The Difference Between Demographics and Psychographics

Breaking down the anatomy of a customer can sometimes be difficult. Oftentimes, business owners will think of their personal preferences or a close family or friend and build their business around the likes and desires of someone they already know. While using someone close to you in order to develop a customer persona can be helpful, your actual customer base may not always share the same preferences as yourself or those closest to you.

This is why understanding the difference between demographics and psychographics is important. Many times, one may just pay attention to the demographics of a customer and not delve deeper into the whole person such as what they enjoy or where they spend their time.

So what is a demographic? Demographics are defined as “a specific segment of a population having shared characteristics”. These shared characteristics include who the person is externally. They refer to the features of their life that determine their position and placement in society.

Demographic Traits

• Age

• Academic/Education Status

• Profession

• Annual Salary

• Relationship Status

• Residence

Then, you have psychographics. Psychographics goes a step further and refers to who your customers are internally. Psychographics are defined as “The use of demographics to determine the attitudes and tastes of a particular segment of a population, as in marketing studies” and refers to the personality traits of an individual.

Psychographic Traits

• Hobbies

• Opinions

• Values

• Interests

• Social Media Platform of Choice

How do you make this work for you? For example, if Nike were to prepare the release of a new shoe segment for runners, they would consider the demographic and psychographic traits before creating their marketing content. In this example, they may segment a demographic set of women and men age 18-30 with some form of education (high school, college, and/or an advanced college degree), an annual salary of more than $30,000, and who live in a metropolitan area. Now, when they compare the psychographic traits, these potential audience sets would enjoy running and working out. Because of the shoe features, the target segment would like outdoor pavement or track running and do not mind bright colors on their shoes. They care about their environment so they would be pleased in knowing that the shoe’s soles are made from recyclable material. These potential customers run often so they also use health app platforms to track their miles ran, heart rate, pace, etc. so they are tech-savvy and socialize with like-minded individuals on health apps as well as Instagram and Facebook. One can continue to delve further into the demographics and psychographics of this potential customer set such as the cities they live (demographic) to whether they work out on vacation (psychographic).

Defining both the demographic and psychographic of your preferred customer base helps you understand what makes your customers unique. It allows you to create content to speak directly to them in your advertising and social media as well as helps you create new features to continue to meet the needs of your customer base. Knowing your customer base is vital to your business success and outlining the demographics and psychographics is one of the first steps.