Psychographic Targeting — Using psychology in marketing

What is Psychographic Targeting?

Ana Miloš
Digital Reflections
4 min readJan 28, 2023

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Psychographic targeting identifies and targets consumers based on their psychological characteristics. It goes beyond demographics and beyond things like age, gender, and income. Psychographic targeting allows businesses to target customers based on their interests, values, and lifestyles. And even their personality types. It can help to understand many things. This method relies on understanding a person’s psychological profile.

Source: https://rockcontent.com/blog/psychographic-segmentation-examples/

Psychographics vs. Demographics

Demographics refer to observable and quantifiable characteristics of a population, such as age, gender, income, education, and occupation. This type of segmentation is based on the idea that people with similar characteristics have similar needs and buying habits. For example, a company might target its marketing efforts towards a specific age group, such as teenagers or retirees.

Psychographics, on the other hand, refers to a population's psychological and social characteristics. Such as values, interests, lifestyle, and personality. This type of segmentation is based on the idea that people with similar psychographic profiles have similar purchasing decisions. For example, a company might target its marketing efforts towards people with a specific lifestyle, such as outdoor enthusiasts or health-conscious consumers.

Source: https://foundr.com/articles/marketing/psychographics-everything-know-marketing

Why is Psychographic Targeting important in Marketing?

Marketing is the process of promoting and selling products or services. It involves understanding the needs and wants of consumers and creating effective strategies to reach them. One of the most important tools for understanding consumers is psychology. By applying psychological principles, marketers can gain insight into how consumers think, feel, and behave, and use this information to create more effective marketing campaigns.

Psychographics in marketing refers to the study of consumers' psychological and social characteristics. This information is used to segment the market and create targeted marketing campaigns that appeal to specific groups of consumers. Psychographic segmentation allows marketers to go beyond demographic characteristics and instead focus on consumers' underlying motivations, attitudes, and values. Marketers can use a variety of methods to gather psychographic information, such as surveys, focus groups, and interviews. They can also use data from social media, online behavior, and purchase history to gain insight into consumer attitudes and preferences. Once the psychographic information is gathered, it can be used to create targeted marketing campaigns.

Overall, psychographic segmentation allows marketers to create more effective marketing campaigns by understanding the underlying motivations and attitudes of consumers. By targeting specific groups of consumers with tailored messaging and imagery, marketers can increase the chances that their marketing efforts will resonate with the target market.

Psychographics Example

A company that sells organic and all-natural skincare products can use psychographic targeting in its marketing efforts. The company might segment its market based on consumers’ values and lifestyles, such as health-conscious and environmentally-conscious individuals. To gather psychographic information, the company can conduct surveys and focus groups to learn more about consumer attitudes towards organic and all-natural products, as well as their lifestyle habits and values. They could also gather information from social media platforms and analyze consumers’ online behavior to gain more insight.

Using this information, the company can create targeted marketing campaigns that appeal to the values and lifestyles of their target market. For example, they can create ads and social media posts that highlight the benefits of using all-natural and organic products, and how they align with a healthy and environmentally-conscious lifestyle. They can also leverage influencers and brand ambassadors who share the same values and lifestyle as their target market. In addition, the company can create targeted promotions and discounts for its target market, and use specific keywords and hashtags to reach out to them.

Source: https://www.limecube.co/target-audiences-our-guide

Why should you use Psychographic Targeting more often

When you use psychographic variables, you can focus on consumer segments. Consumers can share the same demographic attributes and still be very different people. For this reason, marketers need a way to “breathe life” into demographic data with psychographics.

In conclusion, when you understand their interests and lifestyles, you can target them with messaging that resonates.

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