You might want to group customers by:

• Social class
• Lifestyle
• Interests
• Values
• Personality
• Social status
• Religion
• Opinions
• Attitudes
• Hobbies

Three use cases for Psychographic Segmentation

1. Refining marketing channels – Whilst you may have a good idea of which marketing channels your customers are interacting with you, this doesn’t tell you much about their wider interaction with the world. By understanding their hobbies and interests you can better place your brand alongside things your customers already like. If for instance you were a beer manufacturer, you might know that a certain supermarket was your most successful outlet for sales, and by doing research into the hobbies and interests of your audience, you might discover that Rugby is a popular sport with them and so by offering a discount when the Rugby games are on you can increase your sales with that retailer.
2. Reflecting cultural trends – Culture is always shifting and it can be difficult for brands to know which issues are passing trends and those which are here to stay. It can also be difficult for brands to understand if their customers expect them to have a viewpoint and act upon social issues. By conducting research on the values of their current and prospective customers they can better understand which action to take. There are quite a few examples where this has gone wrong for brands. Gillette’s advert which aimed to tackle ‘toxic masculinity’ came under heavy scrutiny as being condescending with people commenting “When did shaving have to get political?”
3. Tap into lifestyle motivations – The more we understand about the context in which consumers live their life, the easier to becomes to tailor our messaging. If you had a meditation app for example, your research might uncover that many of your users are single individuals who like to spend their weekends partying, so your marketing team might create advertising campaigns that speak to the need to disconnect from the hectic pace of urban life.

Pros

Where behavioural segmentation looks at how a segment interacts with your brand, psychographic segmentation looks at how they interact with the wider world. Understanding the motives, needs and desires of your customers can be incredibly useful in order to execute emotive marketing.  Lifestyle, attitude, emotions and preferences are crucial factors in analysing how consumers allocate their money. Psychographic data is qualitative in nature, but with the amount of information that users share on social media, organisations can also understand at a broader level the interests, opinions, values, hobbies and lifestyle choices, etc of different segments.

Through research you can uncover not only the probable needs and motivations behind purchases but you can also understand what they expect from your product or service. What does success look like for them? If they buy your toothpaste for example, would they expect better results for a higher price, do they value fresh breath or white teeth more? What is their criteria for making a purchasing decision? All of this information can help you to get, grow and keep more customers and more closely align your brand to your customers.

Pros

Where behavioural segmentation looks at how a segment interacts with your brand, psychographic segmentation looks at how they interact with the wider world. Understanding the motives, needs and desires of your customers can be incredibly useful in order to execute emotive marketing.  Lifestyle, attitude, emotions and preferences are crucial factors in analysing how consumers allocate their money.

Psychographic data is qualitative in nature, but with the amount of information that users share on social media, organisations can also understand at a broader level the interests, opinions, values, hobbies and lifestyle choices, etc of different segments.

Cons

Most of the research methods used to collect psychographic data are qualitative in nature, and this means that typically a small number of respondents will represent a larger group. Time is limited in interviews, surveys can only have so many questions, and so the quality of responses must be called into question. Psychographics can easily be misunderstood or incorrectly applied, and it’s also important to consider that while every business will consider the buying journey a consumer takes, the consumers themselves may never have considered it at such a granular level.

Patterns can change rapidly meaning that Psychographic Segmentation often fails to deliver ROI due to the time needed to conduct research, the cost in doing so, and the recommendations brought forth. While psychographic data enables rich consumers personas, often they aren’t well-differentiated on category behaviour, and this is why they are best utilised when combined with an analytical lens focusing on customer needs.

Creating a Psychographic Profile