You might have heard of “buyer personas” in financial marketing. It might look intimidating, but the term essentially refers to “what your target audience looks like.”
A big part of this picture is your audience’s demographics, which typically includes variables such as age, gender, educational background and income.
But what are “psychographics,” and how do they relate to financial marketing?
Broadly, demographics break down who your audience is, whilst psychographics expound on why they buy things. Information relating to psychographics might include people’s spending behaviours and values, their hobbies and their buying habits.
Why is it important to understand your audience’s demographics and psychographics? Because your financial marketing can only reach them effectively when you do so.
An Example Buyer Persona In Financial Marketing
Let’s suppose you are a financial adviser who works primarily with clients in the dental sector. What might your target market look like?
Demographic Information:
- Male
- Practice principals
- Aged 45-65
- Married, with children
- High disposable income
Psychographic Information:
- Tends to favour quality over economy.
- Enjoys time with family and small friendship groups.
- Wants a comfortable retirement, and a comfortable lifestyle now.
- Finds fulfilment in financial success and career
- Enjoys going online in the evenings after work
Just by glancing over the list above, you should see why both sets of data are important for your financial marketing. With just the former, you miss out of a host of motivations, pain points and needs exhibited by your target market. With just the latter, you have no idea who you’re dealing with!
How Do I Find My Market’s Psychographics?
Broadly, there are two ways you can find out.
#1 Interview current clients
Think for a moment. Who is currently your best client? When you next talk, ask them more about themselves. Did they see a good movie recently? Did they do anything particularly interesting over the weekend? Do they have any holiday plans or resolutions for the New Year?
Of course, the kinds of questions you ask will depend on the relationship you have with the client. You might need to be direct and tell them why you are asking these kinds of questions.
Most IFAs we speak to, however, are fortunate in that they often forge close bonds with their clients. If this is you, this means you are sitting on a financial marketing goldmine!
Another approach might be to send out a survey to your current client base via email. Again, explain what you are doing and maybe consider some form of incentive for them to fill out the survey.
#2 Analytic data
If you have Google Analytics set up on your website, then you’ll be able to get a pretty insightful picture of who your visitors are, their interests, and what kinds of content engages them. It can also really help you target your SEO efforts, ranking your website higher in the search engines.
Look at your reports and ask yourself: what have motivated people to click, fill out your contact forms, or download whitepapers / online resources? This should give you a greater look into the psychographic data you’re looking for.
One final channel you might also want to look at is your social media. A lot of IFAs are active on LinkedIn for instance. Are you connected with people in your target market? If so, what sorts of things do they post about?
Gathering these two strands of financial marketing data – demographic and psychographic – is essential if you’re going to effectively deploy your marketing resources to maximum effect.
Skip out on this step, and you risk putting a lot of time, effort and money into a marketing strategy which doesn’t give you maximum bang for your buck.
If you’re unsure where to start, feel free to speak with us. We offer free, no-obligation marketing consultations to financial firms on these matters, and it’d be a pleasure to speak with you about your financial marketing.
Phil Teale is the Sales & Marketing Manager at MarketingAdviser, an agency specialising in marketing for financial services – and especially for financial advisers. Along with our sister company, CreativeAdviser, we also provide bespoke website design, branding, graphic design and video production services to financial clients.
Contact us on 01923 232840 or email me: phil@creativeadviser.co.uk