PSYCHOGRAPHICS ARE IN

Why Psychographics Are Revolutionising Consumer Insights: Moving Beyond Demographics to Understand What Truly Drives Your Audience

In a world consumed by face filters, TikTok’s ‘For You’ page, and personalised playlists, individuals are more self-aware than ever.

Because of this, brands are being called to deeply understand their consumers—or risk becoming irrelevant to their customers…

So, how can we, as marketers, keep up with the ever-evolving, self-centered customer?

We need to dig deeper than just the age and gender of our target market. We need to understand the motivations, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles of our target market by introducing psychographic segmentation into our marketing activity.

Why Demographics Aren’t Enough

Demographics are shallow as they rely on segmenting the market into broad categories such as age, gender, and income level. Not every 30-year-old female who lives in the same suburb has the same purchasing behaviour.

Society is changing and becoming less rigid in its ways. Social class is becoming less of a factor in the modern world, as brands are discovering. Gen Z are entering the luxury market which is traditionally dominated by older generations. Gender is becoming more fluid with more clothing brands including unisex items. Lifestyles are becoming more diverse—life stages that were once tied to age, such as retirement and parenthood, no longer have a set timeline.

Consumers have a desire to be understood by brands through hyper-personalisation. Through big data, predictive analytics, and machine learning, businesses are now able to understand the consumer on a deeper level, and this is the expectation. Customers will be more loyal to brands they align with emotionally.

Psychographics Go Deeper

Psychographics help us understand the consumer’s motivations, attitudes, beliefs, interests, and lifestyle choices—allowing us to connect with them on a deeper level. When we understand this, we can create messaging that truly resonates with our target market—making our marketing campaigns more effective.

Brands have used psychographics to:

• Create a better product: By understanding the motivations of our consumers, we can produce products that better meet their needs.

• Connect with customers on an emotional level: Customers are more likely to be loyal and advocate for a brand if they feel a bond with it. “By appealing to their values, aspirations, and emotions, brands create a strong bond with their customers that goes beyond the transactional relationship”.

• Not only provide a product or service but a community: Brands can organically market themselves by connecting users with the product/service experience and encouraging them to endorse it to other like-minded individuals.

For example, Figma, a website design software, has fostered a community of designers and innovators who share their plug-ins, illustrations, wireframes, and more. They all have the same motivation to create something new and exciting, and the product users feel understood by the brand through feeling a part of a community.

What Brands Are Making This Change?

Dove → Over 60 years in business, Dove has changed its marketing messaging from ‘beauty’ to ‘body acceptance’ through various campaigns such as #ChooseBeautiful and #RealBeauty. Dove has keept up with the changing attitudes and emotions of society. In this case, Dove’s target market has moved with the natural beauty movement, which when used in Dove’s marketing, has helped their consumers resonate and advocate for the Dove brand.

Spotify → Fully understands the moods and habits of listeners through machine learning to create personalised playlists that hyper-personalise the customer experience. Consumers feel connected and understood by the brand and therefore trust, align with, and advocate for it. Furthermore, Spotify engaged with users by teaming up with easyJet to create a ‘symbiotic music and travel experience’.

Nike → Segments its market through the motivations of individuals. Their target market is motivated by and enjoys participating in sports. Nike’s mission is to ‘excel in nurturing and expanding human potential,’ which aligns with sports enthusiasts. Nike has created a range of products to meet the needs of sport-centric individuals through unique innovation, including the Mercurial Dream Speed 009, designed for football enthusiasts.

Lululemon → Targets individuals who are active and engaged in fitness, yoga, wellness, and sustainability. By understanding the interests of their target market, the brand has produced products that align with these ideas, creating the ‘feel like you’re wearing nothing at all’ experience and encouraging freedom. Lululemon also fosters a community of like-minded individuals who value social connection and similar wellness interests by holding events and running yoga classes. This provides another layer of value in the consumer’s mind and further promotes loyalty to the brand.

How Are Brands Getting This Data?

Brands can talk directly with their customers to understand them and gain deeper insight. Through surveys, questionnaires, research panels, interviews, and focus groups, a brand can segment its market using psychographics.

Digitally, brands can use applications such as Google Analytics to track how customers navigate their website and engage with content. Through this data, marketers can discover the interests and preferences of their audience.

Why Does This Matter To Marketers?

Nike, Spotify, Lululemon, and Dove have all leveraged their marketing capabilities through psychographic segmentation. They all resonate and bond with their customers through motivations, values, emotions, and lifestyles.

Through these hyper-personalised connections, customers come to love and stay loyal to brands. The customer-business transaction becomes more than just a checkout—it becomes a deeper personal relationship.

In an era of hyper-personalisation, brands that forget about this customer relationship experience risk becoming irrelevant. Brands that utilise this information will grow and evolve for the sake of the customer—and, in turn, the business.

Final Thoughts…

Winning brands have been adopting the notion of psychographic segmentation for years.

Thanks to technology, it is now easier than ever to gain deeper insight and understand our customers on a psychological level—so let’s do it.

Is your business stuck using demographic marketing?