As a marketer or business owner, your primary goal is to reach your target market. Historically, companies defined their prospective consumers using demographics: male or female, age, income level, etc. However, using demographics to define your target market is no longer a winning strategy. Today, successful strategies depend on learning what drives individuals to purchase specific products. Unfortunately, people have very different motivations, making this a challenging prospect. Therefore, consider the use of psychometrics in understanding your audience.
Psychometrics
Psychometrics is the study and measure of individuals’ personalities. They define your values, skills, personality and interests. Often, this approach is used in psychoanalysis to measure depression, but it can also be used to measure personality and intelligence. Your target market will have very specific values and interests, but you may find that they also have similar personalities, skills and intelligence levels. In addition, your audience will value specific personality traits in themselves and others, and you can track these values by observing and analyzing how they describe themselves.
Personality Surveys
Behavioral science, which is commonly used in the psychology and psychiatry fields, has valuable applications in other industries. In the past, standardized personality surveys were used to measure individuals’ personality traits. In the past, a 10- to 300-question survey would be used to determine individuals’ personalities. However, the respondents may provide untrue or biased answers. For example, not many would admit to stealing from a former employer or strongly agree that they are disorganized.
Using Big Data
Today’s technology allows personality to be measured through years of data collection and analysis, called digital psychometrics. In addition, this process can take any data from your digital footprint, such as the products you regularly buy from specific stores, your social media posts and where you live, to predict your personality. You can now analyze past behaviors and actions and creates relatively reliable predictive models of what your prospective customers will do in the future. Through big data analysis, you can gain a deeper understanding of your clients’ personalities, including why they purchase your products or whether they are likely to do so.
Using Personality Analysis in Marketing
The best strategy for increasing revenue through new and returning customers is to build relationships with them. When you understand your target market’s motivations and values, you can build customized marketing strategies that provide messages these individuals will identify with. They will engage your audience emotionally because they speak to them in ways they appreciate. You will appeal to their inner sensibilities and encourage them to buy from you. Because you aren’t making assumptions and create plans based on hard data, your marketing will be much more effective.
Although personality marketing is a relatively new approach, it may significantly increase your marketing effectiveness.