A Quick Introduction to Psychographics

Back in the day, marketers relied almost exclusively on demographic data to understand the marketplace. They got to know their audience in terms of things like age, race, gender, location, and socio-economics, and they built their advertising campaigns to target broad categories of consumers.

Since the late-2000s, however, marketers have begun exploring psychological traits belonging to their target markets—an area of focus called psychographics. Psychographic data considers activities, interests, opinions, and personality traits when crafting a marketing message, providing a more multi-dimensional view than what demographics offers alone.

In this post, we’ll explore the following topics…

What is psychographics?

How to collect psychographic data

How you can use psychographic data to boost business

Controversies surrounding psychographics

What is psychographics?

Psychographics is the collection and analysis of data regarding consumers’ activities, interests, opinions, lifestyle choices, and personality traits. Marketers can use this information to create stronger buyer personas and craft messaging that appeals to their target market.

Example #1: A health insurance company finds that a larger segment of their market includes urban professionals (a lifestyle psychographic) who exercise regularly (an interest psychographic) and really want to look good naked (a value psychographic).

With this in mind, the company adds more posts to their blog about health and fitness for busy professionals (e.g., “How to Fit Workouts into a Busy Schedule,” “Recipes for Quick, Healthy Meals”).

Example #2: A book reseller learns that many of their customers are women who are highly religious and socially conservative (a combination of opinion- and value psychographics). They target members of this demographic/psychographic segment with recommendations for books that other religious, conservative women have purchased in the past. 

How to collect psychographic data

We produce a sea of data these days, so there are plenty of ways to gather psychographic data and get to know your target market. Some common techniques include:

• Customer surveys
• Focus groups
• Customer interviews
• Browser data
• Social media activity (e.g., likes and shares)

How can you use psychographic data to boost business?

Creating a psychographic profile of potential buyers can help you reach them in a number of ways, including:

Better messaging: When you understand your audience’s worldview, you can write website copy, ad copy, and email campaigns that show how your brand connects with their interests and values.

Better content marketing: Since content marketing is about providing something of value (rather than going straight for the sale), the number of topics you could cover are as broad as your audience’s interests. So… if you use content marketing (e.g., blogs, articles, videos) in your business, then understanding your audience will expand your ability to generate content they’ll love.

Better buyer personas: A buyer persona is a fictional character created to represent a market segment based on what you know about your buyers. For example, a university that targets working professionals over 40 might create a fictional character named Karen to represent this segment, which aids their ability to reach prospective customers with similar attributes. Adding psychographic data to your buyer personas can supercharge them.

Controversies surrounding psychographics

Psychographics isn’t without its critics, and their objections raise two main questions:

1)    Is it ethical?

2)    Does it work?

Let’s address both…

Is gathering psychographic data ethical?

Psychographics was at the center of the Cambridge Analytica scandal following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Hillary Clinton and others referred to psychographics as the “dark arts” of marketing, and the story raised concerned about data privacy.

Just to recap (since 2018 feels like a lifetime ago in today’s news cycle), the research firm used an app that would gather psychographic data from people who agreed to complete a survey for “academic use.” The app then harvested data from millions of people connected to those Facebook users—none of whom consented to anything.

Clearly, gathering data the Cambridge Analytica way is unethical. If you want to gather psychographic data, practice informed consent and make sure your subjects know what you plan to do with their information. 

Does psychographic profiling work?

Understanding your customers can help you craft better messaging and build better user personas, but know that there are limits to the predictive power of psychographic data.

In the case of Cambridge Analytica, the firm believed it could predict voter behavior based on personality traits like openness, extraversion, etc., but it turns out there are too many variables involved in shaping someone’s political opinions.

For example, none of the Big Five personality traits (traits like Extraversion and Openness) influence politics more so than someone’s parents’ political views. In other words, there’s no evidence just yet that you should spend your time trying to find links between psychographic traits and seemingly unrelated behaviors. Of course, that could change as artificial intelligence discovers patterns that us mere mortals can’t spot.

What we do know is that psychographics can be effective when the information you gain about someone’s attitudes, interests, and opinions relate more directly to your marketing efforts. For example, if you’re an electronics reseller and you know your market enjoys reading about new technology, you can add more posts to your blog that highlight the latest and greatest in consumer tech.

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