When I posted a blog post about target markets last week, I also emailed a link to it to my email list subscribers. A handful of subscribers replied back with questions. Their questions boiled down to:
"Which niche should I choose?"
or
"Whom should I target? Like who is going to be the best to work with and the most likely to invest in my course, membership or group coaching program?"
How Much Do You Know About Psychographics?
Straight up demographic information (e.g. "I work with women ages 25 - 45") is the worst answer someone can give you. It just doesn't work like that. When you target everyone in a broad target, you target no one. Not all women of that age range are going to be interested in your thing. So let's change this to psychographic information.
Psychographic information is defined as: the study and classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria, especially in market research. It is frequently studied in conjunction with typical demographic data to build more complete profiles of target markets. One of the great things about psychographics is that it tells you what they want and how they feel. This, in turn, allows you to tap into your target’s doubts, fears, and questions to create highly relevant and targeted email blasts.
So you haven't been choosing a target based on their attitudes, aspirations, and identity? Then you have been literally screaming into a stadium of your target without a microphone. And no one is paying attention.
A friend shared that, when she designed for Nike, her team would create war rooms and shadow boxes based on three different target's psychographics. They would generate the
- imagery,
- situations, and
- textures
that these people would see on a regular basis and relate to. For example, a "high school tennis player" will have different needs than a "middle-aged club playing woman", versus something totally different than a "competitive tennis player".
- The teen tennis player might see asphalt and chain link fences and prefer cool images on t-shirts to represent his style.
- The club goer might be desiring to appear chic and play on polished wood courts.
- The pro tennis player may have specific needs around their skirt length meeting the league requirements. Or there may be features that make them faster.
Not all these tennis enthusiasts fell into the same demographic category. Their psychographics ran even deeper than just "tennis enthusiasts."
5 Psychographic Characteristics Examples
Following are five examples of psychographic characteristics that can give you useful insights about potential customers:
1. Personalities: The collection of traits a person consistently exhibits over time
2. Lifestyles: The sum of a person's daily activities: their associations, where they reside, where they spend their time, etc.
3. Interests: This includes hobbies, pastimes, media consumption habits, and what a person spends their time on.
4. Opinions, attitudes, beliefs: In general, religious beliefs (or lack thereof) can often predict political opinions and general worldview, and vice versa.
5. Values. Their sense of right and wrong.
How Well Do You Know Your Client?
So the question I have for you would be, "how well do you know your ideal client?" How many levels deep do you know their main psychographics and how it relates to your course idea? Have you created a course that is for that psychographic need?
If Nike only had one type of tennis clothing solely based on female or male, they'd be out of business.
Choosing the right deliverable (goal achieved) to the right psychographic type is essential to creating a profitable course. You must put the right offer in front of the right target or the course sales will be disappointing. Once you have found the common thread between your most desirable customer segments using psychographics, you can develop a unique, powerful marketing creative idea that is relatable to everyone in the segment.
