Why?! Why do consumers behave the way they do?

Okay, you have finally cracked the code. You have optimized everything in your power; your media plan, the bid & budget, ad sets, channels, and even the coffee machine next to the stationary! 

It’s showtime! You can’t wait to see the dazzling results of the campaign.

That day finally arrives.

The campaign’s performance report is here. You open that mail – the one that you have been waiting for so long. 

And?

And it doesn’t look any better than those previous campaign reports. All the metrics – hovering around the same old averages. 

How?! You were so sure that this campaign was going to go through the roof!

If this is what your everyday life looks like for you, you aren’t alone. Most – if not all – marketers face this challenge. Highly optimized campaigns that aren’t churning the expected numbers could indicate inefficient targeting. 

A highly optimized campaign without efficient targeting is like a rudderless ship.

So what are they really thinking?

Understanding consumer behavior is the key for marketers to segment similar behaviors into cohorts. Remember good ol’ audience segmentation? Yeah, it’s always going to come to your rescue. It’s strategically segmenting your target audience into smaller cohorts based on demography, geography, and other factors. 

It enables marketers to create smaller, more focused campaigns that can attract quality conversions. Not just that, it also uncovers unique new opportunities within different segments that allow effective strategic building. 

Okay, literally every marketer knows that. But hold on. If everyone’s doing it, how can you do it better? 

Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation is primarily based on the assessment of psychological attributes of individuals such as – opinions, perceptions, personalities, and lifestyle. 

It allows marketers to go deeper and identify consumer beliefs, perceptions, understand their personalities, and their interactions with the brand. In turn, this enables them to deliver a more customized humane’ brand experience by tailoring their marketing efforts.

This segmentation can be used to analyze how consumers will respond to campaigns and brand messages. Some of the psychographic segmentation marketers can use are: 

1. Consumer needs. 

2. Preferences.

3. Interests & Motivations.

4. Values.

5. Attitude.

6. Beliefs & Perceptions. 

7. Think about it. 

Before, you were targeting based on who they are, where they are based, and their age. With psychographic segmentation, you can do all of that by taking the factors such as – what they think, their values, their beliefs, brand image, and more. 

More customer engagement, more conversions, and more loyalty – a great recipe to increase campaign ROI. 

What are the benefits?

Okay, no rocket science there. If a brand knows its consumers’ attitudes and personalities, it can curate brand experiences that keep them coming back. These are the crucial benefits of this segmentation: 

Understand the reason behind consumer behavior 

While everyone knows they prefer this, you can know why they prefer a product. 

Customized reach

With the information about their choices & preferences, brands can tailor the campaigns that can attract them and increase quality conversions. 

Better Channelization of resources

Be it campaign budget, channels, or media planning, brands can efficiently manage their resources and reduce wasteful spending. That means – better ROI in every marketing effort. 

Enhanced brand awareness & consideration

Consumers can only be made aware of the product they really need or care about. You can spend thousands of dollars on a golf accessory campaign that is gonna turn out for nothing if your audience doesn’t golf. Can’t ace that. Understanding consumer interests and motivations help create brand awareness to the right people, and these are most likely to consider buying too. 

Assists in competition analysis

Psychographic segmentation helps brands evaluate their brand image in a competitive landscape. This enables them to strategize better to get that competitive advantage. 

Consumer loyalty and affinity

Consumers always prefer to buy from brands that know their consumer’s needs and preferences contextually. Not us, stats say this. According to Forbes research, 91% of customers preferred a customized customer experience. 

Content creation & communication efficiency

Reaching millennials with Victorian English copy, and reaching baby boomers with ‘sup my dudes, the product is lit yo’, is probably not something either segment would resonate with. That’s the reason why understanding consumer traits help brands create resonating content and communication tone. 

Great! But we can’t do that for everyone.

We know. It’s impossible to carry this out for every single one of your audience. Also, not to forget perceptions and behaviors change. Every minute. 

Artificial intelligence can help. AI can analyze millions of your consumers’ unstructured data and can provide actionable insights. Be it social listening – through which brands can understand current trends and consumer emotions around that. Or it could be AI-led research where AI can monitor eye movements, emotions, pain points, and more to uncover hidden customer sentiments towards a new product or service. 

Not just that, consider the data that is generated every second on social media, your websites, comments on live videos – it’s humongous. AI can identify trends and uncover new opportunities for brands. 

It’s safe to say, something big is waiting for brands in terms of creating better experiences by accurately understanding consumer psychology.

Jazz Leong, Head of IMC at Microsoft sheds some light on how AI is helping marketing teams at Microsoft. She explains how AI helps create contextual & customized content based on marketplace demand, campaign objectives, and market trends. Listen to the full podcast here. 

Closest to the Orbit: AI

Data can reveal interesting insights about your audience that you might have never considered yet. And AI is your best companion in getting there. Be it segments that you never touched, or the sweet spots that you just missed in the last campaign – AI can help you get the most out of your marketing efforts. 

Stay tuned for our next AI-volution blog. Shoot us a demo if you want to see all of this in action.