Psychographic Segmentation: Definition, Examples, Categories

Do you wonder why brands divide their customers based on psychographic segmentation? Well, in reality, it is the opposite. People are different because of these psychographic factors. What we buy, the careers we choose, the brands we are loyal to, and even the movie stars that we look up to are determined by this.

When you decide to buy a product based on certain attributes or when you pick your college majors, even the friends you choose, all of these are examples of psychographic segmentation.

1. What is psychographic segmentation?
2. Psychographic segmentation examples
3. How to collect psychographic segmentation data?
4. Advantages of psychographic segmentation
5. Companies that use psychographic segmentation

What is Psychographic Segmentation?

Psychographic Segmentation is a market research technique that divides a market or customer group based on psychological characteristics such as values, lifestyle, social status, activities, interests, opinions, and attitudes.

While demographic segmentation focuses on measurable factors such as age, gender, income, and education, psychographic segmentation delves into the deeper motivations and emotions behind consumer actions.

But how do you get hold of this data?

It is possible by asking the right questions. Here are a few areas you should cover:

• What are the values your customers espouse?
• What motivates your target market?
• Why is the purchasing behavior of your customers influenced by factor A?
• What are the strongly held beliefs of your customers?
• What kind of lifestyle do different segments in your customer list have?

Psychographic Segmentation Examples

Let’s consider the case of a high-end electronics store in a posh locality to give a psychographic example. It appeals to upper-class customers as they have the purchasing power for it, and they look for luxurious products.

To identify customers interested in buying, the jewelry store has to carry out psychographic segmentation. Variables like social status, purchasing power, and lifestyles are important factors that would identify potential customers for this store. Using these variables, you can find potential customers who would also be a part of the upper class by the above-discussed variables.

Let us look at a few more examples of psychographic segmentation:

• A high-end jewelry brand that customizes based on the demands of the customers
• If a beer brand discovers that its customers enjoy watching sports, it can use this in its ad campaigns. The campaign can show customers having a beer while watching sports matches.
• A fashion brand that targets middle-class buyers to buy trendy clothes at affordable prices. They wouldn’t advertise themselves as high-end. Instead, their marketing campaigns can focus on the fact that they provide affordable in-fashion clothes.
• A company realizes that a huge part of its target market consists of people who are vegans. They can show their support for veganism by creating vegan products. Or they could send a part of their profits to animal welfare organizations to show their solidarity.

Now, unlocking the complete power of psychographics requires data. For this, surveys emerge as a valuable tool. Plus, you need the support of an advanced data collection tool to streamline the process. If you like, I’d suggest you try SurveySparrow.

The platform lets you craft targeted conversational surveys that delve into their lifestyles, values, and interests. That’s not it! You can share the surveys via multiple platforms, and collect, visualize, and analyze the data to make informed decisions.

Now, if we take the above examples, the high-end electronic store can use SurveySparrow’s targeted surveys and filter respondents based on income levels and location.

As for the jewelry brand, they can utilize the custom question types to gather specific design preferences and gauge interest in customization options. The fashion brand can leverage NPS scoring to measure customer satisfaction and identify areas for improvement. There is something for everyone!

Why don’t you try it out today? Sign up for a 14-day free trial!

How to Collect Psychographic Data for Segmentation?

Collecting psychographic data is an important part of the process, as the quality of the data you gather should be worth the effort. Here is how you can collect psychographic data.

Online Surveys

The fastest way to gather feedback these days, as we discussed a while back, is through online surveys. You can create them with SurveySparrow. Send the surveys to your entire email list (or via multiple sharing options) to get information about them and segment them psychographically.

Here are a few questions that you can add to your survey:

• What are your goals concerning product X?
• How easy is it to work with the product?
• What has been your biggest reason to have a product like X?
• Would you buy the highest-priced product if it had all the features you were looking for? (Say a price point of $500/month and above)

If you want to get the best results for your survey, keep it short. Ask only the most relevant questions.

 

The next important way is…

Interviewing customers

One of the best ways to get meaningful data is by interviewing customers. Ask them what their goals are and how your product or service helps them achieve them. It will also help you figure out their language to describe their pain points. It will be of huge help in your marketing communications.

Quizzes

Segment your customers by asking the right questions. When you are capturing information about the lead, ask them psychographic questions so that you can segment them accordingly.

Social media

Millions of people, more importantly, your target market, reside on different social media sites. Find your target market or most engaged customers, and send them polls or make them comment on your posts where their responses will have psychographic elements in it. This is where a Tiktok channel can help. Share content like polls or videos on your channel. Get TikTok views to increase visibility and get content trending.

Using your CRM

Your customer relationship management software has ample data about your customers. Find psychographic data from your CRM, there will be a lot of useful information.

Use brand tracking software

With the help of a good brand tracking tool, you can understand what your customers and target audience feel about your brand. It will also tell you how they react to your marketing campaigns.

Read more:

What are the Psychographic Characteristics?

Below are the various psychographic segmentation characteristics that have a significant influence on the buying patterns of consumers:

Personality

Businesses can divide their customers based on personality. There are different types of personalities, too; you can define them as introvert, extrovert, emotional, friendly, opinionated, funny, etc. The purchasing habits of customers are closely linked with their personalities. Businesses need to ask-” What is the personality type of my prospective customer?”

Attitudes

Each individual’s choices are based on how they have been raised and the values they were taught when they grew up. People can be segmented based on their thoughts and attitudes, as they also affect their purchasing behavior.

A persona from a high-income group will not pinch pennies, nor will they look for ways to get discounts on every purchase. Instead, they will splurge on activities or things that make them happy. On the other hand, the middle-income group might want to save on each purchase to save money for the future. Businesses should keep this in mind when they come up with strategies.

Social status

People from different social classes will have various choices regarding the things they want to buy. It differs from the type of cutlery in their kitchens and the places where they seek entertainment. A brand like Audi will not target someone who is in the lower rung of the middle class, while a brand like Walmart or Costco will target people of all social statuses.

Lifestyle

Another way to differentiate customers is based on lifestyle. The lifestyle of a millionaire businessperson is completely different from that of a mill worker. As a business, you have unique challenges to solve for each of these lifestyle types. Brands should understand the AIO variables of customers. It is abbreviated as Activities, Interests, and Opinions.

Activities

What are the common activities that the customers enjoy? How much time do they invest in these activities? What kind of research do these customers do when they are looking for products to buy?

Interests

People have different interests, and when brands deeply understand this, it will help them refine their marketing activities.

Opinions

Beliefs shape the way a person behaves, including their shopping habits. A vegan will not buy any animal products. So if you are a brand that sells animal products, they might not be a part of your customer base, and no matter how charming your marketing copy is, they will not budge unless they change their beliefs. That is not likely to happen. People have strong opinions about culture, religion, gender, and politics. You need to be careful about your marketing messaging on these topics.

Advantages of Psychographic Segmentation

Collecting customers’ data and analyzing them for lifestyle, attitudes, social status, beliefs, and personalities. It gives the opportunity for brands to draw insights into what motivates them to buy from a brand. It is the key to providing your customers with a relatable and exciting experience. Let us look at the advantages:

Potential for customization

It provides deep insights that allow for relevant customization. The customization is not only of products and services but also of how you communicate with them.

Better use of resources

You can create better products when customers’ preferences are understood and predicted. They will be closer to what your customers expect from you. It will also assist in branding and communication efforts.

Understand your customers’ ‘why’

Understanding why your customers do certain things is possible when you analyze their personalities, attitudes, and beliefs.

Understand competitors’ audiences

Using the same psychographic variables, you can evaluate your competitors’ target market. It will help you fine-tune your branding activities.

Better communication

When your brand’s messaging aligns with their personalities and attitudes, your marketing campaigns will be more interesting.

Accurate segmentation

Incorporating psychographic elements into your segmentation, you will identify more accurate trends and opportunities. It will also help with creating better products and drive new marketing tactics.

Remains stable across time

People’s behavior changes for a variety of reasons and is always unpredictable. So if you are using behavior as a foundation for your marketing segmentation, it can prove unstable. It is possible to track this drawback by tracking new behaviors and constantly refining segments. On the other hand, people’s traits remain constant over time. Whether they prefer high-end products or low-end products is not likely to change.

The benefit of using psychographics for your market segmentation is that it gives you a steady foundation to divide your customers to build a detailed strategy that can be useful for a significant period.

How to Use Psychographic Segmentation in Marketing?

Using psychographic data, you can get the right offer in front of customers and craft the right messaging in your marketing campaigns. Let’s see how you can use it effectively in your marketing.

1. Motivate customers based on their needs

Now that you know what is most important to your customers, you can give them more reasons to buy from you based on it. Your high-end customers are not going to be lured by discounts. By gathering psychographic data, you will know that they value one-to-one support. You can offer that level of support, you can easily get the customers to make the purchasing decision.

2. Tweak your CTAs

The call to action is the most important piece of material in a container. By using the right CTA, you will be able to motivate your customers to take action. A tailored CTA is at the convergence of interests, values, beliefs, and motivations.

3. Write interesting ads

By knowing what emotionally appeals to your target market, your ads will be even more compelling. Using the information, your ads will make the target customer buy from you. You will be able to emotionally influence your customers and strike a chord with your customers.

4. Refine your customer personas

In marketing, buyer personas are everything. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your most ideal customers. When you are creating a marketing campaign, you do not expect everyone to like the content in it. It is impossible that you have the same buyer persona. If you have significant psychographic data, you will be able to update the existing details to refine your buyer personas.

Examples of Psychographic Segmentation: Use cases

Now that we know how important psychographic segmentation is let us look at how companies use them.

Nike

How does Nike use psychographic segmentation? It is one of the world’s most loved sports apparel brands. They use psychographic data in their marketing campaigns. If you have observed their ads, they are always about creating a ‘feeling’. They aim to create a community of doers and infuse a sense of community into their customers.

Apple

Using psychographic data, Apple projects luxury, class, and minimalism to its target audience. They create different marketing campaigns for various psychographic segments. The Apple brand also stands for simplicity, creating a people-driven design and removing complexity from people’s lives.

Coca Cola

The cola drink brand targets its audience with a variety of drinks. Coca-Cola buyers are divided based on their lifestyle, personality, and values.

Netflix

They target three primary groups: people who are too busy to go out for movies, movie buffs who love renting films, and people who want to get the most value for their buck.

Headspace

A popular meditation app, Headspace, realized teachers were a huge part of its customer base. They believed that teachers held a lot of persuading power. So, they created a special offer for teachers, increasing their subscriber base by 25,000. The new subscribers they got were from different markets, too.

Limitations of Psychographic Segmentation

Even though psychographic segmentation helps businesses unlock pivotal information, it does come with its limitations.

Requires clearly defined standards

When it comes to analyzing psychographic segmentation, there should be clearly defined standards. Otherwise, it can be confusing and inconsistent.

Difficult setup process

It is one of the most difficult segmentation methods to perform. Why? Because it requires participation from specific psychographic surveys.

Could be misleading

Even though it is believed that psychographics gives you an understanding of why customers buy your products, it isn’t always found true. While it is a good indicator, it might not necessarily be true why customers buy from you.

Difficult to gather insights

To get meaningful psychographic segmentation, it requires both qualitative and quantitative market research methods. It can be expensive for many businesses, but it is also time-consuming.

Read More: 10 Best Market Research Tools

Wrapping up

Understanding what your target audiences feel and how they operate is pivotal to running a successful business. Getting your marketing strategy up and running based on hunches will only lead you to failures. With the help of psychographic segmentation, you can create marketing campaigns that fit the psychographic patterns. By doing so, your campaigns will represent your customers’ ambitions, attitudes, and beliefs. But you also need to consider the costs involved and the potential inconsistencies that may come up if the research is not conducted properly.

Before you go, don’t forget to create your very own survey with SurveySparrow. It’s free to try!

FAQs

1. What is a psychographic segmentation example?

It is one of the most effective segmentation methods among the others. It uses traits such as attitudes, lifestyles, social status, opinions, and other characteristics to segment customers.

2. What are four examples of psychographics?

Four examples of psychographic characteristics are Personalities, Lifestyles, Interests, and Opinions.

3. How do you identify psychographics?

The psychographic factors include social class, habits, behaviors, interests, and personality characteristics.

4. What businesses use psychographic segmentation?

Marketers of retail products, such as phones, laptops, video games, etc., typically try to identify their target audience based on psychographic factors.