How to Gather Psychographic information from Your Audience
There are a number of tools and systems that you can use to gather Psychographic data about your target audience. You’re probably already familiar with a few of them. For example, you may use Google Analytics to help gather geographic data about your audience.
(If you’re wondering what Psychographics are, check out the post “Understanding Psychographic of Target Audience“.)
Let’s take a look at more tools and resources as well as the pros and cons of each.
1. Surveys/Questionnaires
Surveys and questionnaires are a useful and fairly easy way to begin gathering information. The real trick to success here is knowing what questions to ask and how to ask them. Surveys need to be catered to your audience and you have to also incentivize them. Many people won’t fill out a survey unless there’s something in it for them. For example, you might enter them into a contest if they answer your survey.
Pro: You’ll get results quickly and can gather a lot of information in a short time.
Con: Not everyone will answer so it can be difficult to get a good cross-section to represent your market. You may have to add an incentive to get a response.
2. Personal Interviews
A few one-on-one interviews with your best clients can help you create a profile. This approach can be one of the most informative ones. It’s important when conducting a personal interview to have your questions prepared in advance and to be able to record the answers.
Pro: Detailed information from actual customers, with the chance to clarify their answers and ask follow-up questions.
Con: Time consuming. You may spend an hour or more per customer getting the detailed information that you need.
3. Focus Groups
Focus groups can be conducted online or in person. It’s a collection of people gathered to provide information about your market. Focus groups are generally a diverse group, demographically speaking. They can provide information about a particular product or service or they can be asked about their various psychographic information.
Pro: You can gain a deeper insight about your prospects, and often people will chime in on other people’s answers, giving you more insights and answers.
Cons: In a group environment people may not be as honest about their opinions, values, beliefs and motivations as they might be in an anonymous environment.
4. Research provided by 3rd party companies
There are web-based services and tools that you can use to gain information about psychoanalytics.
Pro: Vast collection of data that someone else collects for you.
Con: Cost-conscious marketers who have a smaller budget may not wish to pay for this level of service.
5. Your existing website analytics
Use your existing business analytics to dig a bit deeper into your customers’ behavior. What are visitors clicking on? On which content do they spend the most time? Which calls-to-action convert better than others? Where does the majority of your website traffic come from? Where do people go after leaving your site?
Pro: Readily available and pertinent to your existing visitors.
Con: Time-consuming and you may have to go back a bit to find enough data. Can be complicated to understand and draw conclusions when there’s a lot of data. Need to set up specific tests (A/B tests) to uncover patterns.
6. Outsource it
Hire a marketing firm to do the research and information gathering for you. They can conduct the surveys, focus groups, and dig into your analytics to manage the profiling for you.
Pro: It’s easy
Con: It’s expensive
7. Social Media
The great thing about looking to social media for psychographic information is that users tend to be much more open when using these channels. Ethically, it’s not a great idea to trawl through peoples’ profiles grabbing every last bit of info you can, but you can get a decent grasp on the lives of those you’re targeting.
Pro: It’s relatively easy to get your hands on a lot of data as so many people use Social Media.
Con: Social Media information is harder to quantify than other methods and entails a number of different variables.
Each one of these methods can help add depth and information to your audience profile. Combine a few of the methods and you’ll be well on your way to creating a comprehensive and accurate description of who is interested your products or services. You’ll know how to market to them to meet their unique needs.
Want to learn more?
I’ve created an indepth ebook: HOW TO USE PSYCHOGRAPHICS TO UNDERSTAND YOUR MARKET
PLUS a Competitive Research Worksheet and a Tools and Resources Sheet
0 Comments
Trackbacks/Pingbacks