Diving into the nuanced world of psychographics can transform your brand’s resonance with consumers, so we sought out the expertise of Founders, CEOs, and other business leaders. From segmenting your audience by lifestyle and values to creating personas that reflect client motivations, discover the top six strategies these professionals recommend for leveraging psychographic data in brand positioning.

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Contents

1 Segment Audience by Lifestyle and Values
2 Analyze Engagement to Uncover Priorities
3 Humanize Data with Relatable Personas
4 Align Communications with Consumer Values
5 Target Messages to Customer Lifestyles
6 Create Personas Reflecting Client Motivations

Segment Audience by Lifestyle and Values

I worked at Amazon for four years as a software engineer on the Amazon Fulfillment Technology team (software that powered all the fulfillment centers in the world).

One effective technique for using psychographic data in brand positioning is to segment your audience based on lifestyle and values, and then tailor your messaging to resonate with their specific motivations and aspirations. This approach ensures your brand connects on a deeper emotional level, driving stronger customer loyalty and engagement.

Peter Wang, Founder, Exploding Insights

Analyze Engagement to Uncover Priorities

To leverage psychographic data in brand positioning, focus on your audience’s priorities, hobbies, and interests. Dive into the subjective aspects of your consumers, such as their beliefs, values, goals, and attitudes—essentially, understanding why they buy.

Start by analyzing your site content and past offers to see what has historically driven engagement and purchases. If you haven’t monitored your analytics, now is the time to start. Testing different approaches can uncover your audience’s true motivations based on their actions. For example, a consumer may not label themselves a bargain-hunter, yet their frequent use of discount codes suggests they prefer deals.

After identifying what matters to your target buyer, like career and family, incorporate these into your content and advertising. Share articles on how good health boosts job performance and offer fun exercise tips for kids. Use ads showing healthy parents enjoying time with their children, mirroring your audience’s values and lifestyle goals.

Understanding your audience’s hobbies and interests can guide your content creation. For example, if they love baking, share healthy baking recipes on Pinterest, Instagram, and your blog. This tailored approach resonates deeply with your audience and positions your brand as a meaningful part of their daily lives, driving engagement and loyalty.

Karan Rawal, Demand Generation and Brand Partnerships Coordinator, Ace Infoway

Humanize Data with Relatable Personas

A smart technique for brand positioning using psychographic data is to build detailed customer personas. We dig into our customers’ lifestyles, attitudes, interests, and opinions to shape a tangible, relatable persona.

By doing so, we humanize our data, making it easier to create messaging that strikes an emotional chord. So, our brand isn’t just offering a product, but a solution that fits seamlessly into our customers’ narrative. This approach, founded on psychographic insights, fosters a deeper connection with customers, converting them into brand advocates.

Abid Salahi, Co-founder and CEO, FinlyWealth

Align Communications with Consumer Values

A successful approach to leveraging psychographic insights for positioning a brand involves creating particular communications that align with consumer values. At Fuel Logic, our goal was to shift the perception of our high-end diesel offering to attract fleet managers who care about the environment. Through examining psychographic information, we found that these managers valued being eco-friendly and efficient in their operations.

We developed complex characters, such as “Eco-Friendly Fleet Manager,” that aided in grasping their incentives and challenges. For example, these leaders were mainly focused on minimizing environmental impacts and valued thorough analyses of eco-friendliness.

By leveraging this understanding, we customized our advertising content. Our promotions emphasized our high-quality diesel’s reduced greenhouse gas emissions and showcased examples of businesses that had effectively minimized their ecological footprint. This strategy boosted our interaction rates by 30% and resulted in a 25% rise in sales.

In a different situation, while I was serving as a Brand Manager, we leveraged information about people’s lifestyles and preferences to focus on a “Cost-Conscious Logistic Officer” type. This group prioritized being efficient and saving money. Our communication highlighted how our services could lead to ongoing savings on fuel and their dependability, which struck a chord with their principles.

Consistently refreshing these character profiles with new information from polls, social networks, and client reviews guarantees that your brand stays in tune with your audience’s changing requirements. This approach improves how your brand is perceived and strengthens relationships with customers, encouraging loyalty and increasing sales.

Harnessing insights from psychological profiles to develop and improve profiles of target customers has always been successful for me, whether at Fuel Logic or in my prior positions, highlighting its importance in long-term marketing strategies.

Eliot Vancil, CEO, Fuel Logic

Target Messages to Customer Lifestyles

One effective technique we’ve used is leveraging psychographic data to create highly-targeted marketing messages that resonate with our customers’ values and lifestyles.

We analyzed psychographic data to understand our customers’ preferences and pain points. For instance, many of our clients value convenience and quick service. We positioned our brand as the “fastest, most reliable on-site repair service in Louisville,” highlighting our commitment to saving clients time and hassle.

This approach attracted a loyal customer base who prioritize efficiency and reliability, boosting our brand’s reputation and customer retention.

Chris Calkins, GM, On-Site Louisville Computer Repair Co.

Create Personas Reflecting Client Motivations

Understand what truly motivates your clients. Go beyond surface-level demographics with psychographic data, which delves into attitudes, values, and interests. Create detailed client personas that reflect their fears, aspirations, and habits.

For instance, instead of just targeting “people needing a personal injury lawyer,” focus on “working parents worried about family security after an accident.” This shift makes your messaging more relatable and compelling, helping potential clients feel like you truly understand their needs. When you speak directly to their psyche, you position your brand as the best choice.