Psychographic segmentation: examples

Your market research isn’t a one-time exercise. The validity of your data is shorter than what you would like to imagine. There is no way your campaigns are going to be successful if they were dependent on guesswork and intuition.

One of the most powerful ways you can generate high-quality leads and sales is with the help of psychographic segmentation. By using psychographic data, you will be able to appeal to the emotions of your consumers and become a brand that they can relate with.

What is psychographic segmentation?

Psychographic segmentation is defined as a technique where the target market is divided into different segments according to internal characteristics such as attitudes, personality, values, beliefs, lifestyle, interests, and social class using which you can create highly effective marketing campaigns. These factors are analyzed well to understand how the customer will respond to varied marketing campaigns.

Why is psychographic segmentation important?

Psychographic segmentation provides a much deeper and targeted view of the customer. For businesses, it brings them closer to the brand.

Let’s say you were to apply demographics to a city that you are targeting, you will find that more than 300,000 of them are between the ages 30 and 45. However, when you add psychographic elements to the mix, you will be able to divide them as different segments, based on characteristics such as attitudes, personality, beliefs, values, and so on.

When you have access to all of the above psychographic information, you will eventually find that the 300,000 target audience has dwindled down to just 40,000 people that you are better off targeting. This way, your communication strategy gets refined and you are likely to convert more people into customers.

Psychographic segmentation variables

It is an important exercise for businesses that want to get better. Apart from dividing the market based on psychographics, the brand should also use these factors to connect with their audience.

Here are the major psychographic segmentation variables:

Personality

Brands can divide customers based on their personality. Personalities are defined as emotional, introvert, extrovert, friendly, opinionated, funny, etc. The personality of customers and their purchasing habits are closely related.

The question that a brand should ask is this - ”What is the personality of my prospective customer?”

Lifestyle

Another way to divide customers is based on their lifestyle. Lifestyle is an aspect that someone truly values as they spend their time, money and energy to conform to the standards that they set for themselves.

Brands should analyze ‘Activities, Interests and Opinions’ of customers, also referred to as the ‘AIO variables’.

1. Activities - Brands should study the common activities that the customers enjoy. How much time do they spend on this activity? How do these customers research while finding the products they want to buy?
2. Interests - Every one of us have a variety of interests and when brands know this aspect of their target audience, it helps with the marketing efforts.
3. Opinions - A person’s deep-seated beliefs and values shape their buying decisions. Someone who is against wearing animal products might not necessarily support a brand that espouses such values. People usually have strong opinions about politics, religion, gender issues, and culture. You need to be careful with your messaging when it comes to these aspects.

Social status

Each social class has different types of choices when it comes to things they buy. From the choice of clothes to one’s entertainment choices, most of them differ based on one’s social class.

A luxury brand like Louis Vuitton will not target those who are in the lower rung of the economic class while a brand like Walmart or IKEA will likely target people of all strata.

Attitudes

Every individual makes choices based on the way they were raised and with the values with which they were brought up. People are segmented based on the basis of their thoughts and attitudes. The attitude of a person tells a lot about who they are and what will motivate them.

A person from a high-income group can easily afford to frequent fine-dining restaurants while a person in the middle-income group might want to save the money to spend on essentials. Marketers should keep this in mind when devising strategies to capture the attention of their target market.

How to collect psychographic data?

Psychographic data is more subjective when compared with traditional quantitative research methodologies, therefore it should be appropriately chosen. Here are some of the ways in which you can collect psychographic segmentation data.

#1 Customer surveys/questionnaires

As one of the most inexpensive methods of collecting data, online surveys are the cheapest way to get psychographic segmentation data. They are easy to distribute and the results can be received and analyzed in real-time. There are online survey tools like SurveyMonkey and Google Survey that make creating surveys an easy affair.

#2 Quizlets

At the point of lead capture itself, you can segment your customers with the help of the right questions. Once you have a pretty clear picture of the kind of market that you are targeting, you can add questions that will help segment the customers.

#3 Customer interviews

Directly interviewing your customers to gather data about them is one of the most accurate methods to collect psychographic data. Although this method is expensive and time-consuming, it may be worth the effort. It is imperative that you engage with customers who are at both the ends of the extremes.

Customer interviews are also a great way to capture testimonials and help them personally if they were undergoing any difficulties in using your product. A well-satisfied customer could be added as a part of your customer loyalty program which promises them attractive perks.

#4 3rd party data providers

For those who do not have ample resources to conduct interviews and surveys directly, they can outsource the task to 3rd party providers. If you give these companies your requirements, based on your budget, they will undertake the exercise on your behalf and send back the results.

#5 Social media

The reach of social media is mind-boggling and there is no doubt that you are most likely to find your customers here. Find your most engaged customers and post polls on your social media handles with questions that you want answered. Since these social media sites themselves provide you detailed information about your audience, you will be able to target the right set of people to run your polls.

How to use psychographic segmentation in your marketing?

Psychographics is mostly applied in the field of market research and it will help you with creating detailed buyer personas. With the help of buyer personas, you will be able to create customers with characteristics that are closest to your real customers. It helps with targeting, creating the right offer for customers and ensuring the right messaging.

#1 Write compelling ads

Based on psychographic factors, you will be able to understand what moves the emotional buttons of your target market. With this knowledge at your fingertips, you can write ads that will make the target market closer to buying from you. While it is all-advised to emotionally influence your customers, you should choose your words carefully so as not to offend any recipient.

When you write emotionally-packed emails, you can expect the conversion rates to soar because you would have been able to strike a chord with your audience in some way.

#2 Refine your social media audience

The granularity of your social media audience is only going to help your cause when it comes to marketing. Target your audience based on their interests. Using the psychographic data that you have gathered, you can easily add more interests, preferences, like and dislikes of the audience so that you are better placed to target them.

#3 Find new content areas

With the help of psychographic data, you would be in possession of information that most of your competitors can only dream about. You can broaden the content topics that you usually discuss by adding topics that are a bit beyond your business interest but are still relevant for your audience.

#4 Aspirational branding

With the help of psychographic data, you can learn ‘what they want to be.’ Aspirational marketing is incredibly effective because it gives hope and a high for the average customer. When they think about your product, they should be able to think of all the ways that your product is improving their lives or your business.

#5 Refine your personas

The importance of personas in marketing is unquestionable. Gone are the times when mass marketing was mainstream, these days, the only thing that always works is targeted marketing to a highly-refined audience. After you have considerable psychographic data, you will be able to update your existing buyer personas based on the new information you receive.

Five examples of companies using psychographic segmentation

Headspace (Health & Wellness)

It is one of the world’s most popular meditation apps that has its own Netflix show. Headspace realized that teachers were a segment of their customer base who held a lot of influence in persuading people to take up an activity like meditation. So, they extended a special offer to honor educators which saw a 25,000 increase in subscribers who were teachers. To add to that, these new subscribers were from three different markets too.

Klook (Travel)

A fast-growing travel platform catering to the South-East Asia region, Klook uses psychographic information to attract customers. When they realized that customers travel for a variety of reasons, they created their website interface in such a way that it allowed for flexibility to select from the destination or the things that you can do (without even selecting a destination). They decided to add things that can be done at a particular destination because many customers traveled based on the activities which were available at particular destinations. Klook even created marketing campaigns that were targeted at female travelers who are looking for adventures.

Old Spice (Consumer Goods)

When the American male grooming brand realized that their customers want to be regarded as “manly,” they decided to alter the way their marketing messages read. To ensure that they spoke directly to their target market, they changed their marketing message and fully directed them towards it. Here is an excerpt from an ad-”We built our products uniquely for your face, the face of man.”

Nike (Apparel & Fashion)

One of the world’s most recognizable sports apparel brands uses valuable psychographic information to create a lot of difference for them. Nike targets individuals who enjoy sports- people who play, watch or at least talk about sports. Their marketing activities are simply about creating a “feeling” that is well beyond their product. Every marketing activity or events that Nike conducts is all about creating a community and a feeling of belonging to their tribe.

Apple (Consumer Electronics)

Apple’s branding strategy focuses on emotions. It is all about lifestyle, liberty regained, imagination, passion, hopes, dreams and aspirations, and putting power in the hands of people through technology. The Apple brand also stands for simplicity, removing complexity from the lives of people, creating people-driven design, and is about creating a connection with its customers.

Conclusion

Psychographic segmentation is an excellent way to get better at your business. Divide your customers based on psychological factors such as behavior, personality, lifestyle, values and emotions. Understand them better and target with the right messaging using psychographic segmentation.

By combining behavioral data and actionable insights from psychographic data, brands can do wonders for themselves. Since it provides details about lifestyles, interests, attitudes, it is usually much more significant than geographical or demographic segmentation. Once you change your marketing activities based on psychographic data, you can see your brand getting more visibility and opportunities.