The common question in social media marketing, “What is our demographic?” needs to be rethought. Demographics bring back incomplete answers that will not give you a complete story on your target audience. Demographics tell people very basic information about our target audience. In order to paint a full picture, we need to look at psychographics. Psychographics help us predict what customers will do, and why they are doing it. Psychographics give us better insight into our customer’s reasoning and actions.

Let’s begin by comparing two individuals.  Person A is a man, 23-34 years old, and makes about $45k each year.  Person B is a dad with one child who is 1-6 months old and spends $500-1000 online every month.

Time to blow your mind: person A and B are actually the same person. Mind blown! He is a dad and he is 23-34 years old. He spends $500-1000 online and he makes $45k/year. Shocking right? Not really, I know. The difference between these two sets of information begins to illustrate the differences between demographics and psychographics.

Today we have many resources used to get information easier than ever before. We also have new resources allowing us to find more in-depth information about a target market. If we have access to all of this information but only utilize age, gender, income level and geographic location, companies are cheating themselves.  Psychographics look at all the information available. Then, it is important to take all this information, compile it and adapt marketing efforts accordingly. Psychographics ask questions such as:

• What do they like about my company’s services?
   

• What do they like about my competitor’s services?
   

• Why did they buy our service?
   

• What are their other hobbies?
   

• How frequent do they make online purchases?
   

• What is their social status?
   

• Who do they seek approval from when they decide to make a purchase?
   

• How much disposable income do they have available for this type of purchase?
   

• What messaging have they seen before their purchase?

Questions like this help us become much more strategic in our marketing efforts.

Through psychographics we begin to understand and predict what our customer will do. The guessing game begins to disappear and strategies become effective. Psychographics are the way of the future while demographics are the way of the past. Don’t fall behind.

About the author

Courtney Rose

Courtney has always wanted to take over the world, but for now she is working on bettering the place with good design. Courtney is our visual problem solver and she loves a good typeface. Having studied design for some time in Switzerland—one of the most design savvy countries in the world—we’re glad she chose to work for PRMarketing.com. She’s full of inspiration and feeds off of the creative adrenaline she finds in traveling, new cultures, food and nature.