What Are Psychographics? A Media Seller’s Primer

Psychographics is the field of market research that studies people and their psychological attributes. These attributes range from values and attitudes to interests and lifestyles. These data points highlight details about a specific audience such as what people do in their spare time and what their political beliefs are. Media sellers can use psychographics, from sources like AdMall’s AudienceSCAN, to help their account effectively target the right audiences in their ad campaigns.

How are psychographics different from demographics

Demographics reflect data points about who a person is. Common demographic data includes gender, age and income. Demographic data is a helpful clue for identifying some purchase behavior.  Psychographic data offers more insight into what drives purchasing behavior.

Why psychographics matter to media sellers? 

Media sellers must sell their ad space to local businesses. In doing so, they must convince these prospects that the revenue generated from advertising will result in a return on their investment. Using psychographics helps because media sellers can show their accounts' audience motivations resulting in improved targeting, messaging, planning, and campaign outcomes.

Understand audience motivations

Consumers buy products and services for different reasons. With psychographic data, media sellers can understand that a core motivator for buying a luxury product may be connected to value instead of prestige.

Improve audience targeting

With psychographic data, media sellers can help accounts pinpoint how to improve audience targeting. As AudienceSCAN data reveals, not all High School Sports Fans are parents or grandparents. Around 15% of the audience is aged 18-​to-​24, suggesting that recent high school graduates are supporters of local teams and can be targeted.

Create relevant messaging

When marketers target the right audience with relevant messaging, they use their ad budgets efficiently. Running an ad campaign for hearing aids that targets all consumers over age 50 will not be as efficient as targeting hearing aid shoppers.

Support better media planning

One important aspect of psychographic data is to understand which media formats influence a marketer’s target audience. With AudienceSCAN, media sellers can show their accounts media-​related details about an audience. The marketer will understand where to buy advertising. And the media plan will also outline the types of content most enjoyed by the target audience.

Psychographics vs Demographics

Factor	Demographics	Psychographics
What it measures	Statistical details about a group	Characteristics controlled by people in a group
Examples	Age, gender, income	Lifestyle, wants, spending, attitudes, motivation
Audience insight	Broad overview, quantitative	Qualitative data
Primary use	Audience segmentation	Detailed audience targeting

What does psychographic data include?

Psychographic data includes multiple details about a consumer. The data is often collected through consumer surveys. Consumers answer questions about their values, such as which types of charities they support. Other topics include sports fandom and travel destinations. In addition, psychographics cover the types of businesses and brands consumers like and how they spend their free time.

How media sellers use psychographics

Media sellers use psychographic data to understand an account’s target audience. Specifically, they need to know how to influence the consumers to make purchases. The influence happens because of advertising in the right format with the right messaging and timing.

Build detailed audience profiles

Media sellers can extract key details from a psychographics intelligence platform to build audience profiles. This type of information shows the marketer how an advertising campaign can succeed.

Segment audiences

One on the most important added values by a media seller is based on audience response to media type. With psychographic and demographic data, they can segment audiences. They can show accounts that the older segments of their audience respond to traditional TV advertising while younger segments will check out a mobile ad.

Identify consumer motivations

Psychographic data reveals what motivates consumers to make a purchase. If consumers strongly support advertisers that contribute to a specific charitable organization, those details should appear in an ad campaign.

Match audiences with advertisers

Marketers may have a preconceived notion of who their audiences are, especially for a new product or service. Media sellers can use psychographic data to show marketers who the buyers really are.

Examples of psychographics in media sales

Psychographic data can help media sellers identify specific audience groups. After identifying these audiences, they can share data with their accounts to improve the outcomes of ad campaigns.

Health-​conscious consumers

AudienceSCAN data reveals that 37% of U.S. adults are Healthy Eating/​Weight Loss Seekers. These consumers are 26% more likely than others to have vitamins and nutritional supplements delivered through a subscription box service. This information helps marketers create a meaningful marketing campaign to reach health-​conscious adults.

Environmentally conscious consumers

Marketers that want to reach environmentally conscious consumers should know that they are far more likely than other U.S. adults to purchase solar panels in the next year.

Technology enthusiasts

Early adopters of technology can make a difference for marketers that want gain acceptance of their products. Around 27% of Techies report that their friends and family members seek their advice before making a purchase.

Frequent travelers

With AudienceSCAN data, media sellers can review profiles for Domestic Travelers, Cruise Vacationers, Beach Vacationers, and more to learn about other favorite activities. When they package this data with the media format each type of traveler uses, they can improve campaign outcomes for their accounts.

Value-​driven shoppers

Value-​driven shoppers have financial concerns. Media sellers can learn about their purchasing attitudes with the kind of psychographic data contained in AudienceSCAN.

How to collect psychographic data

Psychographic data is primarily collected by independent market research companies. Other methods include isolating a marketer's customer data.

Surveys

The most common way to collect psychographic data is through surveys. When research companies run online surveys, they must establish rules to screen for demographic data. They use this approach to build a survey population that mirrors the larger population of the U.S.

Audience research

Marketers may engage directly with their existing customers online. They may send out questionnaires. And they may build a database that tracks every customer’s interaction in terms of purchases, returns and client services requests.

Behavioral data

Marketers may collect and organize consumer behavioral data into useable analytics through their social sites and through their CRM systems. These datapoints can be merged with other data to build behavioral profiles for marketing purposes.

Purchase data

Using their own purchase data, marketers can build intelligence systems that show historical patterns. They can also use a forecasting model to predict when consumers will make additional purchases and how much they will spend. This information can help them determine when to personalize an email outreach to boost revenue.

Media consumption data

For media sellers, there is no substitute for understanding an audience’s interaction with and attitudes about specific media formats. This piece of behavioral data helps sellers position their formats and their presentations. When they show the percentage of the audience that responds to an ad in a specific format, they’re helping marketers understand the value of their potential investment. 

How Admall uses psychographic insights for media sellers

AudienceSCAN is proprietary research conducted annually by SalesFuel and is available through the AdMall platform. With access to over 1,350 audience profiles, users can access data about purchase intent, cause marketing attitudes, sports interest, entertainment preferences, and more.

Admall helps media sellers use audience and psychographic insights to better understand target audiences, identify relevant segments, and create more effective media recommendations. 

Understand the target audience

The first step in selling media with psychographic insights is to understand the target audience. With AudienceSCAN, sellers can show their prospects how those consumers make purchase decisions and how they spend their time on a daily basis.

Identify relevant audience segments

Sellers can also group consumers according to common behaviors. For example, with a platform like AudienceSCAN, sellers can identify consumers who go out with friends at night or on the weekends.

Match audiences with media opportunities

Media sellers can also determine which groups are more likely to respond to an ad campaign that appears on broadcast TV instead of social media.

Build data-​driven media recommendations

With that information, sellers can put together an outstanding presentation. They can show their accounts their percentage of the target audience that will respond to an ad in a specific media format. With demographic data about the population counts in a geographic area, they can project the reach of the campaign and give an estimate about campaign outcomes.

AudienceSCAN and psychographic insights

AudienceSCAN provides insights into consumer interests, attitudes, behaviors, and media preferences. These insights help media sellers identify the right target audience for their accounts. With the added knowledge about media preferences, sellers can show their accounts how their proposed ad campaign will increase sales and give them a solid return on investment.

Benefits of using psychographics in media sales

When media sellers use psychographics, they can show their accounts more information about their target audiences. The additional data allows for better campaign outcomes.

Better audience understanding

Better media campaigns start with better audience understanding. Media buyers want to know more than basic demographics when buying ad space.

More precise targeting 

Psychographic data allows for more precise targeting. This information allows sellers to reach prospective buyers. And it also allows them to avoid spending money on consumers who are not a good fit for what they are selling.

Stronger advertiser proposals

When media sellers include psychographic data in their proposals, business owners will listen. They’ll understand that the seller has researched their business and identified the consumers that should be targeted with advertising.

More relevant campaigns

With psychographic data, consumers see advertising that is more likely to apply to them. This activity improves their opinion of the brand and helps marketers improve ad campaign outcomes.

Improved sales conversations

Because psychographic data helps advertisers identify likely product buyers, the marketer will be more willing to listen to the sales pitch from the media sellers.

Best practices for using psychographic data

To achieve the best outcomes for media sales and for ad campaigns, sellers and buyers should follow best practices when using psychographic data.

Combine psychographics with demographics

To truly understand audiences, users should combine psychographic data with demographic data. This kind of information reveals details like age, gender, and income along with purchase intent and motivations to make purchases.

Focus on relevant audience segments

Psychographic data allows users to identify relevant audience segments. Advertisers can save money by targeting consumers who are most likely to purchase what they are selling.

Connect insights to campaign goals

When media sellers understand what motivates a target audience to make purchases, they can customize their presentations. They should include data points that tie directly to a marketer’s campaign goals.

Keep audience data current

Another best practice for psychographic data is to regularly update information sources. Consumers' attitudes and opinions changes. Running surveys annually is the best way to maintain an accurate reflection of consumers.

Final Thoughts: Turn audience insights into better media strategies

Psychographics help media sellers understand not only who their audience is, but also what motivates them. Admall contains detailed demographic data to the zip code level for subscribers to use when building proposals and ad campaigns. AudienceSCAN can help turn audience insights into more informed media strategies.

Frequently Asked Questions

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