Table of Contents
- What is Psychographic Segmentation
- Why Psychographic Segmentation is important in Marketing
- Types of Psychographic Segmentation
- 7 Psychographic segmentation examples
What is Psychographic Segmentation
Psychological Segmentation is a segmentation method that can be used in conjunction with or without behavioral and demographic Segmentation. Instead of focusing on how people behave and what demographics they belong to, Psychological Segmentation focuses more on psychological characters such as conscious and subconscious beliefs, motivations, and priorities.
Why Psychographic Segmentation is important in Marketing
In marketing, psychographic Segmentation is a marketing strategy that utilizes data to create psychological profiling of your customers with the intention to make marketing messages more relatable and personalized.
Psychological Segmentation also allows marketers to understand the motivation behind a buying decision. For example, the world’s most famous phone brand, Apple, is known to have phone products that easily cost over $600, yet they have customers who purchase their phones even if they have a monthly wage far below $600.
For the example above, looking at the demographic Segmentation alone will put marketers at a loss, leaving them to wonder what the reasons people are purchasing the phone way above their income level. However, if psychological explanations are taken into picture, the action of consumers can be easily explained by wanting to be associated with high social status, a good sense of judgment, or being in the same social group.
Hence with Psychographic Segmentation, marketers can gain a better understanding of the Psychological factor behind the purchasing behavior and fine-tune your marketing messages based on each
Types of Psychographic Segmentation
They are many types of Psychological Segmentation, and depending on the source, it can range from four to ten types. I combined all the types available out there and came out with four main psychographic segmentations.
Personality
Personality is the psychographic Segmentation that identifies the users behind the data. Who they are, how they usually behave, and how they will behave under certain circumstances. Brands usually identify the personality traits of their target customers and create a personality trait most attractive to them. Some examples of personality types are:
Belongers
The “mainstream” personality is a personality trait envisioned by the population. People in this personality trait constantly trying to fit in with their society, families, and communities
Survivalists
These individuals have difficulty earning a stable income, or they think they difficulty earning a stable income. This might due to their poverty-stricken background or due to what they believe in life. They don’t spend much money because they are in constant fear of losing everything.
Social Status
Social status segmentation is not only about income level, social background but also about where the customers are currently in life. For example, are your customer high schoolers, university students, married, or single? This can be the current customers’ social status or social status they aiming to be.
Lifestyle
Lifestyle refers to the customers’ lifestyle patterns. How do they start and end their day? What do they do on the weekend and how do they spend their free time. With a good understanding of consumer lifestyle and habits, marketers can curate marketing messages that speak at the right time.
Value (Opinion, Attitude & Interest)
Values, perhaps one of the most important psychographic Segmentation out there, talks about what your customers believe in, what’s their opinion and attitude on a certain subject, what’s their hobby and interest in. Or in other words, what do they value in life. This could revolve around themes such as religion, politics, gender, environment, cultural issues, arts, and sports.
Based on the values that customers hold, brands know when to talk about a specific issue, send messages to kinder their customers’ interest, and encourage purchase.
Psychographic Segmentation examples in real-life marketing
Klook
Klook, one of the fastest-growing travel platform in the East Asia region, is no stranger to the psychographic Segmentation. Knowing that customers are traveling for different reasons, they created their website interface to allow flexibility to select from the destination or things do to (before needing a destination). This is because Klook realized some travelers decide where to go based on the activities available.
Klook also had marketing campaigns created aiming at daring female travelers who love are looking for an adventure.
Traveloka
Tapping into the traditional Chinese value for family and the hard work nature of moms in the family, Traveloka devised this clever advertisement aiming at those who experienced the love of their mom that has strived hard to take care of their children.
Their Instagram page also did an excellent job in acknowledging the needs of people from different personality traits, showing photos ranging from food, exotic hotels to worries of current customers.
Old Spice
The good old Old Spice needs no introduction. Ever since their viral marketing debut in 2010, they have never stopped making marketing videos that capture the heart of their target market so dearly. After conducting research that shows that females purchase 70% of the household shower gel, Old Spice cleverly devised their male product aiming at the female.
Fast forward to 2020, 10 years after learning more about their newly acquired customers, they realized that their customers want to be “manly.” To make sure they speak to their target customers, they have phrased all their marketing messages to stereotypical man talks to connect with their customers.
Xiaomi Malaysia
One of the top phone manufacturers from China, Xiaomi, knows how to talk to relate to their customers. Well-known for being their low-cost, high quality, and performance phone, the majority of their customers are usually from the low to the middle class. Knowing that most of their customers watch local product reviews on Facebook, they changed their usual marketing style and created their own live broadcast to connect with their customers.
Mamari
Psychographic Segmentation is not only for big companies, but it can also be used by SMBs and on their website. Mamari, a platform used by moms and moms-to-be in Japan, utilized the psychographic Segmentation of what moms and mom-to-be value the most and send out marketing messages which relate to them.
For mom-to-be, nothing matters to them the most than the expected day of delivery and the health of their baby. Understanding that Mamari sent out messages showing the days till delivery and “Quote of the day” to educate and inspire them their users
Read more about Mamari case study here.
Goo-net
One of our clients, Goo-net, is one of the biggest car listing sites in Japan. They are too, no stranger to the psychographic Segmentation. This is especially true when it comes to the car industry as people mostly like purchasing vehicles based on their psychological Segmentation.
For Goo-net, they created two psychographic segments. One side representative of housewives is trying to get a car, which allows them to easily go shopping, and the other is a car used for a family with kids. Based on these segments, they sent out different messages and received an 80% increased in engagement rate.
Read more about Goo-net case study here.
Square Enix (end Factory)
Manga UP is a manga App in Japan that is co-operated by Square Enix and end Factory. Knowing that their users have the habit of watching Youtubers on youtube, they created a marketing campaign that partners with three different Youtubers. The campaign involves the Youtubers creating a video promoting the App and requiring viewers to vote who made the best promo video by voting within the App. The Youtuber who won will get to chance to appear in one of the manga. This created a buzz among the community as people want their favorite Youtubers to win.
