How to create an audience psychometric profile

Humans are inherently social creatures. We thrive on human interaction and respond best to positive experiences with it. Businesses (and marketers) have become increasingly aware of this, as brands often perform better when they engage their audiences like people, instead of transactionally. After all, nobody likes feeling like they’re just another tally mark.

That’s where psychometrics come into play. Psychometric marketing is a way of enriching your existing data, like demographic trends or behavioral modeling. You’re rounding out your data and creating a full-fledged idea of the person you’re selling your products to. After all, knowledge is power, and you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble by limiting the amount of trial-and-error you need to market yourself effectively.

Your customers will have a better experience engaging with your products. That makes them stronger return customers, extending their lifetime value to your business. Targeting your audience by appealing to personality traits and making personalized campaigns also has a stronger chance of attracting—and keeping—new customers.

SO WHAT IS AN AUDIENCE PROFILE?

Essentially, an audience profile is a fictional person that embodies the key traits of your real-life customers. This isn’t a target market, which is a broader, general definition. Your audience profile is an in-depth representation of a real person that goes into far more detail than your target market or the buyer personas found in sales.

Instead of listing their interests, age, or other notes, you’re detailing the demographics they’re a part of, the challenges they face, how they engage with businesses, and other aspects of how they identify themselves.

This is a key part of making a highly successful marketing campaign and a useful tool for building messaging by trying to look through the consumers’ eyes.

BUILDING YOUR AUDIENCE PROFILE

This might sound like an intimidating process at first, but it’s far simpler than you might expect. Building a fictional customer after all is essentially an exercise in getting to know them.

Keep in mind that this is an ongoing process. Your first profile doesn’t need to be perfect, and even if it is, your audience will grow and change as much as your business does. You’ll always find a new market and new customers as you grow. Approach this as a consistent project and adjust it as you go.

GATHER ALL THE DATA YOU CAN FIND

The best place to start is with quantitative data.

If you’re a small business, you likely won’t be able to conduct huge research projects, but you still have a lot you can work with. Secondary data is always useful, but you can also gather your own through your business’s analytics.

Advertising via Google or Facebook will collect metrics that you’ll build over time. Through things like A/B testing or adjusting campaigns, you’ll learn what works best for you. You’ll be shocked by how well you get to know your audience by keeping track of your constantly growing metrics. This same rule applies if you use a CRM, maybe even more so. It’s a comprehensive, living metric for your business’s performance that will work wonders in shaping your audience profile.

A large corporation will spend millions developing qualitative data, but as a small business owner, don’t discount the wealth of knowledge you get from running your business and interacting with customers. After all, that’s really what these companies are trying to replicate. Talk to your marketing team for insights and trust your instincts.

FIGURE OUT WHAT YOUR CUSTOMERS NEED

Having data is good, and your next step is putting it to good use. You now need to anticipate what your customers need and figure out where you can solve their problems. This is partly about addressing issues that you solve through your service, but it’s also about finding where you can tighten your service to make things easier on them. For instance, you put forth the effort to build a comprehensive website, but it won’t do anyone any good if your site keeps crashing.

Your tools and metrics can be a big help here, and it’s worth checking your CRM to see if you can gather any insights from it. Doing keyword research and figuring out where your business lines up with customer searches is also highly informative. You want to find out:

• The problem they had to solve
• Where other solutions they tried failed
• How your product or service was helpful
• Where your product or service fell short (ie how you can improve)

NOW MAKE IT PERSONAL!

You have a great idea of who your audience is, but now it’s time to round them out into the complete image of a person. Make a list of their:

• Likes and dislikes
• The values that drive them
• Anything of strong interest
• What attitudes they hold and to what
• Any personality quirks or traits

You can do a lot to round out this image by making notes of what they wear and how they speak (is it formal? Casual?). See what other products or services they enjoy and use that to round out your image further.

Once that’s done, list it alongside demographic information, like age, gender, and common professions. Take it a step further and list how they engage content, like if they read newspapers or find news online, or if they have cable or rely on streaming services.

PUT IT ALL TO GOOD USE

Having a good idea about who your customer is will tell you what motivates them. It’s tricky since often they won’t know that answer themselves. Your audience profile essentially is trying to figure out their subconscious behavior patterns so that you can tailor your campaign in a way that gets their attention. With that knowledge in hand, you can create a unique experience for every customer your meet and advertise products you know they’ll benefit from.

SUMMARY

While standard resources of analysis are great tools, psychometrics is wielding market research to its full extent. Having the best understanding of your customers is the best way to sell to them and cater to their needs. You can use it to segment your audiences further and developing better testing, like through UX flows and product recommendations. For the best results, make this the core of your marketing strategy. You’ll learn as you go and develop more insights as your experience grows.