Psychographics, Advertising and Online Marketing Strategies
Create Advertisement that speaks to your customer
Introduction
Psychographics, the science of dividing a group of people into distinct
sub-groups by their psychological makeup is elemental to all
advertising and marketing efforts. Without knowing who your customers
are, and focusing your campaign to speak directly to those customers,
your efforts will be less successful than they could have been, and
frequently a total failure. Fortunately magazines and and Television
marketing agencies can usually provide you with a psychographic profile
of their readership, to know what types of message is required for
those people, and whether this is a good venue to advertise your
product or service in the first place.
Why online advertisement differs from print advertisement
The internet changes all of that significantly because such precise
information is almost impossible to know. As the internet is mostly
free, anyone in the entire world can end up in virtually any place,
either from a related link or through a search engine, on purpose or by
accident. So the question is, given that your advertisement will be
competing with hundreds of other choices, how can you get the right
user to push the button that gets them to your site, and eventually
purchase your product or service? After all, if your ad is in the form
of an Pay Per Click (PPC) Ad, you don't want the wrong kind of person
to follow your link because every-time they do, it costs you money, and
sometimes the prices can be quite high. If you pay $5 per click, you
don't want to attract the wrong kind of customer too often, the one
that you are not targeting. You can literally spend thousands of
dollars and never get a single sale. On the other hand, you want to
capture the attention of the one that will buy your product. The way
you do this is by telling the right person the right message. What is
the right message? It contains the keywords that speak to your target
group of customers. This is an art as well as a science, and those that
are good will make a fortune at it, while those who are not go out of
business quickly.
On the internet, it's all about speed
It is important that the right message is communicated, and it is
communicated quickly and in a way that speaks to the target customer.
It basically has to jump out at him or her and scream 'click me', while
telling everybody who is not in your target group to 'stay away from
me'. And you only have a split second before the user has already
forgotten about your ad, until he or she has scrolled away or followed
a link halfway around the world. The internet is a brutal place that
doesn't give any second chances, competition is fierce, the next thing
is just a mouse click away and the person is unlikely to ever come back
to this page again.
What many people do wrong
The first mistake that most inexperienced advertisers will make is to
tell people who they are. It might be good for ones ego to tell others
how great one is, but it won't do much for sales. Instead of telling
others who great you are, tell others why the should visit your site.
'I am the greatest, come to my site' is not much of an offer. 'Come to
my site and I will give you something for free', 'Come to my site and
see our great selection of discount items', 'Come to our site and see
the latest and greatest before you neighbours do', these are the why's
that people are looking for. See yourself in the shoes of your
potential clients: Our of at least 5 competitor links all side by side,
why would they follow yours and not the other ones? What makes you
better? 'I am the best' doesn't cut it.
What you should do instead
I have already used three different offers that will target three
different psychographic groups in the last paragraph: Something free
will attract the emulator because they can jump at free that will make
them look successful. Something at a discount implies an urgency,
because discounts go away, so it will automatically trigger the needs
driven person. Something new and unique will trigger the need for
individuality in the Achiever. 'Your friends and family will love it'
speaks to the belonger, and 'we will donate $1 from every purchase to a
local charity catches the attention of the socially conscious person.
Getting people there is only half the story
Getting people to your site is the job of the ad, but getting a sale is
an entirely different matter. Not only does your ad need to speak to
the person you are targeting, but the site that they go to must speak a
language that they understand. The belonger wants to belong, to feel
secure in the knowledge that they will be taken care of. The Achiever
wants to get in, buy, and get out, and know what they bought is unique,
new, and of good quality. The emulator will be impressed by flashy
graphics and lots of cool things. The socially conscious needs to know
that you do care about society beyond this sale, that you and your
company have a larger vision than just making a buck. So you might have
no have a separate page or even website for each of those people should
you really want to sell to all of these different categories, because,
as I pointed out in the introduction, cross psychographic marketing
does not work. Never, ever, ever. Focus, target, concentrate.
And if you should fail the first time, try, try again ...