Understanding Audience Psychographics to Help Your Social Media Marketing

Understanding your target audience’s demographic is significant for all aspects of your marketing strategy. However, delving into psychographics can be extremely useful for your social media marketing. Going beyond basic demographics can help you answer questions like, ‘what social media platforms would be best to reach my target audience?’, ‘what kind of content do they want to see?’, and ‘what will engage them the most?’. 

It’s important to point out that on social media, consumers aren’t always engaging with a specific product or service. Instead, they are engaging with your brand and its personality, and therefore it’s not only important to understand who your customer is but also why they are interacting with your brand. Where demographics might help you to decide what social media platforms to use and what time to post, psychographics can be useful when determining what type of content will engage your audience, and hopefully increase brand loyalty.

Demographics vs Psychographics

If you’re new to audience segmentation and unclear on who your target audience is, then demographics are a great place to start. Your audience demographic refers to factors such as gender, age, occupation, geographical location, income, and marital status. These features explain who your audience is, which is important when targeting your audience on social media to help decide what platforms to use.

While demographics should not be undermined, two customers can be the same gender and age but have very different behaviour and interests. Psychographics are therefore important and refers to psychological factors such as your audience’s personality traits, interests, hobbies, and values. They explain why they interact with you. If you’re a brand or influencer this can, therefore, help you predict what your audience will and won’t like when marketing on social media.

To collect data from your social media accounts to understand your audience's behaviour, there are various social media analytical tools to improve your performance. Many of these are free and can be useful for your social media marketing. Hootsuite, Facebook Analytics, Twitter Analytics and Instagram Insights can all be used to measure your success and determine the behaviour of your audience. Establishing their interests and values can also be found through market research such as customer interviews, surveys and, focus groups to identify trends and attitudes. While this method can be time-consuming, the research is invaluable when devising your social media strategy and will save you time in the long run.

Here’s a basic customer profile

Demographics

• Female;
• Aged 30;
• Married with one child;
• Household income £45,000 per year.

Psychographics

• Values family bonds;
• Animal lover;
• Plays the guitar;
• She wants a healthy lifestyle but works a lot.

Using Your Psychographics in Social Media Marketing

While there are many ways to productively use psychographics to increase the engagement with your campaigns on social media, a few have been listed below so you can make a start. 

Tone of Voice 

Knowing the behaviour and interests of your audience will help to determine how to address them. Do they like content that has an educational and informative tone? Or do their interests suggest they would prefer a more humorous tone of voice? Once you understand how your audience wants to be addressed, it is something to keep in mind when writing your posts.

Subject Area

While it is essential to write about topics directly relating to your brand, you might want to consider discussing other topics that your target audience might like. These can be associated with your product or service. By understanding your audience’s psychographics, you can identify topic areas that make them tick and can write about them in your social media posts.

Brand Values

It is no secret that illustrating your brand values is key to any marketing strategy. While your brand values can be shown through aspects like your logo, social media is a great way to reiterate your message. By deciphering the psychographics of your customers, you can understand their beliefs and values, and echo them on social media. 

On a Final Note

Social media can be good for acquiring new customers who are unaware of your brand. However, it can also be great for retention. This means customers stay loyal and continue to interact with your brand. Using psychographics to understand your audience and aligning your findings to your social media marketing can be highly beneficial. Try it!

Written by Emily Ralphs