marketing efforts, as the psychographics you secure can paint a clear picture of who they are and what motivates them. Before you know it, you’ll have more qualified leads than you thought possible.
