STP marketing is one of the most popular strategic marketing modules used by businesses today and for a good reason. The STP model is an excellent embodiment of the gradual change in focus from a product-centric approach to a customer-centric approach, which enables companies to better understand who they are trying to reach and how to position themselves for success.
How can you use the STP framework to grow your business?
Read on as we attempt to answer all questions you may have about STP marketing, STP strategies, and anything else you may need to know in order to apply these tactics yourself.
What is STP?
STP stands for segmentation, targeting, and positioning in marketing. It is a three-step process that allows for the development of a specific and actionable marketing strategy.
The main principle behind the process is to segment your audience, target each segmented group according to their preferences and habits, and make positioning adjustments in your branding and marketing strategies to accommodate their needs and expectations.
The segmentation-targeting-positioning process is so effective because it breaks down broader markets into smaller parts, making it easier to develop specific approaches for reaching and engaging potential customers instead of using a generic marketing strategy that would not be as appealing, or as effective.
How to Use STP in Strategy Building
Using STP marketing in your business may seem complicated, but the process can be broken down into actionable steps.
First, you must define the market you want to reach and create market segments based on segmentation variables and bases such as age, location, interests, or almost anything else.
Then, evaluate each segment for viability, looking at how realistic it is to target them, and choose the segments that show the most promise.
After performing a thorough FTP analysis and selecting the most promising segments, developing a targeting strategy for that market (or markets), and identifying the most promising positioning opportunities for engaging that market.
Let’s take a deeper look at the segmentation-targeting-positioning equation below.
Market Segmentation
The process of customer segmentation is all about identifying distinctive and common traits between people in your market, which allows you to develop much more relevant and engaging marketing campaigns.
If you can use audience insights to identify a specific desire or need in a group of people in your market, you will be able to focus your message and deliver it in a way that has a much stronger impact than broader marketing campaigns.
In fact, in saturated and mature markets, you may even discover new opportunities, highlighting unique benefits to a segment that wasn’t catered to by anyone else.
But what types of segmentation variables can you use for segmentation? Some of the most common segmentation variables include:
- Demographics: age, gender, marital status, ethnicity, etc.
- Geography: city, region, country, climate, etc.
- Psychographics: personality traits, habits, attitudes, etc.
- Values: politics, religion, cultural beliefs, identifications, etc.
- Life Stages: work status, education status, retirement, etc.
- Behaviors: purchases, interests, clicks, browsing data, etc.
These are just some of the possibilities for segmenting your audience, but they should provide a pretty good starting point for what you should look at.
Market Targeting
The next step is to look at the segments you picked to identify the best opportunities for your business.
First, you will need to look at the size of the segment, which will tell you whether it’s worth pursuing. After all, the marketing opportunity must be large enough to warrant running a campaign. Otherwise, it simply won’t be worth the effort.
The next step is to look at whether there are significant markers that set the segments apart; these can become the basis of an STP marketing campaign.
Be sure to analyze the opportunity from a financial perspective—the profits you can expect should exceed the additional marketing budget required to execute it.
Finally, you must look at whether the market segment is accessible to your company, and if you will be able to get your marketing messages in front of them.
In the end, the targeting stage is all about identifying the best opportunities for using the consumer data and insights that you gain during the segmentation stage. Then, you can optimize the customer journey map and create more relevant and engaging marketing campaigns.
Market Positioning
Finally, consider positioning opportunities that will help you respond to an unmet need or desire in your market that your product can fulfill.
Since you have tangible data about what segments of your audience desire, you can use those insights to position your product and develop a unique selling proposition, presenting the right message at the right time.
Using customer segmentation models, you can completely revamp your product positioning and center your campaign around the most pressing problem that your audience is facing. With a segmented and specifically targeted audience, your product positioning can have a much stronger impact, helping your message stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Why You Need STP Marketing Research
STP Marketing is a powerful tool. However, identifying segmentation and targeting opportunities, not to mention finding the right positioning angle, are all complex processes that require the collection of large amounts of data and insights, as well as an expert understanding of how markets function.
That’s where Luth Research comes in. We can help you perform a thorough and comprehensive STP marketing research, using our own data and intelligence tools to provide more accurate insights into your audience and help you run smarter campaigns. The result? You have the best strategy possible for delivering results to both your business and your customer base. We are always happy to answer your questions and help you find the best way to approach marketing strategies specific to your business needs.
