What you need to know before advertising
Customer Psychographics
Before running any ad, it is critical to determine the psychographics. Psychographics are a group’s attitudes, goals, concerns, and beliefs. They are underlying and often unconscious patterns of thinking. These patterns of thinking connect people across demographics and groups, and they are the core motivator’s for the decisions made. Psychographics can include things like people looking for something unique or individuals desiring a place where the entire family can enjoy themselves.
To obtain psychographics, you must first understand why your customer was interested in purchasing. You should also find out what beliefs they share with other customers of yours. This section emphasizes the importance of asking the proper questions to guarantee you obtain the right answers. It may take some time, but it is well worth it. When you understand your customers’ concerns, hopes, and beliefs, the proper message for your advertisements will become evident.
At a minimum, endeavor to gain an understanding of their perspectives on why they purchased your product or service, and then look to understand why others did not. Both allow you to test your theory about the psychographics that buy from you.
There are many companies that limit their size by a lack of focus on psychographics. Victoria Secret did a great job of showing how you can increase market size by focusing on a psychographic. Their magazine and marketing efforts centered around one focus. “Ensuring the woman looked as sensual as possible.” For many years women were the only buyers of their lingerie. However, Victoria Secret introduced the idea that men and women should buy the lingerie. They geared their brand away from the demographic of just women. This change in marketing focuses allowed them to create a far greater amount of buyers. The great part was not only did they add a new demographic, but they also created a heavier buying demographic without alienating their original demographic. By putting the focus on their psychographic of sensuality.
You can also see where not focusing on the psychographics can cause your business to lose market demand. When you’re only focused on promoting a specific demographic, then you tend to not focus on the psychographic that caused that group to buy. Instant pot is a great example of this. They were only concerned with having their products in front of a psychographic who wanted quick cheap meals at home. They didn’t see the trend of fewer home buyers, and the increase in the trend of eating out. Their products that met the psychographic desire of cheap quick meals at home disappeared, and they are disappearing with it. It’s always the psychographic that causes the buying.
Customer Demographics
Your customers’ demographics are the physical qualities that can be measured. Consider age, relationship status, financial situation, and so on. It is critical to employ these measures and comprehend their impact on the psychographics of the group as a whole. Keep in mind that you may have numerous completely distinct demographics that fall under the same psychographic. These can be quite useful on digital platforms, where you can tailor advertisements based on these parameters.
Being able to utilize demographics is incredibly valuable in personalizing your marketing efforts. We’ve seen a consistent trend with technology for people to increasingly desire a more personalized focus of advertising. Understanding the different demographics allows you to build multiple customer segments. Each can have specific ads and campaigns focused on them. This is what allows the large corporations to be so successful. They ensure that there is one cohesive message, but different ads and campaigns promote personalized messages for that customer segment. In the end all unite under the same umbrella after being brought from different segments.
Groups They Belong To
Knowing what groups your ideal customers belong to will help you gain better insights into where they hang out, and it will give a better understanding of their psychographics. Understanding what gatherings online or offline attract your ideal customers is crucial in understanding them, ad placement, and branding.
Knowing where your clients are gathered is critical to ensure that your advertising dollars are not squandered. The worst thing you can do is invest money and/or time at an event or platform where there aren’t a lot of your clients. Therefore, asking about your customers’ social media platforms, school groups, church groups, or if they attend a specific type of event are all excellent questions to obtain knowledge of the best location to be in front of them.
We have seen many companies be able to create a lot of success by being a part of the right groups. One great example of this would be Yeti. They focused on ensuring to have a tent at rodeos. They understood that customers who spend long days in the sun go to rodeos for fun. It was this location that allowed for them to quickly grow.
Another great example is Grove Cookie Company in Oregon. They realized that LinkedIn is filled with sales people, B2B service providers, and VP’s. This has allowed their focus of being a B2B gifting service to take off. They have literally put themselves directly in front of people who want what they offer.
The opposite is also true and needed. Knowing where your customers aren’t is crucial in ensuring that you don’t waste time or money trying to reach people that aren’t there. A great example would be our own journey. Where we found the majority of people we wanted to work with haven’t touched their LinkedIn account for years. This allowed us to change our focus and platform.