Are you a motorist or a pedestrian?
Posted by Scott Dunn on April 22, 2008
Today’s blog is written by George Lemmond. He will be writing exerts for Dunn’s Den of Knowledge from time to time and we are excited to have him on our team! Thank you, George, and I look forward to your writings:))) Please respond to George’s post, and let us both know what you think.
“Segmentation” has always been a worthy goal of marketers. It’s a good way to target your customers, so you don’t waste your time going after people who don’t like you anyway.
It makes sense to know who might buy your product. Rich people or poor? Young vs. old, farmers or city-dwellers? College grads, illiterates, parsons or felons? It’s useful to put them into big buckets. That makes your media and promotion efforts efficient.
The fad now is “psychographics”—the art of grouping people into lifestyles. Psychologists have sliced up the population into many pieces, like—-Early Achievers, Stay-at-Homers, Front-runners, Bookworms, and Deadenders.
The problem is it pigeonholes people into static stereotypes. Once you’re a trend buster, always a trend buster. But people change roles and attitudes daily, even hourly. Are you same person at eight as at five? Monday as Saturday? At a ball game as in a traffic jam?
I ask my students whether they are a motorist or a pedestrian. Most think awhile, then choose the one which best fits them. (They thought I was analyzing their inner selves.) But after discussion they all agree that the right answer is, “BOTH—it depends!” And there are times they are a cyclist or an equestrian. Sometimes they’re even motionless.
Psychographics can be interesting, maybe useful. But it becomes psychobabble when it replaces common sense. Wouldn’t be better if you would segment your product according to the benefit it bestows, and let the customers self-select across all artificial lines? What do you think? George Lemmond
April 22, 2008 at 6:53 pm
The most useful thing about psychographics that I’ve found — is that it helps you identify pretty specific ways to motivate or otherwise affect the behavior of a group. True, what you’ve said about folks changing from one bucket to the other — but fundamentally, I don’t think their motivators change…..if that makes any sense. As marketers, we’re looking for ways to communicate with and then ultimately, change the behavior of our markets. Knowing how your target responds to a variety of queues is like stacking the deck. Or at least taking a peek at the key card. The messaging it takes to impact the pedestrian is different, in many cases, than the messaging it takes to catch the attention of the motorist. Don’t you think?
April 23, 2008 at 12:03 pm
The problem I see with pyschographics is that it puts the cart ahead of the horse. It says, a hah!—a big group of my users is, for example, bookworms. Therefore I will seek what ever motivates bookworms, and that will be my marketing premise. But that would be straying from the real motivator of most of the rest of my users.
I would first seek to find the core benefit that my product or service elicits. I will probably discover that users cross over many demographic or value system groups. (I would see what are the biggest buckets that can be reached with my media budget.)
I call this “benefit segmentation.” The magic motivator stays in the product, and that will be my message.
April 30, 2008 at 4:59 am
I am delighted to find George Lemmond’s blog on Dunn’s Den! George has been a friend, mentor, and teacher to me for a number of years. His views on marketing are spot on. As the owner of one small business and the prospective owner of a second company, I found that once I answered the question of what business am I in, my marketing plan practically wrote itself.
June 5, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Psychographic data should be used only in connection with one particular buying situation, not as a fixed an unchangeable dimension in the customer’s or prospect’s profile of information. That is why it is useful to couple psychographic data with demographic data. Humans are complex, there are so many different factors at play in buying decisions including things like culture, gender, self esteem and group affiliation, not to mention the kind of day a person had at work. It is important to maintain an up to date and well rounded picture of who your customers are using a variety on unobtrusive market research techniques. Customers are usually happy to tell you a bit about themselves if you make it easy and they think it will help you serve them better… at least loyal customers are, and those are the ones a chic entrepreneur wants
June 6, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Thanks for reading our blogs and for your comments, which help us to hone our thinking. I’m afraid I’m not sophisticated enough to use psychographic data in combination with other facts to come up a usable media plan or creative platform.My approach is to find the strongest benefit that appeals to the most people. The users will then self-select themselves. Keep your comments coming!