Pschographics – Why They Could Be Better Than Demographics

Ask any marketer what they think one of the most important things to know about their target audience is and they might just say demographics; their age, sex, job, and so on. While this data is useful, it does have a habit of reducing people to nothing more than statistics when the reality is that we are all much more than the sum of our parts.

Recently, a new school of thought has come into play, and it is being led by none other than Buzzfeed, the millennial website that celebrates individualism. Called psychographics, this instead focuses on making content that makes its readers feel like the content “gets them” – and is therefore a part of their personality (or psyche) when they share it.

In turn, this makes for a powerful sharing chain as like-minded people passionately share the content. For marketers, this means creating content that is unique and delivers at a deep personal level to connect with an audience.

Instead of focusing on a group of people by sex, age group or another impersonal metric, content needs to focus on validation and understanding; it’s a mix between the nostalgia of “hey, remember this?” style of content and the shared power of understanding a current experience.

Those who can tap into this powerful form of content marketing not only have the key to a huge new consumer group, but a lot of marketing success. Social identities are far more fluid than they used to be, and being able to leverage into that to grow your business (or another person’s business) is a powerful way to grow.

It’s time to start focusing on psychographics, rather than fusty old demographics and reap the rewards!