Psychographics - a better audience definition

For many businesses, trying to get a great definition of your customer base just can't happen with demographics alone. In most instances, your customer base is defined by a lifestyle or a mindset, rather than by their age, income and education.

You need to discover what makes your customer base tick. Do they love to read? And if so, what do they read? Do they love to garden? Are they fans of old movies? Every one of these answers teaches you more about your audience and how to reach them with your marketing efforts.

For the sake of example, let's look at organic products. This is a very specific mindset and lifestyle. They cost more than traditional products and their benefits tend to not be seen immediately. So what might be the defining elements of this customer base?

With traditional demographics, this audience could be defined as anyone over 21 years of age, largely female, with college or university education and a mid-range to high income. They have a healthy lifestyle that would include exercise, outdoor activities such as gardening or hiking, they stay away from prepackaged/preprepared foods. They like to read and support the arts in some form.

So what could your marketing plan include that would reach this customer base? If we only looked at the demographic information, it might make sense to buy traditional media like radio or newspapers. But that just isn't targeted enough.

With the information about the customers likes and dislikes, you can fine-tune your plan and hit them where they live, thereby getting more return on your marketing investment. Gardening magazines would be a good choice. Magazines based on hobbies or interests are read with more attention than general stream newspapers or magazines. In Canada, Canadian Gardening offers a subscription base that would well match the psychographics of an organic product purchaser.

Sponsoring an art event or buying an ad in a theatre program, would also streamline your message delivery. The most important thing is to not waste your money on traditional, general interest media.

So how do you figure out the psychographics of your customer base? Talk to them. Survey them. You'll see commonalities fairly quickly. And there will be commonalities you can take advantage of to grow your business.