(Image courtesy of  Anastase Maragos on Unsplash)

You are a content creator or marketing expert. Perhaps you’re an entrepreneur. And high-ticket marketing efforts carve out a pound of flesh from your budget. Often, your ads and posts, commercials and pitches, miss the mark. You post, you pay for ad space, you cut checks for your 1099 marketing consultant…and the phone doesn’t ring. We’ve all been there.

If you want to maximize your marketing impact, spend some time understanding your target customer or client. Marketing experts chat about identifying your customer or client persona. This basic concept — proven over and over — is that once you know to whom you are selling, you can craft your message to attract that person.

Those same experts advise you gather demographic information (age, gender, income), career or education data, hobby data. And that’s all good.

Yes, if you are selling hot dogs, you might want to place your ad at the next ballgame — so you want to find the baseball fans. Yes, that’s great. If you are selling luxury cars, you want to find your high-income customers. Economic data is important. Each of these aspects of that customer/client persona allow you to market right place, right time, to those who want and can afford your product or service. Yes.

But that demographic data will only take you so far. It tells you where the person is. It informs as to other behaviors he or she may exhibit. Demographics tell you some likely problems seeking your solution. Yes.

You want to stand out? Close every sale? Then take the next step. I advise my clients to add personality characteristics to their persona description. Personality characteristics include risk tolerance, cognitive complexity, and temperament. And personality characteristics let you get inside your customer’s head.

Respect Human Needs Preferences

I’ve written many articles about universal human needs (Your Personal, Powerful Needs Formula, Seven Keys to Happiness & Balancing Your Needs) and a system I call NAM — the Needs Alignment Model. I wrote these as an invitation to coaching, yes, but also as a cornerstone for my content clients.

You can get detailed information from those other articles. For our purposes, understand that every human — no matter demographics — has seven universal needs:

1. Stability: Safety, security, and the things we need to survive. Housing, clothing, sleep, food. Financial matters. Career. The shadow of stability is fear. Financial services, real estate agents, banks — all focus on this need. So do doctors, insurance companies, gyms… 
2. Stimulation: Our need for stimulation is the home of movement, sensation, action, and innate creativity (sexuality and procreation). If that need is unsatisfied or ignored, you experience shame and regret. Restaurants and bars, fashion, arts & entertainment, travel — industries that hit the stimulation need.
3. Identity: The need to be recognized as important and unique. Humiliation (or imposter syndrome!), weak boundaries, low motivation are all signs this need is undervalued. Here, fashion, the automotive industry, career sites, thrive on helping the individual feel like someone. Feel important.
4. Connection: The need for connection is, arguably, the most powerful human need. We require others to survive. We want to be a part of something. Charitable ventures target this need, obviously. But so do schools, teams, organizations, meet up sites, dating sites — and the not so obvious food and beverage industries. I could keep going because this need is a favorite!
5. Expression: Our need for expression is our need for communication. Creativity, speech, and honesty are aspects. You have internet and mobile providers, cell phone and technology providers, and social media itself! Cameras, selfie sticks — art companies… Giving individuals the means to show their identity (yes, these are connected).
6. Awareness: We satisfy our awareness need when we think, learn, intuit, dream, visualize. Schools are the obvious industry. But all media — from print to digital — trigger the awareness need. Workshops and speeches, podcasts and blogs. Yup. But also consider meditation apps or psychologists. They, too, solve problems for awareness.
7. Meaning: What is the purpose of your life and existence? When a person is not satisfying his or her need for meaning, he or she will feel like an outsider, disconnected from life. Life becomes meaningless. Yes, religious and philosophical groups target this need. But think broader: So does every other product and service. Meaning is a need that covers and encompasses all other needs.

Marketing experts know this information — and use it to help you craft your problem / solution approach. The consumer is concerned about personal safety, so you sell them an alarm system. The consumer is concerned about personal appearance, so you sell them makeup or a cool watch. But that’s just the surface approach.

Try these ideas:

1. Understand that although everyone has these seven needs (they are universal), not every person ranks the needs equally. You can sell a risky investment to someone who values stimulation (not risk averse), but must sell safe investments to a person who values security (risk averse). Yet, that same person who is risk averse financially might enjoy adventure travel. People are complex.
2. If an activity satisfies three or more of the universal human needs, it will become addictive. Ensure your product or service addresses three or more needs (problem areas). Our microwavable dinners will bring family together (connection), save you time (security), make you seem the gourmet (identity). Get it? Pro tip: Your offer should satisfy problems across all seven needs.
3. Trigger your audience to feel an unsatisfied need so they realize they have a problem you can solve. If you don’t have X car, no one will notice you(identity). This seems smarmy… but it’s not. Think of yourself as the reminder. Sell the vacation to the Type-A Work-a-holic. Sell the savings plan to the bankrupt. Highlight the problem and solve it.
4. Don’t solve a problem your audience doesn’t have (or care about). If you don’t have X car, no one will notice you will not work on someone who doesn’t value identity. Maybe your customer/client persona values connection and contribution. X car saves the environment, fits your whole family, brings people together…

Respect Cognitive Complexity

Over the years, as a business consultant, professor, and attorney, I’ve also written extensively about how to persuade others. (See recently: Touch Them!and Persuade Them Powerfully) I’m pretty damn good at it and have sworn to use my powers for good.

But here’s something I don’t always share: Most people think simply and are swayed emotionally. So drop the facts and logic. Sometimes.

Cognitive complexity is the psychological characteristic that measures the simplicity or complexity an individual’s perception and processing. Cognitively complex people perceive nuance and interpret the world along continuums. They process information across intricate mental webs. Cognitively simple people do not.

As an example: Your team must vote on a new logo and they are presented with two options. The cognitively complex person will consider an unfathomable amount of data. She considers history, other companies, color, shape, music she likes, other ideas that failed or succeeded, how the logo will make others feel, how the logo performed in focus groups, and how the logo will be interpreted in a dystopian future. The cognitively simple person will react emotionally: I don’t like the green tone. Or, Wow, that’s pretty!

Why should you care about cognitive complexity aside from dating a person who is cognitively similar?

Because when you are romancing your client or customer, you are not selling to a cognitively complex person with an emotional appeal. You need more. You need logic and facts and data and… sound reasoning. You want that person using the web inside his mind. And you want to satisfy all his questions.

As a cognitively complex person, you can get me to testdrive the sexy red car because I am a human and have emotions (somewhere in here…). But I’m not parting with my dollars until you show me the data. Because when I’m driving that car, the web of information in my head is exploding with questions that need answers.

Respect Consistency

Humans universally yearn for behavioral consistency. If Sally is a vegetarian, you are not selling her a steak anytime soon! She can’t eat meat and maintain her self-image. She must maintain consistent attitudes, values, and opinions.

We call this attitude consistency. And you have to shift an attitude to shift a behavior. You’re selling organic toothpaste? You have to sell the value of organic first. You have to change that attitude. And that’s where you must respect the human proclivity for consistency.

Let’s take an example: Fred always goes to the local-smocal tax prep guy who has one of those cubicles at the food market. You’ll discover Fred chooses this because it’s cheap, convenient, has had good results in the past (the IRS is not hunting him). So, you are not selling Fred a $500 tax advising service. No matter Fred’s demographic profile. Even if he’s a millionaire.

What you do is sell Fred on cost, convenience — and trigger his security need. What are the percentage of audits for those grocery tax prep places? Oh, Fred… you are in danger! Then, you sell him a small step he can tolerate. Don’t expect him to flip and hire an accounting firm. Sell him a tax review package for $80. He’s likely to change that little step.

Ultimately, if I were advising that client, I’d ignore Fred. It’s too much work. Focus on the customer that is already behaving close to what you offer. Focus on the client who is unhappy with his accountant. Who got audited after going to the market… Who’s almost sold.

Respect Temperament

Here is another area where persona descriptions miss the mark: Temperament. Sure, personae include what hobbies the person enjoys, what religion he or she practices, what food and drink he or she enjoys. Those are habits and attitudes and very helpful.

But often, people with varied temperaments value different approaches even if they share those habits and attitudes.

What do I mean by varied temperaments?

While temperament theory is too complex for this short article, and you can easily learn about the details, I’ll give you the short-and-sweet version:

Personality is two-fold: nature (temperament) and nurture (character). Temperament is an individual’s innate disposition measured, classically, along four areas:

• Introversion or Extroversion (how an individual is energized by his or her environment)
• Sensing or Intuiting (how a person perceives his or her environment)
• Feeling or Thinking (how a person judges or decides) 
• Judging or Perceiving (how a person organizes his or her environment)

Each area results in a measurement. So, a particular individual might be an introverted intuitive who prefers thinking and judging. The measurement along the four ranges results in sixteen distinct temperaments with particular behavioral proclivities and preferences. Understanding temperament is keyto unlocking an individual’s preferences. (And, I typically focus on temperament and preferred human needs when I draft a persona.)

It’s helpful to know a persona drives a muscle car, drinks ale, and eats barbeque almost daily. That he shares racing videos on social media on Tuesday nights and never misses a football game. Great information. You can find him.

But can you motivate him to buy your product??

To motivate him, you need to know what makes him tick.

Again, without delving into the science, the important aspect for marketers is to appreciate that no matter the demographics, the temperament of your target market is more important. You don’t want to sell exciting parties to an introvert. You want to sell alone-time and reflection. You don’t want to sell security to someone who is one of the four Artisans — who prefer activity over stablilty.

Temperament is an area where a marketing expert could use the advice of a life coach or psychologist!

And that’s the point of my article. If you are attempting to market your product or service, don’t rely soley on the demographic data. Hire a life coach or psychologist so you can appreciate human behavior.

That effort will bring you a much higher return.