Blog 105: Health Club Marketing Psychographics

Psychographics is used in marketing for market segmentation. This variable describes and groups customers by combining psychological characteristics (e.g., personality, attitude, lifestyle, etc.) with demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, income level).

Health club marketing psychographics is basically profiling in today’s society and the word “profiling” has become a very negative word because it is normally used by police and FBI referring to the profiling of criminals. The FBI uses profiling to profile terrorists, serial killers and all different types of people, but, profiling has been around in the marketing industry for a long time.

I started learning about profiling back in the early 80’s when we would profile our target market for our prospective members for the health club industry. Psychographics is a wonderful tool for you to use to engage your target market and to develop your profile.

Psychographics are used in many different ways. You want to learn the buying patterns of the consumer, the habits of the consumer, their attitudes toward the health club products and health club services they purchased, etc., then you incorporate that with the demographics which is the age, income, etc., and geographic as far as the proximity to your health club.

All of these different mini-profiles make up the larger profile which is the prospective member you really want to target and draw into your health club. The first place you need to start is to find out what are the prospective member’s attitudes toward your health club, what does the community think about your health club, how they perceive your health club, etc. These little surveys will help you understand the attitudes of the prospective member so you will know if you need to change that attitude or build upon it.

If your brand is strong within the health and fitness community, and you still want to find out different things about the prospective member’s buying habits, you can learn this through different lists for purchase from businesses like credit card companies, magazines, restaurants and all different types of businesses that sell lists to build the profile of the types of person that you are looking for and then merge these lists with your formula and then create your own profile of your desired prospect.

This is similar to what MMC® does; when we are profiling targets for our clients.

Psychographics should be incorporated as part of your health club marketing so you don’t incur a lot of wasteful spending. This will help you target the profiled prospective member that you really want to bring into your health club.

For more free tips on increasing your health club membership base through health club marketing, health club promotions, professional health club membership sales, and advancing your health and fitness career visit us today @ www.healthclubmarketingmmc.com or call 904-448-5727.