Demographics, Geographics, and Psychographics: Three Things to Know About Your Tribe’s Market
Marketing is the act of letting people know about your product or service. it’s education Sales is the act of solving a prospect’s problem, relieving their pain or fulfilling their desire, and exchanging money with them for your product or service. Not everyone is going to need your product. Spending money marketing to “anyone who can tarnish a mirror” is crazy and expensive. To connect the right people with your solution, you need to know exactly who those people are.
Who is in your tribe?
You may have heard of the term destination marketing. I choose to use the word tribe to reflect the customer community we intend to create rather than the word target. Using objective implies that we are aiming and shooting at a group of people. In business, doesn’t it sound a lot better to create a “tribe” of sympathetic customers than a pool of potential customers you target?
Three essential areas of research related to your tribe are the demographics, geography, and psychographics of your ideal customer. The better you know these three, the more you can connect with them and educate them about your product.
Demography
Demography is the science of vital and social statistics of populations, which specifically means studying births, deaths, marriages, educational level, income level, etc., of the population.
Demographics, then, is the data that represents the gender, age, and education levels of your tribe’s market.
- How old is your ideal client?
- How much education have they had?
- How much income do they earn?
- Are they parents or grandparents?
- Do you rent or own?
geographic
As you can see from the word itself, geographic data is data that represents the geographic picture of your tribe’s market. In other words,
- Where they live?
- What neighborhood, region, or general area are they located in?
- What zip codes are associated with your ideal customer?
- Where do they work?
psychography
Break down this word: psycho and graphics. The root psych is exactly the same as in the words psychology and psychoanalysis: they all have to do with the psyche or mind. Psychographics are the data that represents the “why” behind the purchase. Usually, when you can figure out the “why” behind buying some products, you can guess how they might buy other products, including yours. Yes, there are companies that spend billions of dollars researching spending habits. To get you thinking about the psychology of buying and how it applies to your marketing, think about these scenarios:
Examples:
A woman shops for groceries at the cooperative’s local organic food market, drives a small crossover vehicle that has bumper stickers from different campsites, and carries a glass water bottle. What kind of newspaper do you think he reads? What kind of magazines do you think she subscribes to? What kinds of activities/causes does she support that you could sponsor? Do you think she watches TV? If you wanted to encourage this woman to buy her product, where would she advertise? What kind of words would you use to tempt her to buy?
A young college boy has just run down to the store to buy beer for a party. He bought a beer on sale, drives a pick-up truck and was wearing a T-shirt and jeans that he bought at the small thrift store downtown. If you wanted to encourage this man to come to his store/buy his product, where do you think he would have to go? What should be the price range of his products for him to buy from you?
- What kind of people are your customers?
- What do they read?
- Where do they spend their free time?
- Listen to the radio? Watch TV? What seasons?
- What problems do they face?
- What do they want to maintain their quality of life? What is your quality of life?
Spend time thinking and creating a model of your ideal client. Draw, cut out images and write as much information as you can about them. Name them! Call them Susan, John or Bubba. Get personal and know exactly who they are. By clearly identifying your tribe, you will be able to effectively educate them about your product, resolve their issues, and facilitate sales.
