Psychographics are the lesser-known cousin of demographics, but they’re just as important if you want to reach an audience with effective, engaging content.
To start making psychographics work for you, we’ve created this handy guide.
Dive on in!
What are Psychographics?
Psychographic information (psychographics) is data about the likes, habits, values, and attitudes of a group or person. That’s not an exhaustive list, but it gives you an idea of the type of information psychographics covers.
This information is used in marketing to help companies understand why people buy their products.
Psychographics are often used alongside demographics, which help companies identify who they need to target. You can read more about demographics here.
So why should you care about psychographics?
Why are Psychographics Important in Content Marketing?
You need to understand as much as possible about your audience when you’re creating content.
Why is that? Because it allows you to focus.
With information about the beliefs, daily practices, likes and dislikes, aspirations, fears, and pains (in other words, psychographics) of your audience, you can focus your content to serve their needs.
You do this by:
- Providing content where your audience will see it.
- Writing about subjects that interest them and affect their lives.
- Solving their problems and easing their pains.
- Becoming a trustworthy organisation in your audience’s eyes.
Without psychographics, you’re working in the dark.
Ultimately, psychographics support your efforts to create content which builds brand authority, grows an audience, and delivers leads to your company.
Demographics (the ‘who’ data) are an important part in the process of understanding your audience, but without the inclusion of psychographics too, you’re only getting part of the picture.
How do I Identify Which Psychographics are Important?
Working out the psychographics of your target audience is not as data-driven as demographics. You can achieve it through a combination of your own understanding of your ideal audience, and some straightforward research.
- Existing clients are a great source of data about your target audience’s psychographics. Arrange structured interviews where this is possible. If interviews are not an option, you can get a wealth of information by asking your clients about their pain points, habits, and areas of interest in the course of your everyday conversations.
If you get your customer-facing employees to ask your clients and prospects about these areas on a regular basis, you can build up a lot of useful information in a short period of time.
- Reaching out to your followers on social media can also be a great way to learn more about the psychographics of your audience.
If you do take this approach, be sure to qualify the respondents, otherwise you risk making content for people who aren’t likely to buy or use your product or service.
- If you make content in a B2B setting and have clients in a particular industry, read their industry publications so you’re abreast of developments. This will allow you to create content which is genuinely valuable to them, further enhancing your credibility.
- One approach for exploring psychographics is to mine Reddit for the most searched-for keywords using the Reddit Keyword Research Tool. This resource allows you to discover what people are really interested in; would you have guessed that the most searched-for subject in the r/webhosting subreddit was customer service skills?
When you’ve collected psychographics data about your audience in this way, you can combine it with the demographics data you already have.
This will allow you to create a detailed picture of who your audience is, and what content you should be creating for them.
Keep Checking
Check the psychographic information you’re basing your content on a couple of times a year to stay relevant.
You don’t need to conduct exhaustive research, but the last thing you want is to spend time and money creating content only to find that it’s not what your audience wants or needs because it’s out of date.
Think about it; if your clients are growing businesses, their challenges and areas of interest might change over time and you want to remain a useful ally throughout their growth.
What Next?
The best way to turn your psychographic information into something you can use on a daily basis, to help content creation, is with a reader persona.
A reader persona is a hypothetical ‘ideal’ reader created with psychographic and demographic data as its foundation.
And guess what? We’ve got a guide for how to create reader personas right here.
Prize Content digs deep to find the psychographics which matter when creating engaging content for all our clients. Get in touch to find out more by calling 020 3920 6347 or emailing hello@prizecontent.com.
