Demographics/Psychographics

 Demographics and Psychographics

When determining how one should market their business for their customer-base, it's essential that anyone running a business understands what kind of customers they're expecting to be interested in their business the most. In the course, we've had a stab at this by building multiple customer profiles of different kinds of people that we believe may be interested in purchasing our goods/services (in my case, people who I believe would want to write something but are unable to do it themselves for any number of reasons). While these fictional customer profiles are a good way to start getting an idea of who my customer-base is, it's important to get more general and find the main demographics and psychographics that I'm targeting for my business.

Demographics

Determining a specific demographic for my customer-base may be slightly difficult, as I've found less similarities between these aspects of my customers compared to the psychological aspects - there are more common threads for the way my customers act compared to their age or gender.

The majority of the customer profiles I created were fairly young in age, with only two of them being older than 30 (and one of these was someone who was wanting my services for a younger loved one rather than themselves). Therefore, it's safe to say that my target demographic's age would be in the range of 16-27 primarily, with a smaller focus on attracting the attention of older parents who may want to use my services to make a gift.

Whilst I did make the majority of my customer profiles based within the UK, this was more due to me being familiar with the UK rather than believing most of my customers would live within the UK. In all honesty, I don't believe the location of my customers matters at all and doubt there would be a common thread. This is due to the online nature of my business and its delivery, meaning I can give my services to anyone across the entire world (although I may have to tailor my work slightly for American audiences due to minor differences such as colour vs color). However, it's safe to say that my customer base would be almost entirely in English speaking countries as I'm unable to fluently speak any other languages myself. Something to consider would be getting a translator and someone to write stories in other languages should the business grow more.

In terms of income for my demographic, I expect the majority of my customers to fall in a lower income bracket due to the general age of my customers. Quite a few of them will be just getting out of education, with a lot still in education. Due to this, I'm predicting that most of my clientele will either have no job at all relying on allowance or will be working at a minimum wage job. Considering this, I'm expecting the annual income of my demographics to be less than £30,000 for the most part.

Finally, I believe that the relationship status of my customers does not matter in the slightest, and that there will be no real similarities for the status of any of my customers. The only thing I can really predict is that the majority of my customer-base will not be married due to their younger age, although I cannot go much further than that in terms of predicting their status.

To summarise, I believe that my primary demographics for the customers I want to attract should be the following:

• 16-27 year olds
• Living in an english speaking country
• Annual income of less than £30,000 (or minimum wage equivalent for non-UK countries)
• Social Grade DE primarily, with a smaller amount of Social Grade C2.
• Not Married
• Mostly female (although there will be male customers too).

Psychographics

Contrarily to demographics, psychographics obviously go into the psychological aspects of my customers and how they behave. By considering psychographics, I'll be able to determine what kind of businesses my customers will want to shop with and what considerations they make before purchasing (i.e. inclusivity, diversity, eco-friendliness, etc). Unlike the demographics, it's harder to define specific categories of psychographics to consider (e.g. age, gender). Therefore, I've considered the following psychographics as a general idea of my customers psychological profile.

• Creative
• Enjoys reading and loves literature
• Likes to read fiction
• Willing to spend some money on getting something done that they can't do
• Feels under-represented/unhappy with their current stories.
• Is unable to write themselves for any number of reasons
• Too lazy
• Doesn't have the knowledge
• Doesn't have the time to learn
• Doesn't have the time to write

While these are the general personality traits I'm anticipating for my customers, I'm also expecting a lesser psychographic to be someone who cares about their loved ones and wants them to have a personalised gift - this is something my business could easily provide through a short personalised story perhaps for a child.

Another thing to consider is the Young & Rubicam 4Cs model, with the 4 C's standing for Cross Cultural Consumer Characterization. This model attempts to split people into 7 different groups depending on their psychographics and their motivations: Aspirer, Succeeder, Explorer, Reformer, Mainstream, Struggler and Resigned.

When it comes to my target demographic, I'm expecting a good amount of my customers to fall under the Struggler archetype. According to the model, the struggler is primarily motivated by wanting an escape. With this in mind, I feel that fictional writing with a personalised edge is the perfect way to provide some escapism for someone desiring it. Other than the Struggler, I can see the other 6 archetypes using my services (albeit less than the struggler, as they have motivations that don't entirely overlap with my status as a writing company). Therefore, any marketing I produce should focus on targeting strugglers.

Conclusion

To conclude, I feel that my main demographics are teenagers/young adults living in english speaking countries, generally those within lower economic brackets. These customers will be people who like to read and have a creative mind, but are unable to produce their own writing for various reasons such as a lack of time or motivation. These people may also want an escape from their day-to-day lives as Strugglers, giving them further reason to want my services; a personalised story will give them some escapism as they get to read a fictional story tailored to their specifications.