FOCUS ON PSYCHOGRAPHICS
It’s time to do laundry. You carefully separate your whites from colors, put aside the delicates to wash by hand or air dry, and create yet another pile of clothes for the dry cleaner.
When we do laundry- at least when we do it well- we realize that a one-size-fits-all approach would be a disaster. So we separate our clothes to meet their unique needs. But when it comes to our prospects, audiences and customers, we often treat them as one homogeneous group. If we want to foster trust and loyalty with the people we aim to serve, we can no longer afford a mass targeting approach.
Traditionally, targeting and segmentation relied heavily on demographics— gender, race, age..etc— to predict consumer behavior. Those demographic indexes were an accurate way to predict people’s attitudes and preferences, even their values and beliefs. But in the context of our modern world, those boxes have become unreliable predictive models.
The world is a different place— more integrated and fluid. And the internet served as a catalyst for that transformation. It doesn’t mean, however, that the world has turned into a homogenous place. The traditional boxes we used to put people in have simply been redefined.
Nowadays, psychographics— personality, values, beliefs, opinions and attitudes— are more important than demographics. In the context of our global and digital world, psychographics now transcend demographic markers. A study of the hashtags on our respective timelines and the diversity of the people who belong to those micro-communities provides a great insight for this cultural shift.
The move from demographics to psychographics has at least two important implications.
First, it means that ideas, emotions, beliefs and values are more important than ever before. People no longer belong to groups simply because they are made up of people who look like them. Instead, they want to form micro-communities with people with a similar worldview, with shared beliefs, values, tastes and preferences. It is increasingly important to lead with those psychographic markers when deciding on a target audience or in dividing an existing group into segments.
The second implication, is that we have to resist the temptation of going for a mass appeal. We should instead focus on what marketing guru Seth Godin calls our smallest viable market— the smallest group of people we can serve best. Instead of casting a wide net, we should strive for building deeper relationships with smaller audiences and segments. By catering to targeted audiences or specific segments, we can build more engaged and loyal communities.
If you are starting out and struggling to define a target market, ask yourself these important questions. What is the smallest viable market I can serve best? Who are the people in that subculture or micro-community? What are their needs and aspirations? What is the worldview that they share? And if you are trying to decide how to segment your existing customer base, spend some time creating different customer personas leading with psychographic instead of demographic markers.
The laundry analogy is an imperfect metaphor, but it at least opens the door for us to bring more empathy into our work. For what we do, and the kind of impact we want to have however, simply separating whites from colors isn’t going to suffice.