Psychographic Targeting in SEA: Tapping into User Intent and Interests

In this fast changing world of digital marketing, it is crucial for entrepreneurs to create a meaningful connection with their customers. And it can be easily achieved via psychographic targeting. It is a marketing technique that hunts through the psychological characteristics of a customer. Psychographic targeting focuses on the values, interests, and lifestyles of the customers and it allows advertisers to create an advertisement which offers personalised experience to each consumer and targets the right audience at the right time. It is the most powerful weapon for SEA (Search Engine Advertising) because ad relevance is the key to achieve higher engagement and conversions for any business.  

What is Psychographic Targeting?

Psychographic Targeting considers different factors while targeting an audience like age, gender, income and more. It basically focuses on the factors that drive customers to make decisions and buy the product you are offering. It goes beyond traditional marketing as it focuses on how a consumer thinks, feels and acts in certain situations.

Once an advertiser understands these factors about a customer he can create advertisements to engage specific audiences and lead to higher engagement and conversions. For example if an organisation finds out that its customers are more inclined to sustainability it can generate ads that emphasise eco friendly practices and products. 

What are the benefits of Psychographic Targeting?

Here are the benefits of Psychographic Targeting:

• It allows entrepreneurs to better understand the mindset of their customers and allows them to learn the pattern of conversion of a customer. 
• It allows companies to make more effective marketing strategies as they know what their customer wants.
• Psychographic Targeting allows companies to generate ads with messages that attract the user and this leads to more conversions and ROI. This is because these ads directly discuss the interests of people. 
• By understanding what customers want and using the language the customer uses creates an emotional relation between customer and the business and this leads to brand loyalty. 
• It also helps businesses to make long term customers, when customers feel more connected to a brand or product they tend to buy it regularly. 

How Google Ads Facilitates Psychographic Targeting?

Google ads does not offer direct psychographic targeting, but it offers tools for psychographic targeting which allows advertisers to get close to their customers and find users interest, Google ads tools for Psychographic Targeting are mentioned below:

Custom Affinity Audiences:

This tool allows advertisers to bifurcate their customers into groups, for example an advertiser can add people with same interests, same hobbies or likes and dislikes in a similar group. Here is how to use this tool:

• Open Google ads account.
• Select the campaign you want to work on.
• Find Audience and click “Custom Audience”
• Now create new audiences by adding interests, websites they might visit, or places they might go that are related to your product.

In-Market Audiences: 

This Google ads tool helps advertisers to find people who are looking for similar products you are offering on the internet. For Example if a person is searching for exercise videos and you own a gym or a fitness brand you can target this person because they are “in the market” to find something similar to what you are offering. Here is how it works:

• Open Google ads account.
• Now go to Google Ads dashboard.
• Select the Campaign you want to work on.
• Click “Audience” and then select “in market audience”
• Now pick a category that matches with the products you sell like “Fitness or sports equipment” now you can find people who are interested in your product.

How Google Analytics can help to gather Psychographic Data for Psychographic Targeting?

Google analytics is a very powerful tool which allows you to get insights on how a person interacts with your website and your products. It helps advertisers to gather Psychographic Data, allows them to analyse user behaviour and find out about their interests.  Here is what you get with Google Analytics:

Audience Insights:

It keeps a track on who visits the websites. It focuses on the audience demographics, their interests and their behaviour online. This helps advertisers to find out about the users interests and it helps them with marketing campaigns. With the help of this data advertisers can create ads that align with users interests and preferences.

Behaviour Reports

It shows how a person interacts with your website, including the pages they visit, how much time they spend on a certain page or product and whether they buy a product or not. It helps advertisers to find out what their customers are interested in. 

What are the Methods to Gather Psychographic Data

Here are some effective methods to gather Psychographic Data:

Online Surveys:

Online surveys can be done to find out customers' interests and find out in detail about their lifestyle, values, likes and dislikes. These questionnaires help advertisers to get direct insights of customers. And it helps advertisers to craft creative marketing strategies for such customers. 

Customer Interviews:

Interviews can be conducted with customers to get insights on customers choices and preferences. With the help of these interviews advertisers uncover the psychological factors that influence customers for purchasing a product. These interviews also help advertisers to know their target audience. 

Use Behavior Data

Different tools like Google analytics and Google ads analyses users behaviour and interest. These tools help advertisers to find out the way people search for products and interact with the website and help marketers analyse users behaviour and interest. 

How to Incorporate Psychographic Data into SEA Campaigns

Once Psychographic Data is collected, it can be easily incorporated into the SEA Campaigns:

Targeted Ads Creation:

Psychological targeting allows advertisers to develop ads that can reflect users interests. Let's say there is a certain segment of audience which is more interested in fitness. Ads related to fitness, and which promote healthy lifestyle and ads of products which will help them to gain a healthy lifestyle will be more popular among that segment of audience. 

Ad Personalization

It allows advertisers to adjust their ads automatically based on the users preference. This increases user engagement. It also allows us to improve SEA performance. 

Audience Segmentation

Psychological targeting allows for audience segmentation, it helps advertisers to segment their audience on the basis of users interest and preferences. It helps them to create separate ads for different segments of audience and get more traffic and ROI. 

Comparison with Psychographic and Demographic Targeting

Both Psychographic and Demographic Targeting are essential marketing tools. Demographic Targeting helps advertisers to know the gender, age, education, marital status, occupation, geographical location and income of the user. It does not focus on the user's interests and behaviours which is crucial for advertisers. Whereas Psychographic Targeting gets deeper insights on customers interests, values, attitude, lifestyle, behaviour and personality of the user. It allows businesses to personally connect with their customers and create ads according to customers preferences and help them achieve better ROI and conversions. 

Conclusion

Lastly Psychological targeting is a very powerful tool to enhance SEA and performance of any marketing campaign. It helps advertisers to understand their audience better and connect deeper with the audience. It helps advertisers to understand Psychological factors that affect users' decision to buy a product or not buy it. By understanding these Psychological targeting factors advertisers can create more personalised ads for different types of audiences and capture more traffic as well as better ROI. By effectively incorporating Psychological targeting into business. Marketers can unlock new opportunities and engage more customers and achieve higher conversions.