How to use psychographic segmentation to target your market

Steven Westwood
7 min readAug 16, 2021

Imagine a world where you could read the minds of your customers and work out what drives them.

That would be pretty fantastic — but do you think it would change your marketing if you knew what they wanted and why they wanted it?

Sadly, I’m not a psychic with the power of telepathy; I am, however, someone who works in marketing and understands psychology.

So far, we’ve taken a deep dive into geographic and demographic segmentation, which helps you understand where your customers are and who they are as a group.

Now let’s explore the WHY behind your customers’ activities.

Psychographic segmentation: The Definition

Weber. S (1989) defines psychographic segmentation as an approach to market segmentation based on consumers’ personality characteristics. In contrast to other ways of segmenting the market, psychographics examines the actual motives for behaviour and offer answers about why people behave the way they do when purchasing products or services.

Using psychographic segmentation takes a deeper look into your customers:

This valuable information will help you with planning, designing, positioning and distributing your products and services. You’ll know where (and how) to promote and advertise, and you’ll be able to create the right pieces of copy that appeal to your target audience.

Even more impressive is you’ll be able to understand and handle objections, show how your products and services will benefit their lives, and understand what your customers think of your brand (not what you perceive it to be).

I can’t stress this point enough — it really doesn’t matter what you think of your business, but what your target customers feel about it.

Do you have one product that you want to sell to different types of people?

Then psychographic segmentation will help you develop an understanding of how different segments will view the same product. After all, there’s no “one-size-fits-all” when it comes to marketing — people will value your product (or service) to solve a different need.

Factors of Psychographic Segmentation

One thing that I love about psychographic segmentation (and I’m sure you’ll love it too) is that it stops you from generalising your target market too much. Instead, by following these factors and seeing which one’s fit or don’t fit your customers, you’ll be able to make informed marketing decisions.

Lifestyle Segmentation in Psychographic Segmentation

Are your buying choices dependant on your lifestyle choices?

Yes — you wouldn’t expect a C-level executive to buy the same clothes and brands as a student working a part-time job.

Likewise, they’ll want different gadgets, will prioritise different activities and find different things enjoyable — whether it be entertainment, different places to eat, or travel.

To understand what motivates someone based on lifestyle choices, Marketers analyse AIO (Activities, Interests, Opinions) variables to understand the different dimensions in their life.

Opinions

From politics to food choices, global warming, or colours, everyone has an opinion on something. Our opinions stem from our beliefs (whether cultural and religious) and how much it impacts us.

Your core beliefs drive you and your choices every day. Therefore, your core beliefs will have a central theme, whether it be Social, Environmental, or Economical.

These are the three main topics for beliefs, but they branch down much more in-depth.

People will have an opinion on your product, how your beliefs align with theirs; remember: it’s not about what you think of your products and services.

On average, it takes someone to see your content 5–7 times before they start trusting you. But how do they consume information? Do they prefer blog posts, videos, infographics? Who do they consume information,, and where do they find their sources?

The next thing to consider that may sway opinion is your reviews — what do other people think of your services or products? Social proof is responsible for the buying decisions of 93.4% of all products and services brought online.

Opinions can be formed through logical reasoning, personal anecdotes or facts — the end result remains the same, does your target market trust you?

Interests

Interest is how engaged and invested people are in something. You can be interested in people, topics, communities, recreation, fashion, food, travel, home, and so much more.

Using interests within your psychographic segmentation helps you to funnel down who you want to target. Interests also help you make sure you don’t miss anything important when developing your psychographic customer persona.

As an example, let’s say that a segment of your customers enjoys family-oriented activities. You can then narrow down on the type of activity, and they enjoy picnics and hiking. You then find out that they really like hiking near lakes and through wooded areas.

You can use this information to then make more informed decisions on what to sell. For example, these families may need waterproof equipment or picnic blankets that double as a bag.

Activities

What does your target market’s day to day look like? What do they commonly do? Are there activities that they don’t do a lot of but still highly engage with?

The below questions are what you should consider what developing your psychographic profile:

  1. What is the activity for? (work, family, school, memberships, etc.)
  2. How often do they do the activity?
  3. Does the activity cost money?
  4. How much do they engage with the activity?

What someone does in their free time can give you a vast amount of insight. For example, someone interested in participating in sports will spend more money on equipment and memberships. Someone with a more sedentary lifestyle may be more interested in spending money on food or entertainment.

Tie them all together

You may have noticed that each element within the lifestyle portion of psychographic segmentation builds on the other. Your opinions inform your interests which determine the activities you do.

Chances are your target market have already made a decision about you and your business, even before learning about you.

Once they become aware of your business, if the customer has a favourable opinion of you, they move into the consideration phase of the customer journey. When they are in this phase, customers will consume more information until they make their minds up to buy from you.

Social Status in Psychographic Segmentation

How someone perceives where they are in society can have a massive impact on their purchasing behaviour.

Unlike the lifestyle markers, social class is relatively straightforward, and marketers can group people into three broader social categories.

Upper Class

This class has amassed a large amount of wealth within a lifetime or has generation “family money” to play with. As a result, they aren’t too affected by the costs of goods and services and will always find ways to get what they want.

Middle Class

These people are usually university-educated white-collar workers such as doctors, professors, lawyers, accountants, etc. This group can afford to buy almost anything they want with some time and savings. However, the more luxurious items are often out of reach.

Lower Class

The most vulnerable group in society often have physically demanding jobs for little pay, haven’t invested in education and barely cover the essentials they ended in life.

As you can see, these descriptors are pretty broad and generic, but it provides insight that feeds into lifestyles of these groups of people.

Personality in Psychographic Segmentation

Your personality is who you are, encompassing your beliefs, driving your morals, includes your dreams/goals/motivations, and how you perceive your life.

Discovering the different styles of personalities and their traits will help develop a more targeted message that will drive similar personalities to consume your content, buy from you, and recommend your business to friends and family.

Please note: this topic will be explored separately as there’s a lot of information for personality traits out there.

How to find Psychographic Segmentation data

As with anything else in marketing, you should never just assume. The best way to find out information is to ask people directly.

Your first step will involve surveying a larger number of people to collect data (you can also use quizzes if they work). The next step will involve more detailed qualitative data — either one-to-one interviews of your target customer or smaller focus groups. You can use Third-Party research, but this should only be used to help inform you of the direction to take.

How to use psychographic segmentation in your marketing

Once you’ve collected all of your data, analysed it, and create your psychographic persona, you should use this to:

  • Write compelling advertisement materials to grab attention and stoke action.
  • Refine your audience on social media — remember: people are attracted to others who hold similar beliefs/goals. Using interests to find potential customers will help you grow your community.
  • Generate new content ideas to attract new markets to your business.
  • Use aspirational marketing to give people hope.

Examples Psychographic Segmentation

Headspace

One of the most popular meditation apps around, Headspace realised that part of their target customer base were Teachers. This group hold a lot of influence to persuading people to use meditation as an activity. By providing a special offer targeted specifically for educators, their subscribers increased by over 25,000.

Old Spice

The American male grooming brand seized the opportunity when they realised that their target customer base were men who wanted to feel “manly”. After altering their marketing message, they spoke directly to their target market with “We built our products uniquely for your face, the face of a man”. Sales increased over 107% year on year thanks to campaigns like this.

Final thoughts of Psychographic Segmentation

If you get psychographic segmentation right, you’re arming yourself with an extremely powerful tool that refines your message and creates the right products for your business.

If you get it wrong, you collected information that you can’t do much with.

You’re now able to understand this type of segmentation of the market on a much deeper level and can use that knowledge to make informed choices on strategies that work for you.

Psychographic helps you understand why your customers buy what they do, and with that information, you’re able to show them why that should include your products and services.

What do you think of psychographic segmentation? Let me know in the comments and remember to share!

Resources

Knowledge and Human Interests

Knowledge and Practical Interests

Ideas and Opinions

Attitudes and Opinions

Opinions and Personality

Psychographic Segmentation

Lifestyle Segmentation: From Attitudes, Interests and Opinions, to Values, Aesthetic Styles, Life Visions and Media Preferences

Lifestyle segmentation and museum/gallery visiting behaviour

Originally published at https://www.spwcopywriting.com on August 16, 2021.

--

--

Steven Westwood

Successful Copywriter with more than 10 years of converting casual browsers into loyal customers.