Discover How Psychographics Can Speed Up Your Sales Growth

For many years, marketers have used demographics to gain insight into their target markets. Demographics have a rightful place in market research. Gender, age, income, education and other data provide useful information about customers. Demographics are characteristics of a group that you can observe from the outside. These characteristics can help you know who buys your product or service.

Psychographics can provide much more intimate information about each of your prospects and customers. Psychographics is a person’s interests, activities, opinions and values. These attributes can help you understand the psychological makeup of the individual. Psychographics helps you see the internal attitudes of customers and why they buy your product or service.

You can speed up your sales growth by acquiring, analyzing and applying psychographics throughout your marketing.

Acquiring Psychographic Data

The classic way to acquire psychographic information is to purchase it from companies that specialize in market research. This may be a good strategy for getting leads to prospect for new customers.

The more cost effective way to acquire psychographic information and speed up your sales is by getting information about your existing customers. You can do this in two ways. The first way is by sending your customers a survey.

You can also derive information about your customers by looking at their profiles from social networks, such as Facebook.

Some of the things you can learn about your customers through survey or social media include:

• Relationship status
• Alma mater
• Occupation
• Hobbies
• Social interests

Analysis

The information you collect about your customers can give you clues to what types of products they like to buy. Plus, it can show you how likely they may be to buy a certain type of product you sell. For example, if your customer is a hiker, he or she may be more apt to buy hiking boots than those who are runners.

You can segment your customer database and may find customers who are likely to spend more than $150 on a product based on what sports they like to watch and play or where they like to travel.

Lifecycle data on lifestyle changes, such as moving, marriage or pregnancy, can indicate a time in which your customer may be more likely to spend money on certain products or services. For example customers who are about to have their first child are good targets for baby-related items like furniture, toys and clothing.

Direct Marketing

Direct marketing is the most measurable way to promote the sale of your products or services. The conventional approaches to direct marketing are direct mail, telemarketing or direct response advertising. Yet in today’s digital world, email marketing is also part of the direct marketing mix. In fact, email may be the most cost-effective.

Psychographics can enable you to customize your direct marketing. For example, you can target individuals based on their interests or values, or you can segment your marketing campaign based on these psychographic attributes. You can even test certain campaigns by psychographic attribute.

Psychographics in B2B Marketing

Psychographics is not restricted to B2C marketing. You can apply it in B2B marketing. The key decision makers in any organization are human. They each have a unique psychological profile that makes up their psychographic information. Certain professions attract people with similar attributes. For example, creative and imaginative communication may appeal more to a psychiatrist, whereas a surgeon may be attracted to something more realistic.

You may have business customers that turn and sell their products and services to consumers. Psychographics can provide valuable information about the end-user. You can use this information to help influence sales to your B2B customers. In fact, your B2B customers may be impressed with the value you bring to their companies.

What’s Next

Start to use psychographics by taking small steps. The first step may be to collect information about your existing customers through a survey. Build a database where you can store and analyze the information you collect. Then roll out a campaign based on what you find. You may be pleasantly surprised at how valuable psychographics can be to speed up your sales.