To truly connect with your audience, you have to deeply understand Them.
I always wondered how business owners and marketers could sell their products and services to statistics - female, 25 to 35, single, short hair, lives in the city.
It seems evident that not all female 25 to 35 year-olds are in the same place in life. Some are starting families, others are diving into their careers, all have very different motivations that cause them to like, signup, follow, and buy.
Here's some insight:
“Influencing behavior is no longer about earning passive likes on social media. ”
Connecting with you audience, and ultimately making sales, means creating content that they find inspiring and useful.
It's about becoming a trusted resource that your audience would miss.
It's about diving in to understand the real motivations and curiosities that drive them to take action.
It's about the "WHY".
This is where Psychographics come in
Where standard market research looks into the Demographics or surface qualities of a target audience, like gender, age, race, location, Psychographics focuses on their attitudes, aspirations, and values.
“It’s a deeper, more refined understanding of your person out there...”
Creating a Psychographic profile of your audience provides an advanced, intuitive and verified method for understanding their motivations, psychology, and cognitive tendencies.
When done successfully, you can create an instant connection that earns your audience's trust and attention and leads to boosts in conversion (i.e. bigger pay checks, committed donors, greater influence).
Why psychographics matter
Understanding the psychographics of your audience means you understand:
Why they take action. If you know what motivates your audience to buy, you can focus your efforts on motivating them to buy.
What they wish they had. To be a thriving business, listen for problems and develop a product or service based on the actual not assumed problem.
Where they consume content. Be efficient and get in front of you audience where they already spend their time.
How they consume content. A long-form blog post with a stellar pitch at the bottom isn't going to get read by a quick-clicking consumer.
What language they use. When you audience is researching the solution to their problem, their word choice is going to be different from industry terms.
Their motivations, aspirations, and fears. So you can speak directly to these powerful drivers in your copy and offer relevant guidance.
Knowing the psychographics of your market opens an alternative pathway for influencing behavior that eliminates the manipulative part of marketing and invites a deeper connection to the things that matter to your audience.
Demographics vs Psychographics
Here's how Psychographics and Demographics compare.
The two approaches sound different because they cause you to feel different. Marketing is about emotion so you want to be marketing to their psychographics.
Psychographic traits include:
ACTIVITIES. A hobby or something that someone does.
INTERESTS. Where someone's curiosity lies.
OPINIONS. Views that someone holds based on their unique perspective.
BEHAVIOR. Actions that someone takes in response to a situation.
HABITS. Mindless tendencies of someone.
LIFESTYLE. Way someone chooses (or not) to live their everyday life.
ATTITUDES. Feeling someone has towards someone else or something.
VALUES. Driving force behind someone's behavior.
COGNITIVE BIASES. Unique perspective someone has in regard to how they interpret situations.
These traits when looked at as a whole, more deeply describe why someone behaves the way they do. More on these psychographic traits can be found in this article HERE.
How a Psychographic Profile FEEls
Take, for example, the psychographic profile of an affluent user.
This is someone who cares more about experience and convenience over price. Messages that emphasize brand story or disclose limited-edition products are more impactful for this user over blowout deals.
Red Bull has a clear understanding of their audience psychographic as seen in their adrenaline fueled, thrill-seeker, action-oriented content.
Understanding the behavioral drivers behind why your audience chooses to buy from you requires in-person and social media listening but it keeps you from being on all the socials at all the times creating the wrong type of content for the wrong people.
clarifying your audience
It's good practice to take a moment to evaluate your current audience. What kind of clients/customers have you been attracting? Are they your ideal client? What kinds of clients do you see yourself working with 5 years from now?
Having a vision for your business and lifestyle that includes the clients who will afford you that lifestyle helps you make decisions now that get you closer to that dream vision.
Download this worksheet to clarify your vision of the future.
Finding your audience's Psychographics
Now that you have a clear picture of your future business and lifestyle, you can find the psychographics of the clients that will afford you that dream vision.
Strategies to try:
A/B TESTING. Provides a way to compare two variations of a page or email opt-in to find out which produces more clicks, sign-ups, etc.
Test changes in your copy and imagery related to lifestyle, goals, desires, and fears.
Case Study: Sumo.com tested two ways to describe the same offer in a blog post entitled, Why you Need to Grow an Email List. By using the phrase "list building masterclass" rather than "email marketing masterclass" to describe the offer, they received 33% more signups. What they learned was that their blog audience was not at the stage where email marketing would be useful so Sumo created more content for bloggers in the beginning list building stages of their business.FACEBOOK AND LINKEDIN GROUPS. You can gain a lot of insight into your niche or industry by joining relevant groups on social media. This is a also a great space to highlight your expertise by contributing to the discussion.
SOCIAL FOLLOWERS. Monitor your social accounts and make note of who's interacting with your content. You can gain a lot of insight from your followers' bios that you can use to make adjustments to your messaging.
BE AN ACTIVE MEMBER. In your own community and on social media, every interaction with you audience is an opportunity to learn about them so attend local events and meetups and respond to every comment and message
ASK YOUR AUDIENCE. Simply asking, "what matters to you now?" helps you get to know your audience directly from their point of view. You can email free surveys like survey.io to your audience asking about your audience's goals, fears, and struggles.
COMPETITOR CONTENT. Dip in to your competitors blog post topics and comments. Check out the products and services listed on their webpage. Sign up for their eNewsletter. By looking at the topics, copy, and imagery used, you'll get a sense of the psychographics of your shared audience.
Taking ACtion
Take action by downloading the Clarify Your Future Vision worksheet first.
Next, try the strategies outlined in this post to understand the psychographics of your market. As you go through the strategies, copy & paste any psychographic data points you find into a spreadsheet.
You'll begin to notice and understand trends in your market's psychographics that you can use to reconfigure your sales pages, refine your product listings, update your "About" page, and improve your ads and targeting.
Now, use your fresh insight to consciously create content that connects with your audience's needs and interests and ultimately motivates them to take action.
