Psychographics: The power of understanding your prospects

Psychographics definition: What is psychographics?

Psychographics is the understanding of people based on their aspirations, attitudes, and behavior. Unlike demographics, it digs deeper than surface level “facts” and delves into a customer’s personality, their lifestyle, and their goals. 

Psychographics push our boundaries of understanding prospects to a deeper, more intrinsic level, which makes it easier to create campaigns and products that customers actually need. 

How psychographics work together with demographics

Combining both demographic and psychographic information can create a complete picture of who you’re targeting. The more information you use from each, the more granular you can get and the more laser-focused your messaging will be. 

For example, if you target people based on three psychographic factors, like their hobbies, their biggest goal, and their life stage, and two demographic factors, like their age and location, you’ll have a much more focused persona than if you target just one psychographic factor and no demographic factors.  

There is another type of data that ties into all this: behavioral data. This refers to information about how visitors move around your website. It’s collected via a tracking cookie and identifies data like what device visitors are using, how they arrived on your site, how often they add items to their cart, how much they spend, and what product categories they’re most interested in. 

While demographic information and psychographics paint a more complex picture of your customers as individuals, behavioral data provides a comprehensive story of your customers’ journeys. 

How to track psychographic metrics?

It can be difficult to know what to focus on when it comes to psychographics. Here’s a list of factors you can track or use to segment your prospects: 

• Values: what customers think is important, like quality over quantity

• Goals: what customers want to achieve, such as impressing their boss

• Dreams: what customers would love to do, like work while traveling 

• Hobbies: what customers do in their spare time, like play golf or knit

• Daily activities: what customers do every day, like go to the gym 

• Favorite social platform: such as Facebook or Instagram

• Challenges: what customers struggle with, like planning their weekly meals on a budget

• Fears: what customers are scared of, like having their data violated

• Beliefs: what customers believe, like the idea that coffee is bad for you

• Morals: the moral values customers have, like cheating is bad

• Motivations: what gets customers up in the morning, like building a sustainable business 

• Interests: what customers are interested in, like astronomy or ancient history

• Lifestyle choices: ways that customers live, like eating a vegan diet 

Example of demographic and psychographic prospect profile

Let’s look at this in action with an example. 
 

Demographics of this prospect tells us a fair bit about the basics of this person, but it doesn’t tell us what makes her click, what she enjoys, or the things she loves most in life. Whereas the psychographic profile tells us a lot more about who the customer is outside of their age and job role.

It tells us what she enjoys doing, what gets her up in the morning, and how she spends her time. Health, fitness, crafts, beauty, and travel brands would all benefit from knowing this psychographic information.

All of these are invaluable bits of information in helping us reach the right people, at the right time, in the right place, with the right message. 

Psychographics vs demographics: 3 Key differences 

Psychographics and demographics are closely linked but come with their fair share of differences.
 

Record the interviews and identify any patterns in responses. You can then turn these into customer personas by creating profiles for each of the customers you interview. 

2. Surveys and questionnaires

While interviews let you dig deep into a select few of your best customers, surveys and questionnaires help you collect larger quantities of data in one go. You can still ask similar questions, but you’ll get a wider range of responses which can be good for identifying trends and patterns, but tricky when trying to quantify data. 

The Semantics Group runs an annual survey to find out more about their customers.

How to track psychographic factors 

Now you know what psychographic data is and how you can collect it, let’s take a look at how you can track it and use it in your marketing efforts. 

1. Segmentation 

Segmenting your customers means you can send personalized messages to them at just the right time. Consumers today actively seek out brands that personalize their communications. In fact, 91% of people are more likely to invest in a brand that provides relevant offers and recommendations. 

Using psychographics to create better marketing opportunities

Psychographics are the key to getting to know your customers better. The more you know about them, the more you can personalize outreach and marketing messages to suit their wants and needs.

Start by learning who your customers are. You can do this by holding customer interviews, putting together surveys and questionnaires, listening on social media, or tracking website data. Then, use this information to segment prospects and create marketing campaigns based on their unique interests and lifestyles.