What Are Psychographics?

Patagonia's products include jackets, fleeces, and equipment for outdoor activities such as climbing, skiing, and surfing. Apple is a prime example of psychographic segmentation, as the brand applies this approach to study behavioral patterns in its customer base. The company is recognized for its innovation, sleek and modern design, and strong brand loyalty.

These open-ended questions allow participants to share genuine insights and provide rich psychographic data to inform your marketing campaigns and product development. To collect psychographic data through focus groups or interviews, you need to ask targeted discussion questions that reveal participants’ values, lifestyle, personality traits, interests, and opinions. Focus groups and interviews give you deep qualitative insights into consumer attitudes and opinions. To collect meaningful psychographic data, surveys should include questions that ask about consumers’ values, interests, lifestyles, attitudes, and personality traits. For example, a sports brand might group people based on their interest in specific sports activities, and then market to them accordingly.

This includes more people than just previous customers, as your survey campaign can encompass anyone on your email list. Consider highlighting the activities an audience regularly engages in—actions speak louder than words, after all. Generally, this covers your audience members' overall perspective on life, including their views on social matters, your market, and what your brand stands for.

What you’ll learn:

A good persona summarizes who someone is, what they value, and what influences their choices before, during, and after purchase. It’s best for refining creative direction, positioning, and offering design so your message resonates with each mindset. Psychographic segmentation is a market research method that divides a market into groups based on psychological attributes, such as lifestyle, values, interests, opinions, and personality. When you understand those underlying motives, you can focus on spend, refine messaging, and design products that truly connect. Our comprehensive eBook How to Drive Profits with Customer Segmentation offers the tools and insights you need.

Common Challenges and Limitations of Psychographic Segmentation

Talking to customer-facing teams (sales reps, support agents) can also surface patterns. Frequent repeat purchasers might indicate a segment that is highly engaged or brand-loyal (perhaps tied to certain values or lifestyle needs). Your CRM, purchase history, and customer support logs contain behavioral clues that can support psychographic profiles. Similarly, Google Analytics provides some data on user interests and affinities for your website visitors. Your audience might be actively discussing their interests and opinions in places like Reddit, Facebook Groups, or specialized forums.

Understanding Personality Traits and Consumer Behavior

Meanwhile, for the remaining holdouts, the knowledge that a company’s competitors are using psychographic segmentation to reach untapped markets more efficiently will make it a more, not less, necessary tool to have and use. And, as we’ve seen, psychographic segmentation is a key component in a number of sectors — including the auto industry, health services, and food — that have nothing to do with elections. While Cambridge Analytica and its parent company SCL Group ostensibly shut down in 2018, the group’s sprawling networks remain intact, with over 15 companies and affiliates in the UK and the US. Notably, Bosworth’s memo also derided Cambridge Analytica’s psychographic targeting capabilities as “snake oil.”

• Despite these challenges, psychographic segmentation remains a valuable tool for creating more personalized marketing strategies and connecting with your target consumers on a deeper level.
• Rather than choosing one of the above approaches to customer segmentation, most brands will want to take a combined approach.
• Psychographics can provide valuable insights into the emotional state of a consumer, helping you produce more emotive writing.
• It provides the insights needed for psychographic segmentation, enabling brands to personalize marketing strategies effectively.

Opinions, attitudes, and beliefs

While companies don't usually publish their internal segmentation strategies, we can infer from their marketing that they're targeting specific psychographic profiles. It might help to see how psychographic segmentation manifests in real brands and campaigns. An outdoorsy What factors are considered in psychographics? psychographic segment might be prevalent in certain geographic areas (mountain or coastal regions) where those activities are popular. While geographic segmentation (grouping by country, region, city) is often considered its own approach, you can use it alongside psychographics. Overlaying psychographics on purchasing patterns can highlight opportunities. You might discover that your segment who values exclusivity tends to make purchases immediately when new collections launch, whereas a segment that is more price-sensitive waits for sales.