The hidden power of psychographics for marketing

Psychographics look deeper than surface-level demographic factors like age, location, and gender to reveal intimate details about your target audience. They delve into the psychological aspects of consumer behavior — like lifestyle, interests, personality, and values — to help marketers understand what motivates their target audience to buy.

With psychographic marketing data, you’re better prepared to employ more effective marketing strategies that resonate with consumers on a deeper level. We’ll explore what psychographics are and how to use them, along with the different types of psychographic characteristics that can help you further segment your audience to make your marketing efforts more targeted.

Psychographics defined (and why to use them)

Psychographics is a market research method that classifies people according to lifestyle, values, and interests. This valuable information helps you accurately understand ideal buyer personas and your target market.

Say your target demographic is middle-class, employed American women in their 30s. You can narrow your focus further by asking psychographic questions like:

• What does this audience value?
• What are their interests and hobbies?
• What does their lifestyle look like?

Understanding your audience psychographically clarifies details about purchasing decisions in a way that demographics can’t. Demographics are still important, but adding psychographic data to user personas brings new specificity you can use to pivot marketing strategies accurately.

Here’s why it’s important to capture and use this data.

Aligns your values with your audience’s

Your target audience might think and act very differently from you, and psychographic data helps you bridge that gap. When you know what your audience values in a brand, you can learn how to align your content and marketing strategy to better resonate with them. 

Saves money with cost-efficient targeting

While conducting psychographic research has a high upfront cost, it often provides data that saves money in the long run.

Targeting vague demographics like “women in their 30s” might mean pouring resources into reaching the wrong people. But focusing on more precise segments like women who value data privacy, enjoy reading LinkedIn articles about technological advancements, and tend to live in metropolitan cities increases the chance you’ll reach the right audience — those who are interested in your offering.

Psychographic traits also often persist even as demographics shift (like this same audience moving into their 40s). So you don’t need to update and validate psychographic research as often as demographics, and you can generally use it longer.

Fine-tunes your marketing strategy

Your audience’s lifestyle and personality significantly impact how you should market to them. Learning how they use social media, whether they enjoy reading or prefer video content, and if they respond well to ads helps you choose more effective advertising tactics.

How to find psychographic data

Psychographics examine intimate details about your audience, so typical research methods like location analytics won’t help. You’ll need to get creative and go straight to the source.

Here are a few ways you can conduct psychographic research.

Interview current clients

Everyone is a source for psychographic data — why not start with people who already love your offering? Interview current clients to discover who your audience is (and what initially drew these happy customers in) so you can adjust strategies to accommodate these insights.

Explore website analytics

Website analytics help you deduce psychographic data without having to collect it explicitly. For example, if your audience denies optional cookies on your site 90% of the time, they likely value data privacy. This approach is assumptive, but you can always take these theories to your target audience through client surveys and website polls. You can also integrate test marketing into your marketing strategy to see which approaches and ideas resonate most strongly with your customers.

Use focus groups

Assemble a focus group to observe and question your target audience. Ask pointed questions, like “How do brands earn your trust?” and “What makes you stop trusting a brand?”

Ask open-ended questions, and consider asking them in both a group and one-on-one setting to see how answers shift.

Gather data from market research firms

Market research firms like Oracle gather and broker data. But, while purchasing data is currently the easiest acquisition option, it’s also the most expensive and least monitored regarding data privacy.

The relationship between demographics and psychographics

Demographics create simplified user personas, and psychographics paint a richer picture. So, while demographics help you select a target audience according to location or spending power, psychographics identify who within those categories might buy your product. Together, both data points help you craft brand messaging that resonates with your target audience.

Here are a few ways these data points differ.

Access

Demographic data is readily available and easier to acquire than psychographic data. You’ll need to conduct interviews and host focus groups to gather psychographic data, which can be expensive and time-consuming.

Qualities

Demographic data measures quantitative factors like how many people live in a particular city or what percentage are married. Psychographic data measures qualitative details, such as what people care about or do in their free time. This information works well together and offers a more holistic view of your audience.

Purpose

The purpose of demographic classifications like “unmarried” and “30–35” is to broadly categorize your audience. And the purpose of psychographics is to add specificity so you can get to know them better (and, in turn, market more effectively to this group).

Various types of psychographic audiences

When you classify your audience psychographically, your audience becomes segmented in interesting ways. Here are some psychographic segment examples you might discover.

Lifestyle

How people live their lives has an enormous impact on their purchasing decisions. It determines what they need and how they go about getting it. Here are a few lifestyle segment examples:

• Travelers. People who travel for work, fun, or as a permanent lifestyle might look for portable, compact solutions to everyday problems.
• Entrepreneurs. People working solo or in startups likely care about money-saving options and effective time management.
• Caregivers. Professional caregivers and those living with family members will want products and services that help them better care for clients and loved ones.

Personality

Prominent personality traits say a lot about one’s attitudes and purchasing motivations. Here are a few examples:

• Nurturing: Caring, empathetic people who want to better themselves and others
• Ambitious: Goal-oriented folks who wish to progress in life, work, and social circles
• Independent: Self-motivated people who value autonomy and self-reliance

Values

Your audience’s values indicate how to build trust with them. If your values don’t align with theirs, you’ll cause unnecessary friction.

Here are a few examples of audience values:

• “Animal testing is unacceptable.” Especially for beauty and pharmaceutical products, these people won’t buy from companies who don’t follow ethical testing practices.
• “Corporations should invest in surrounding communities.” Creating volunteer programs and making charitable donations is a great way to appeal to people who value corporate responsibility.
• “Sustainability is imperative to mitigating climate change.” Highlight when your company substantially improves its environmental impact, and you’ll win this audience over.

Activity, interest, and opinion

People’s hobbies and interests provide cues about what they buy and where. Seasonal hobbies, such as certain sports, can even help you determine when they make purchases.

Here are a few examples of interests, along with the cues each might indicate about your audience:

• Sports. Health-conscious, physically active people might resonate with a “go hard or go home” ad.
• Crafting. Creative, often quirky, individuals with niche interests might respond to a funny ad that teaches them something new.
• Video games. Tech-savvy people who enjoy solving puzzles could enjoy an ad that challenges them to try something difficult.

Build content that resonates with Webflow

Robust psychographic research helps you develop a clear target audience. And the next step is to track that audience’s behavior as they interact with your site, which is where Webflow comes in.

Webflow supports integrations with analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Nocodelytics, which can give you critical insights about how your audience interacts with your website and, therefore, your brand. These tools can show you how many users and page views your site gets, where your traffic comes from, how long people stay on your site, and more.

Our visual web development platform’s collaborative workflows and scalability give your team the power to build and manage your site. Get started with Webflow Enterprise today.