People working in the marketing industry are always on the hunt for new and upgraded techniques to improve their advertising methods.
Because new advertising strategies are constantly being developed and old ones reinvented, the marketing we know of today is nothing like the marketing of the past. Psychological segmentation is one of the more important marketing elements today.
It focuses on the key customer information required to develop detailed and successful marketing strategies, which is precisely why so many marketers are introducing it as part of their marketing efforts.
If you’re interested in learning more about psychological segmentation and the power it can have on the success of your marketing campaign, make sure to keep reading.
About psychological segmentation
As you can probably tell, psychological segmentation plays a vital role in the marketing industry and target market definition business. It includes categorizing your customers into segments that describe their buying behaviors.
Unlike behavioral segmentation, which focuses on tracking down the buying behavior, psychological segmentation is turned towards examining the motivations behind specific buying behaviors.
With that said, psychological segmentation examines the following buying behaviors:
- Values;
- Beliefs;
- Opinions;
- Activities;
- Lifestyle choices;
- Social status.
When it comes to marketing campaigns, psychological segmentation is often accompanied by demographic segmentation. The role of demographic segmentation is to collect demographic information about your customers and categorize them according to different criteria.
We can say demographic data is quantitative, while psychographic data is qualitative. By combining the two, marketers can create complete customer profiles to help them make better future decisions.
Psychological segmentation and its 5 variables
Market researchers look at customers’ interests, opinions, activities, and lifestyle choices when using psychological segmentation. To make segmenting customers into different categories easier, marketers usually rely on the five variables.
The five psychographic segmentation variables are:
Personality: Customers’ buying habits are strongly influenced by their personalities.
Therefore, introverted and extroverted people will have different purchasing habits. Here are some other personality characteristics that you can use as filters: emotional, sociable, organized, creative, and many others.
AIO: Activities, interests, and opinions, or simply AIO, is a variable that categorizes customers based on these criteria. Whether your customers are hobbyists, enthusiasts, or professionals, the AIO variable helps you better understand what your customers are all about.
Attitudes: Upbringing and cultural background shape our attitudes and affect our shopping behaviors. Because each person experienced a unique upbringing, different marketing techniques will have different effects on people.
Learning about your customers’ attitudes is essential for creating a successful marketing campaign.
Lifestyle: Lifestyle choices also affect people’s purchasing habits. For instance, purchasing sneakers is different for everyone – some need them for work, as a fashion statement, for the gym, or for a marathon.
Knowing the lifestyle choices of your customers can help you develop a good product and advertise it to the right target audience.
Social status: Since price plays an important role, analyzing the social status of your customers will help you optimize the cost of your products or services.
Price optimization is critical because you can miss out on generating sales with prices that are too high and miss out on earning profit with prices that are too low.
Advantages of implementing psychological segmentation Naturally, psychological segmentation comes with numerous advantages. Let’s check out some of them.
Gathering useful customer information: With psychological segmentation, you can understand how and why the customers use your product or service. That’ll also help you understand your customers’ wants, needs, and concerns.
Such information will help you improve your existing product, but it can also assist you in developing new ideas.
Customizing products or services: When you know how and why people use your product or service, it’s easy to develop various customizable solutions. That allows you to customize products and services for different personal and other use cases.
Improving communication with the customers: Psychological segmentation requires marketers to focus on their customers since it includes talking to customers and understanding them on a personal and emotional level.
As a result, marketers can experience better communication with their customers.
How to collect data for psychological segmentation
Finally, all that’s left to explain is how to collect valuable and game-changing psychological segmentation data. There are countless ways of gathering this type of data, but we’ve decided to single out the most useful ones here.
Conduct surveys: One of the best ways of collecting qualitative psychological data is through surveys. Include open-ended questions and open-text answers to collect thorough, accurate, and reliable results.
Interview customers: In-person or video interviews allow you to pick up on body language, facial expressions, and other details that surveys miss. Also, interviews let customers be more honest, as it’s much easier to explain the pros and cons of a product through a conversation instead of writing them down.
Use digital analytics: Social media platforms, websites, browsing details, and other types of digital data contain plenty of valuable customer information. Using digital analytics can help you get a clearer picture of the kind of people interacting with your brand.
Conclusion
With the power of psychological segmentation, you can learn much more about your customers. This special marketing technique equips you with everything you need to make informed business decisions and develop reliable marketing campaigns.
If you still haven’t implemented the technique mentioned above into your marketing efforts, make sure to do so as soon as possible.