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Psychographics and how to use them in marketing and product development

Psychographic data is integral to marketing strategies and product development. It provides insights you can use to make informed business decisions that ultimately affect your connection with your target market. This equals effective marketing, successful business decisions, and product development that appeals to your consumers.

Psychographics is the study of people’s attitudes in interests. It’s usually combined with demographic data to understand the target market for a product or service. Psychographic data reveals traits such as values, interests, desires, lifestyles, and goals.

The primary use for psychographics is in market research to add depth to demographic data and help you better understand your customers’ emotions about your brand, product, or service. Psychographic profiles of target audience segments help companies create relevant messaging for each segment.

Psychographic data can be gathered via:

  • Surveys
  • Social media
  • Web analytics (e.g., Google Analytics)
  • Social media analytics
  • Browsing data
  • Focus groups
  • Interviews

When we talk about demographics, we’re talking about the structure of the population. They are concrete characteristics you can use to narrow your market segments by splitting groups into subgroups based on one or more traits.

A demographic survey includes questions about:

  • Age
  • Race
  • Gender
  • Marital status
  • Education
  • Employment
  • Income

Demographic data is generally collected via survey using quantitative questions.

Psychographics looks at emotions, habits, and attitudes. It focuses on understanding customers' feelings about a brand, product, or service. This data can leverage your marketing and make your efforts more effective and accurate.

It includes factors such as:

  • Personality
  • Lifestyle
  • Opinions
  • Values
  • Beliefs
  • Attitudes
  • Interests
  • Habits
  • Activities 

Collection of psychographic data in a survey is done using qualitative methods.

Demographics tell you who your customers are. Psychographics tell you why they buy. Marketers use demographics and psychographics to create various marketing strategies and advertising campaigns.

Example of a demographic and psychographic profile:

Demographic profile

  • Male
  • Black
  • Age 18-25
  • Single
  • No children
  • 4-year degree
  • Employed full time
  • Household income $75K

Psychographic Profile

  • Exercises regularly
  • Cooks few meals
  • Eats out due to time constraints, stress, and social events
  • Uses Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram
  • Listens to music on Spotify
  • Values time with family and friends
  • Desires high-quality items but struggles with budgeting and saving
  • Looks at his current job as a stepping-stone

Customer segmentation is the general practice of creating subgroups in your target market based on their shared characteristics. It is used in business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketing. Customers may be segmented by demographics, psychographics, or other relevant categories, such as customers who have previously made purchases from the company. 

You can use market segmentation surveys to help you understand how the members of your target market are the same and different.

Psychographic segmentation is the process of customer segmentation using psychological characteristics to divide your target market into groups based on similar traits. By creating these subgroups based on psychological characteristics, you can create marketing campaigns that will effectively impact each segment.

Psychographic segmentation is used with demographic segmentation to create profiles of target audience groups.

There are five psychographic segmentation variables to consider. You need to be aware of each type to use the data for market research effectively.

  1. Personality: There is a definite correlation between personality and buying habits. Marketers may segment by creative, emotional, friendly, introvert, extrovert, sociable, or other personality filters. Companies can take this information and develop products based on a particular personality segment. 
  2. Lifestyle: This factor reveals how a person lives their life. Lifestyle can be impacted by occupation, relationship status, or life choices. Examples of lifestyle factors include green-living, fast-paced, minimalists, vegans, athletics, etc.
  3. Social Status: An individual’s social status determines the types of products they purchase. Each social class has its own choices in every market, from cruises to clothes. For example, H&M, Zara, and Forever21 carry affordable clothes for their working and middle-class markets. Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, and Gucci sell luxury clothes and accessories to upper and upper-middle-class customers.
  4. Activities/Interests/Opinions (AIO): AIO focuses on customers’ passions, activities, and how they feel about issues. By identifying your customers’ AIO, you can tell a lot about their buying habits. AIO factors will include factors such as favorite sports teams, hobbies, television show genres, etc. 
  5. Attitudes: This factor is more challenging to narrow down than the other four. It can include cultural background, upbringing, or religion. An example of using attitudes for psychographic segmentation would be a luxury handbag brand targeting female consumers who drive high-end cars from BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, etc.

Grouping your customers with psychographic segmentation has multiple benefits for your business.

  • First and most importantly, you’ll gain insight into your customers’ buying behaviors as they relate to their needs, wants, motivations, concerns, and aspirations.
  • With this understanding and insight, you can customize your marketing, advertising, and social media strategies to appeal to specific psychographic segments. 
  • Psychographic segmentation informs product development by examining profiles and determining where your new product might fit into a specific segment’s lives. You can also customize the product for various markets.
  • Rather than focusing on your product’s benefits or features, you can draw attention to how your product or service fits into and improves your customers’ lives.
  • You can gather in-depth information about how and why your customers use your product.
  • Increase efficiency and ROI by using marketing, advertising, and development budgets to direct your message to a specific audience.
  • Take your segmentation beyond behavioral segmentation because you’re including AIO.

Clearly, having psychographic data is vital to your marketing, advertising, and product development. But how do you collect the data? Let’s take a look. 

It’s not necessarily easy, but you’ll glean much more information from speaking directly to your customers. You can pick up on body language and vocal cues in person or via video conference. 

The downside is that hiring and training interviewers can be costly, and data collection and analysis are quite time-consuming. That’s why surveys remain a solid choice for psychographic data collection.

Psychographic data can be thoroughly collected with open-ended questions and open-text answer boxes. It can be tempting to send a long survey to gather as much information as possible, but your respondents are more likely to complete the survey if it doesn’t take them longer than five minutes, so try to keep it concise.

Hone in on what psychographics you want to know and begin with a high-level question tailored to your business.