This post is an introduction to the most important things to know about the person/people you're selling to: psychographics. The psychological makeup of your prospect.
It has zero entertainment and as few bells and whistles as possible.
Why?
'cause I'll be referring to it over and over again all over my website and I want the information here to be as densely packed as possible so it's easy to find what you need on the page later. Rather than making it a fun read the first time around.
It's meant as a reference for everyone who is unfamiliar with the idea of psychographics, not as a textbook.
Also...
It's "The 80/20 Guide To Psychographics", not:
The Ultimate Guide To Supercharging Your Sales With 7 Easy-To-Remember Persuasion Hacks
Why Psychographics?
"Write to a person, not to a persona."
-Eddie Shleyner
Because humans are fundamentally emotional creatures and as a consequence speaking to our emotions is the most effective way to communicate with us.
No one ever bought a car because they're a white, 38 year old dude living in the Berlin suburbs.
They bought a car because it would solve several psychological problems for them:
- No hassle when going on vacation with the entire family (peace and ease)
- A fuel economy that won't cut into his computer gaming budget (fun)
- Doesn't make him feel like a poor dork who can't afford a nice car (avoiding embarassment)
- etc.
The litmus test I learned from Eddie Shelyner (quoted above) is to ask myself this:
When reading through my research I can clearly SEE the persona, but I can FEEL the person.
That's when you know you have a good psychographic profile of your ideal prospect.
Psychographics' Components
The way I work with psychographics involves 3 components:
- The levers we need to build empathy in our prospects and let them know we understand their situation
- Identity & Current Self Image - Because marketing to identity is the most powerful approach available to us, but we need to know where people's current self-image is, so we now where to start.
- Any and all beliefs - Marketing can never violate people's established beliefs so we need to know them because they bound what we can - and cannot- say in our marketing and on our sales page.
The 5 Components of Empathy
To write compelling advertising we need to know 5 things about our prospect:
- Suspicions and thoughts of conspiracies. Who do they mistrust on a principled basis? Who are they wary of? This could be their own inner voice as well.
- Dreams and desires. What do they want? Possessions? Free time? Fame? A green future?
- Personal dislikes, pet peeves, enemies/people they dislike. What buttheads have they actually encountered in their lives?
- Fears, anxieties, questions and doubts. What mental anguish is holding them back?
- Bad experiences and past failures. What hardships have they been through in the past. What has traumatized them (in large and small scale)?
The Empathy Mnemonic:
Suspicious Enemies Dream of Fear and Failure.
How To Use The Components Of Empathy
To use these 5 components simply write marketing assets that:
- Confirm people's suspicions and show them their distrust is warranted.
- Throw rocks and their enemies and make the prospect feel good about battling their enemies.
- Fan the flames of their dreams and desires and show them a future where those dreams have come true.
- Allay their fears and show the prospect a better way forward. Prove that your approach is safe and predictable.
- Forgive their failures. Show people how their setbacks were not their fault, and let them know that they never got the whole picture, which is why they failed in the past.
Identity, Self-Image
I'm lumping these two together because identity provides a target to shoot for, while self-image tells us where to begin.
To give you an example:
Starting a gym means being NOTORIOUSLY busy with a million draining tasks that have nothing to do with what the gym owner actually wanted do. And as a consequence many gym owners will readily identify with the label: Overwhelmed Gym Owner.
If we use that label in our marketing they'll recognize themselves in that self-image statement and feel that the following message is meant for them - because it speaks to their current self-image.
Here a short article that outlines how effective marketing to self-image CAN be:(https://beyerconsulting.net/4x-conversions/)
In the same vein, many startup CEOs who work towards the sustainable development goals will be drawn to the self-image of "conscientous entrepreneur"...
...because that's how they think of themselves.
How To Build Identity Into Your Marketing
This article outlines the process of building identity into your marketing message
When Researching Your Market Simply Look For:
- Self-image
- Desired future identity (tricky and powerful)
Any "I am" statements potentially lead to a person's current self image.
Identity also tends to tie in with a person's dreams (see the section on empathy building) so the "kind of person" who achieves that dream is a good initial target to shoot for when marketing to identity.
Beliefs
For EVERY SINGLE PERSON who has ever had to sell anything, this is a hard pill to swallow:
The order you develop beliefs matter
Because our existing beliefs determine how we interpret new information. So when we're presented with new information it tends to get rejected if it doesn't fit with what we already know.
That's why it's nearly impossible to convince someone like me that Jordan Peterson's "wonderful" plan of giving oil companies free reign is a good idea.
I don't care that oil means energy and energy is needed in Asia. I believe that the higher order ramification of letting Big Oil have their way are way worse than actively finding out how to get Asia on track with sustainable energy from its current state.
That's my personal belief, and it's nearly impossible to shift.
In other words...
The reason we want a catalogue of our prospect's beliefs is because:
...we cannot put out advertising that violates pre-existing beliefs or our message will immediately get discarded.
If we DO want to shift beliefs we have to do so in tiny steps and every step has to be emotionally and logically (primarily emotionally) sound. There is an art and a science to shifting beliefs that I cannot go into here.
But once we've mapped out prospect down to their beliefs we have a "persuasion frame" to work in - their psychographic state.
Not only is it powerful, it's way more human and way more fulfilling to work with than trying to market "features and benefits" to demographics.
Example: Psychographics In Action
Oil companies have spent billions, if not trillions of dollars on green washing campaigns and misinformation to protect their own selfish interests, while not giving a shit about climate change.
Which leaves the rest of us fighting an extremely uphill battle against a well-funded machine that knows exactly how to muddy the water enough, so normal people will tune out the climate debate and go back to watching Dancing With The Stars rather than actually do something about our impending collapse.
At the same time...
Politicians will readily provide heavy subsidies for environmentally harmful sectors - like livestock, but will drag their feet when it comes to subsidizing technology of the future, like insect farming.
This lop-sided flux of cash completely skews the competitive environment and makes it even HARDER for startups in Food Tech of any kind to get a foothold.
Remove those f****** subsidies and we'd have a playing field that was so unevenly in favor of alternative proteins that the green transition would probably happen over the course of just one year. Because if it wasn't for all those tax payers' money, all that polluting meat would be so prohibitively expensive normal people wouldn't eat it every single day.
And to make it worse...
The green transition -championed by beleagured startup founders all over the world- is made all the more difficult because the same people who get expensive PhDs, the people who found those tech companies, are never taught how to market their ideas effectively.
And so they're stuck with amazing inventions that never get traction because the hard skills you need to build a stellar product have very little in common with the soft skills you need to sell that very same product.
And so forward thinking startups are often stuck without the profits they need to outcompete their polluting and harmful competitors.
(See how that works? đ)
Example LinkedIn Post
Notice how this has 55 reposts on LinkedIn. Founders all feel they have a great product and they're "merely" outcompeted by others who have better marketing. Obviously this resonates with people.
Where To Go Now?
If you want to see HOW powerful marketing to identity is, read the article on History's Most Powerful Sales Trigger
Want to see how to USE identity in your marketing? Read the How To article below
If you're curious whether there are ways you could use psychographics in your own sales and marketing, click the link below and get in touch, I'll get you sorted.
PS: I don't hard sell or try to close people against their better judgment. Click the link below to see how I DO work...