STP Marketing – Segmentation, Targeting & Positioning

Not everyone will be interested in your product or service.

So you have to narrow down your target market.

Doing so can better inform and educate your audience on how your product or service can help them.

This is done using segmentation, targeting and positioning.

In this blog post, we will learn:

• How to better understand your audience
• Why you should target them with your marketing

Let’s dive right in.

What’s STP Marketing? Segmentation, Targeting & Positioning

Segmentation, targeting and positioning, also known as STP marketing, is marketing communications focused on the consumer.

STP marketing targets your audiences using relevant and personalised messaging.

Doing so improves the way your business:

• Targets your marketing messages
• Serves your customer base

Additional benefits of this model includes:

• Discovering niche markets
• Finding new customer
• Uncovering market opportunities

Overall, STP marketing makes your marketing more efficient and cost-effective.

STP Marketing Analysis

With STP you can take an audience and know how your products relate to segments within it.

Which helps understand how your products and messaging can grab each segment’s attention.

Segmentation

Segmentation separates your audience into groups based on their characteristics.

Grouping your audience into similar groups helps you show them relevant:

• Products
• Features
• Benefits

And your audience can be segmented based on one of more:

• Demographics: Your buyers age, gender, education, location, and profession
• Psychographics: They buy based on priorities, personality traits, beliefs and values
• Lifestyle: Their hobbies, entertainment preferences and non-work activities
• Behavior: Buyers brand loyalty, channel preferences and other shopping habits

Segmentation is similar to creating buyer personas as they both detail important factors reguarding your target audience:

• Buyer personas create customer profiles on your broader audience
• Segmentation divides your audience into groups that can be uniquely targeted

Targeting

With your marketing, you need to figure out which segments are worth targeting.

So to find out this information, answer the following questions about each segment:

• If the segment has enough potential customers to target?
• If the profits from converting the segment be worth the effort?
• If the segment measures differently compared to other segments?
• Can the segment be accessed by all your Marketing and Sales team?
• Can your business handle serving this segment?
• Does any physical, legal, social or technological factor stop your business serving this segment?

Use strategic planning models like the PESTLE analysis to:

• Help choose with segment to target
• Understand which segment is more practical to target

Remember, target one segment at a time.

Because doing so will help you market to each specific segment more efficiently.

Positioning

Now you can start positioning your product or service because you understand your tagrte segments:

• Demographics
• Psychographics
• Motivations
• Pain points

Now, put yourself in your target segments shoes and analyse your product or service.

Then ask yourself, why would you choose your product and not a competitor’s product?

Also, based on motivations and pain points, which features or benefits are relevant to you?

This information is important when it comes to:

• Defining your brand positioning
• Understanding how you compare to your competitors

Another way of understanding how you compare to your competitors is to build a positioning map.

Positioning mapping is visual map with brands plotted on it’s axes.

And each axis is an attribute that influences your target segment to select a brand.

With your target segment deciding the two attributes that go on your positioning map.

Segmentation, Targeting & Positioning in Marketing

Segmentation, targeting and positioning is an important addition to any:

• Marketing strategy
• Industry
• Product
• Audience

Its a type of marketing that is both efficient and effective.

Whilst making sure the most relevant and targeted messaging is delivered.

The STP model can also help develop:

• Buyer personas
• Customer lifecycle stages
• Core brand proposition

And STP is consumer-centric so your marketing stays relevant to your audience, increasing the chances of them:

• Converting
• Purchase
• Becoming lifetime customers

Conclusion

Utilising the segmentation, targeting and positioning model will improve:

• Targeting your marketing messages
• Serving your customer base

So both you and your customers end up winning.

Now its over to you.

Tell me how your use STP in your marketing.

Let me know in the comment section below.