Demographics & Psychographics: The Key to Targeting Your Marketing Message
ByDemographics and psychographics are two important keys to targeting your marketing messages to reach your ideal clients. They help you segment your market so that you can position your business as a key service provider to a specific niche group. They tell you who people are and help you predict what might motivate them to hire you.
Using demographics & psychographics enables you to promote to a very narrow, specific niche market and reach your ideal clients with a strong, specific message.
Demographics are external, observable features; psychographics
are internal, but identifiable, psychological characteristics.
Demographics identify the different observable characteristics of a population segment or social grouping of people. These groups have specific characteristics and needs in common. Examples of observable characteristics that might identify a grouping of people would be age, race, gender, income, or neighborhood.
Examples of groups that have already formed together would be doctors, accountants, single people, or women business owners. You can look at businesses the same way if you are selling to them. Their size, geographic location, specialty, volume, and industry will influence how receptive they are to your product and service offerings.
Psychographics describe the identifiable characteristics of individual people, related to certain internal, psychological factors – their attitudes, values, lifestyles, motivations, opinions, and needs. These might include characteristics such as optimistic, environmentalist, safety-conscious, value-oriented, status-driven.
Psychographics will usually indicate needs. These individuals may also have specific characteristics and needs in common, even though they may be spread out and may not have formed into a specific group.
Why is it important for you to know the demographics and psychographics of your target market? So that you can more effectively focus your marketing efforts to reach potential clients. It’s easier to reach your ideal clients if you understand their characteristics, what they have in common, and what motivates them to buy. You can write your marketing messages so that they speak directly to the specific needs and challenges of your target group. This enables you to promote to a very specific niche market.
The more you know about your prospects and customers, the more easily you can market your products and services to them, and the better you can meet their needs. When you know the key characteristics of those people who need and want what you are offering, you can then offer them unique, strong, specific solutions described in language they will understand and relate to. Buying decisions are often emotionally based, so by understanding the psychology of your buyer, you can attract more purchasers and better meet their needs.
Whenever possible, find out the demographics of your potential clientele, for example, age, city, state, country, income, how they located your services, associations they belong to. Survey the psychographics, such as what motivated them to buy and what their key needs are.
If you aren’t aiming to reach people with something in common through demographics or psychographics, then your marketing message is not as tightly targeted as it could be. You can use the psychology of buying to segment your marketplace to your advantage.
Knowing the identifiable characteristics and the key needs and challenges of your ideal potential clients will help you focus your marketing efforts and design targeted solutions to meet those specific needs.
Action Step
Get to know your customers. List the key identifiable characteristics of your best potential clients, your ideal target market.
- Demographics: What are the different observable characteristics of your buyers? What social groups are they a part of?
- Psychographics: What motivates your prospects to buy your products and services? What are their key needs and challenges?
- How can you better target your marketing message to speak to these groups?
- What specific solutions are you offering to meet their key needs?
- What wording needs to be changed in your promotional material to speak directly to these potential buyers in language they will respond to?
Get clear on the identifiable characteristics, needs and challenges of your ideal clients, offer them specific solutions, and watch your client base grow!
© Copyright Jan Marie Dore www.janmariedore.com All rights reserved.
Jan Marie Dore, ‘The Professional Women’s Success Coach’, Speaker and Author, publishes valuable marketing tips to grow a professional service business and increase profitability in her newsletter and blog ‘Success Secrets for Solo Professional Women’.
Jan Marie teaches women how to attract more clients and financial success, and as a result, live extraordinary lives. For free resources and programs on marketing a professional practice please visit Femalepreneurs.com .
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Sometimes we think we know all this already but it’s always helpful to hear all these important points reiterated. Thank you!
Hi Jennifer,
It’s always good to revisit and refine the characteristics of our ideal clients every so often.