How to get Psychographic information about your customers?

We’ve harked on quite enough about how important psychographic information is to your marketing and online acquisition plans. Now it’s time to get to the heart of the matter: how, exactly, do you find psychographic information in the first place?

Brands that perfect their inbound lead generation strategy see falling marketing costs, better quality leads, greater client engagement and other benefits that outbound methods simply can’t provide. If you want to know more about inbound lead generation read our guide “Everything you need to know about Inbound lead generation"

Reminder: Think about psychographics in terms of behaviour: ‘psychographics’ give you the reasons, motives and triggers behind consumer actions.

Psychographics add colour to demographics and allow you to make informed decisions in terms of messaging, design and placement.

The very first place to start when hunting out great psychographic information is with your audience. An in-depth appraisal of exactly who you’re talking to will help on two counts.

Firstly, it will develop real clarity around the type of person you should be targeting. Right now, if you can get as precise as ‘business owners’ or ‘young mums’ you’re knowledge is woefully vague.

Go through an audience mapping process and you’ll be answering questions such as, ‘where do they exist online?’, ‘what does success look like to them?’, ‘what’s their ideal shopping or buying experience?’

Already you’re adding colour to the blank faces that make up your tribe.

Secondly, it will force you to get under their skin and think about the journey they want to take as consumers or business buyers. And that produces so many ‘ah ha’ moments in terms of how and when to talk to and engage your audience.

We offer audience mapping as an integral part of its strategic process, so if you’ve got any questions about this, give us a call!

Belly vs. Brain

Initial audience mapping involves a lot of guess work, and it’s important to counter those assumptions with hard, cold evidence.

While our guts are incredibly powerful tools (97% of decisions are made using our ‘belly brains’ and then post rationalised using our heads), sometimes we owe it to our instincts and marketing plans to back them up with some solid statistics.

Also, the people in your business who love facts (typically the ones who hold the purse strings) will be persuaded and convinced far more by ‘we know’ than by ‘we think’, ‘everyone does’ or ‘it’s always been that way’ (for the impending dangers of that last sentiment see our previous article on Post Demographic Consumerism).

So, how do you gather such evidence?

You ask.

Research comes in two categories: primary and secondary. Secondary research makes use of pre-existing information. HubSpot has reams of this, as do many other marketing companies. Wikipedia can turf up all sorts.

The problem with secondary research is that we can’t be sure of the research journey - how the authors of the research came to their conclusions.

Primary research is therefore where the power really lies - especially if the fact-loving purse holders decide to interrogate your messaging choices.

Primary research is the stuff you conduct yourself. It’s you, in the field, asking questions. Sometimes literally, sometime by observation. User groups, forums and discussion all inform primary research. Asking existing clients is a great place to start. Sending simple questionnaires through SurveryMonkey to your existing client data base is an easy and efficient way of reengaging and learning about your customers.

Before you go ahead be very clear about what you want to know. Remember, psychographics are based on the motives behind actions. The sort of conclusions you want to be getting to, taken from HubSpot’s blog on this topic, are:

Audience A is:

• Concerned with health and appearance
• Wants a healthy lifestyle, but doesn’t have much time
• Enjoys going online in the evenings, big fan of Pinterest
• Tends to favor quality over economy
• Finds fulfillment in her career and family
• Values time with a small group of friends

There are loads of great tools available for quizzing and understanding your customers better - from ClickTale to CrazyEgg. From Qualaroo to Qwaya. These platforms enable you to obtain a deeper level of understanding between how customers use your site, what they're looking for, how they expect to find it and also, what motivates them.

As ad platforms, both Facebook and Twitter have some incredible targeting features that can slot your message, brand or product in front of specific interests, buying cycles and groups. Incredibly powerful targeting, once you know who you are going after.

Research is not enough

Even armed with a body of evidence your job as High Marketing Inquisitor doesn’t end. In fact, it never ends. All this stuff must be tested, adjusted and tested again to ensure it really works and continues to serve you.

Ideally, testing psychographics - and monitoring changes in buyer behaviour - should be an ongoing part of your marketing strategy.

Why? Because when you’re able to review your facts on an on-going basis, and thus perpetually inform and update messaging, design, placement and promotion, you’re able to refine results and improve the acquisition journey.

At Six & Flow, buyer behaviour is a fundamental part of all our strategy work. What starts as guess work very quickly becomes hard fact and informed decision making, as we back it up with evidence from the web and statistics from existing campaigns.

Website analytics form an integral part of psychographical research, and add an extra layer of technicality. With behind-the-scenes information, we’re able to depict not only if messaging and design convert effectively, but how placement, colour and timing effect buyer behaviour.

 Brands that perfect their inbound lead generation strategy see falling marketing costs, better quality leads, greater client engagement and other benefits that outbound methods simply can’t provide. If you want to know more about inbound lead generation read our guide “Everything you need to know about Inbound lead generation”