Philip Kotler said it, and the world followed. STP is an acronym for the golden ticket to marketing. Segment, target, and position-and there you go- your brand is here to stay.
Say you are the marketing manager of a company that produces apparel for kids. You go through the sales data and analyze the first few weeks and manage to identify a profitable opportunity with a group of customers. Your company comes up with a new line of clothing with new designs that have the potential to attract customers and lead to higher revenue generation. Your plan is to sell through online platforms.
But how are you going to go about and market on the online platform? How will you identify a profitable segment of the market? How are you going to communicate its benefits to potential customers?
We at Buffalo Soldiers are going to take you through the approach of segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP) model so that you have a plan as you get started! Once we take you through this, you will understand how to answer the above questions more easily.
What is the STP model?
The STP Model is a three-step model that helps you analyze a specific group and how you can target your products at them.
STP stands for:
- Segmentation
- Targeting
- Positioning
Let us look at this step by step.
What is segmentation?
Segmentation is the process of dividing the market of potential customers into segments, or groups, based on certain characteristics. The segments created comprise of consumers who will respond in the same way to marketing strategies and who share similar interests, needs, or locations. The segmentation of potential customers can be done in the following ways:
- Demographics: By peoples’ attributes such as gender, age, marital status, sexuality, ethnicity, occupation, and education.
- Geographic: By country, state, region, city, or neighborhood.
- Psychographic: By values, lifestyle, personality, or risk aversion.
- Behavioral: By how people use the product, the kind of benefits they are looking for, or how loyal they are.
Why is segmentation necessary? We at Buffalo soldiers believe that personalized marketing campaigns according to the segment is more efficient as compared to marketing for the masses. It ensures a much more efficient use of money, time, and other resources.
This helps you identify your customers, and design marketing messages that are directed at them. When marketing campaigns are directed to groups with specific characteristics, it helps engage with the customer better leading to a higher probability of purchase of the product.
Go to the nearest drugstore and take a look around. You can clearly differentiate women’s products from men’s. You will notice that women’s haircare, skincare, and grooming products are packaged in soft, gentle colors and are majorly pink. Pink is often relatable to softness, freshness, and a carefree lifestyle.
Now, look over to the men’s section. Men’s products are packaged in colors such as blacks, greys, oranges, and reds. These colors are associated with durability, strength, and ruggedness. The photograph is usually a model with a fierce independent look.
Let’s look at traveling agencies, they try to design their holiday packages based on the segments they divide their customers into. One of the segments is made up of young married couples, who are primarily interested in scenic, affordable vacations in exotic locations. Another segment consists of middle-class families, who want family-friendly, safe vacation packages that make it easy and fun to travel with children. The third segment will comprise of upscale retirees, who are looking for luxurious vacation spots in well-known locations.
Here are a few samples that you may find interesting that covers segmentation for e-Commerce:
Target Your Best Customers
After finding the most attractive segments. Start filtering them out by looking at various important factors. Start asking important questions.
Look at the profitability of each segment. Which customer group has the potential to contribute the most to your apparel line?
Start analyzing the potential growth and size of the customer group. Is steady growth possible in the future? Is the group large enough to warrant addressing? What is the potential growth for other segments?
Often niche markets seem attractive. But always be careful and keep an eye on the revenue as niche markets are usually small and it is difficult to track potential customers.
From experience, we at Buffalo Soldiers can tell you that even when you have gathered your customer profile, there are several points to be kept in mind before it is time to form a campaign and send out marketing messages. The business must decide how it will best serve the selected customers. This is where the final step of positioning comes in. The company must differentiate itself from other competitors otherwise even the best marketing campaigns will not have the desired impact.
For further reading here are a few best practices to keep in mind while targeting on social media platforms:
Position Your Offering
In the final step, your main objective is to identify how are you going to position your product.
In order to do this, first, consider why customers should purchase your products rather than those of your competitors. Do this by identifying your USP(unique selling proposition), and draw a positioning map to understand how each segment perceives your product, brand, and service. This will help you determine how best to position your offering.
The next step is to look at the wants and needs of each segment, or the problem that your product has the potential to solve for these people. You can do this by creating a value proposition that clearly explains how your offering will meet this requirement better than any of your competitors’ products, and then develop a marketing campaign that presents this value proposition in a way that your audience will appreciate.
Digital campaigns can incur a lot of cost for an emerging business, therefore we at Buffalo Soldiers recommend that it is best to concentrate and enter only those segments that help you generate the greatest customer value over time.
After choosing the desired position and targeted campaign, take steps necessary to deliver and communicate that position to the target customers. With increased insights into customers’ behavior through digital segmentation, marketers have the ability to create accurate forecasts and predictive models for their campaigns. The result is highly targeted and relevant campaigns, leading to higher conversions and greater customer satisfaction for your brand.
Now that you have understood the STP model, here is how you can apply the model on the digital platform:
| Particulars | Segmentation | Targeting | Positioning |
| Search | How/What people Search | Search Relevance | Relevant Info |
| Social Media | Preference, Taste, Domain, Interest, | Existing Customer, InterestTaste, | Brand,Support,News/Info |
| Mailer | Email Database | Taste, Needs &Requirement | Informative /Solution |
This way the STP Model helps you to zoom in on the most profitable parts of your business that helps you seize opportunities that you never thought existed!
Still, lost? Let Buffalo Soldiers guide you seamlessly through the STP process. It’s scary at first, but once you get the pieces on the board, it’s all about the strategy!
