Don’t Leave Out The Psychographics When Building Your Marketing Plan

Everyone talks about demographics, but not everyone discusses the importance of psychographics when developing a marketing plan or advertising campaign.

While demographics help to explain who your customer is, psychographics help to explain why that customer buys what they buy. You’ve no doubt seen psychographic options when building a Google or Facebook ad campaign, they are made up of attitudes, interests, motivations, beliefs, buying power, personalities, values, etc. They help you to understand a buyer’s hobbies, values and spending habits. Only by understanding your target market’s demographics AND psychographics can you effectively reach them.

Let’s say, for example, you sell custom leather products such as bags, wallets and belts. The demographic information of your audience may be:

• Male

• 25–54

• Income of $50K+

• Location: In and around the DC Metro area

While the psychographic information of your audience may be:

• Somewhat or generally concerned with appearance

• Luxury shopper

• Prefers quality over economy

• Enjoys displaying certain brands and will spend money to do so

The majority of the time, marketers break down psychographics into 3 main categories:

• Social Class

• Personality

• Lifestyle

Each of these 3 categories have subsets of categories:

• Social Class

  • Buying power

  • Spending habits

  • Income

• Personality

  • Beliefs

  • Motivations

  • Life outlook

  • Morals

• Lifestyle

  • Interests

  • Activities

  • Opinion

  • Attitude

Knowing what categories you need to define for your audience will help create a more targeted approach to your marketing plan. You will find that the further you can break down the specifics of your market, the easier it will be to reach them, provided you find the right mediums to match with the breakdown.

We’ll explore more in-depth research into psychographics in the future, so be sure to check back.