This post isn't about what you might think - psychographics is not a psychological disorder, nor does it require mind reading to figure out what someone is thinking. Psychographics can actually help us, as marketers and business owners, to understand our buyer personas and influence them along the path to purchase. Sounds interesting? Read on!
What Is Psychographics?
Psychographics is the field of social research that studies personal attitudes, values, interests, lifestyles, and opinions of individuals within a certain group. The term psychographics was originally introduced in the 1968 year-end edition of Advertising Age, in reference to the qualitative method of studying self-concept, lifestyle, and attitudes as the key factors in market segmentation. Since then, the study of psychographics has become a widely accepted approach to determining how certain groups of people behave when purchasing or evaluating products.
Psychographics vs. Demographics: What's the Difference?
As a marketer, you have probably already found several ways to segment your audience - perhaps by age, gender, or income. These are all demographic factors that give you the"who" of your audience, but they don't answer questions of how and why consumers behave the way they do when it comes to purchasing your products or services. Psychographics allows you to determine the motives and attitudes of your potential buyers so that your company can better serve customers and ultimately succeed in your market.
Where to Get Psychographic Data
“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
~ Albert Einstein
While focus groups and in-depth interviews are still the most reliable methods of gathering behavioral data, they can be extremely expensive and time consuming. Here are some easy-to-access tools that you, as a digital marketer, can use in order to understand your audience's behavior:
- Website analytics is an excellent source of information to help you understanding your visitors and potential customers. Look at what blog topics attract certain groups of people and what keywords they search for in order to get to different pages of your website. You can then use this data to tailor specific content to different behavioral groups.
- Email marketing data shows what type of offers your subscribers download the most, and at what time of the day. It also allows you to analyze out who unsubscribes from your newsletters and what types of emails will improve your unsubscribe rate.
- Social media analytics is an excellent tool for understanding your target audience. By looking at what types of tweets get the most number of re-tweets and at what time of the day you get the most engagement on your Facebook posts, you can get an idea of why users behave in different ways.
Now that you understand the importance of gathering psychographic data in order to reveal motives and behaviors of your target audience, it's time to start crafting your perfect inbound marketing strategy and attract the right customers.
What can you do with this data? Use it in your buyer personas!
