Page 51 - Marketing the Basics 2nd

segMentation, targeting and positioning 43
Through discussions with their social networks they arrive at a purchasing decision.
One bugbear we have is that too many marketers are too youth oriented. For some products catering to this demographic is vital. For example, many podcasts seem to be reserved for the youth-oriented world. That said, not every new web tool is the exclusive domain of teens. Blogs are one good example. Most marketers assume that bloggers and blog readers are young. However, according to a survey of more than 17,000 blog readers conducted by BlogAds, 61 per cent of readers are 30 years of age and older and 75 per cent earn more than US$45,000 a year. This study helps draw a picture of blog readers that is very different from what many had previously pictured.
We think that marketers are overly focused on the young and should spend much more time targeting the boomers. There are a lot of them, the number of older people is growing and they have the money. Marketers especially appreciate a segment which has money to spend and is willing, and in some cases even eager to spend it.
PSYCHOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION
Psychographic segmentation entails dividing buyers into groups according to their lifestyles, personalities or personal values and attitudes. Psychographic segmentation is a technique that attempts to create a profile of how a particular group lives, what are their interests and what are their likes. This approach also allows the marketer to create groups that reach across demographic and geographic segments. It is generally considered more powerful than traditional demographic segmentations like gender and income but has a major drawback in that it is harder to get data on how people think. The magazines to which they subscribe tell us something: Condé Nast suggests a sophisticated traveller or at least a wannabe; where they live or where they take their holidays are markers but it is still an imprecise science to identify segments by psychographics. We would argue, though, that it is a particularly powerful one.