Don’t be intimidated by the concept of an STP Strategy. It may sound like a bunch of corporate lingo, but it’s actually a lot simpler than you think! Let’s explore how to create an STP Strategy that will help you reach your customers with ease.
Introduction
Developing an effective STP (segmentation, targeting and positioning) strategy is essential for any successful business. It enables marketers to identify, assess and target customers within the marketplace more effectively to create a competitive advantage. STP strategy is also important as it helps to ensure that resources are allocated in a way that yields the highest return on investment which maximizes profits.
By understanding and engaging with customers through segmentation, targeting and positioning, marketers understand what motivates their target audiences and can tailor their products/services accordingly. It also helps them to design tasks that focus on consumers’ demands. Moreover, STP strategies provide insight into both the current trends within the market and data from previous campaigns, allowing businesses to hypothesize more accurately about trends that may appear in upcoming quarters or years.
What is STP?
STP stands for Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning and is an approach to marketing that focuses on dividing consumers into groups and then targeting specific groups with customized strategies.
The key goals of this approach are to identify which markets are profitable and how best to serve those markets. It is a customer-based marketing process used by organisations to ensure their products, services, and communications meet the needs of each customer within their target market.
Through segmentation, marketers identify the different characteristics that customers have in common such as demographics (age, gender or income level), psychographics (attitudes or lifestyle), or usage frequency. Through targeting they then select the most attractive segments and decide how they will serve them. Finally through positioning they decide how they will differentiate themselves from competitors by leveraging unique elements such as brand image, price point or product features.
Identifying Your Target Market
Identifying your target market involves examining the specific characteristics of potential customers, such as age, gender, location and income level. This process entails creating detailed customer profiles based on demographic and psychographic data. Demographics refer to surface information about a customer (such as age or income), whereas psychographics are more emotional variables, such as lifestyle choices and values.
Before you can identify a target market, you must understand the needs of your target customers. To capture this information ineffectively, look at complaints in customer feedback surveys and recall any conversations that you’ve had with current or past customers. A deeper understanding of the customer will enable you to develop a better approach to meet their needs through your products or services.
At the same time, it is vital to segment the target market into different sections so that messages can be tailored for each section appropriately and efficiently. Segmentation is important because different groups within the same general target audience may have distinct preferences that require separate messages with different arguments or tactics for getting them interested in your offer.
Understanding Your Competitors
Before you can devise an STP (segmentation, targeting, and positioning) strategy tailored to the needs of your consumers, you need to understand your competition. Evaluation of competitors should include information such as product and service offerings, pricing strategies, levels of marketing involvement, target markets served, strengths and weaknesses in terms of how they present their company and products compared to yours.
Using this information gathered about your competition will allow you to make informed decisions about what kind of market segmentation best meets the needs of your consumers, which target markets are likely to be the most profitable for you, and how you should position your brand or product relative to that competition. If done effectively this can form the foundation for a successful STP strategy.
Analyzing Your Products and Services
When analysing products and services to formulate an STP strategy, the first step is to look at the existing products and services your company offers. Determine who they are targeting and how they are positioning their products or services in the marketplace. Consider how these products or services benefit customers, what differentiates them from competitors’ offerings, and whether there is unmet demand. Additionally, look at how the product is priced, whether bundled with other complimentary products or not, and delivered – online or through physical stores.
In assessing existing offerings, consider past performance of your current marketing mix strategy – which media channel has been used to promote the product or service? Which distribution channels have been successful for your company thus far? This can provide guidance on migrating industry trends.
It may also be helpful to conduct market analysis by segmenting customers based on demographic attributes such as age, gender, income level and geographic location. Doing so can help a company identify new customer segments or target markets. Furthermore, analyze macroeconomic factors such as income levels of potential customers and assess existing competition in targeted markets. Also evaluate any changes in regulations that may impact marketing strategies across various industries and country geographies. Overall determining the right blend of external conditions will help solidify targeting decisions when preparing an STP strategy.
Developing Your Unique Selling Proposition
Creating an effective STP (segmentation, targeting and positioning) strategy requires deep knowledge of the market, competition and consumers in order to decide which customers you wish to target with your brand. As such, one of the first steps in crafting an effective STP marketing plan is developing a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). This should be based on identifying a specific need within the market that your product or service can uniquely provide. It will help define what sets you apart from any other business in the market, giving you a competitive edge.
The goal of this step is to make sure that you stand out from competitors and emphasize why your product or service should be considered first by potential customers. To decide on the USP for your business, ask yourself these questions:
- What does customer demand for?
- How will our product/service solve their problems better than anyone else’s?
- What pain points can our product/service address?
- How would potential customers benefit from purchasing our product or service over competitors?
- And how can we communicate this USP effectively, so that a customer knows exactly what they’re getting with us?
Once you have identified a USP that makes sense for your business, use it throughout all elements of your marketing and advertising efforts to ensure maximum visibility and recognition by potential customers. This will help create an enduring and powerful brand identity. Additionally, keep track of how successful this USP is in helping create sales opportunities as feedback will inform whether it needs further refinement or adjustment as needs and customer preferences may change over time.
Crafting Your Positioning Statement
Creating a successful STP strategy is essential for any marketer wanting to maximize profits and expand the customer base. The positioning statement is an important component of the STP process that formulates your business’s promise to the customer by communicating what you’re offering and how it solves the customer’s problem.
When crafting your positioning statement, it is important to consider four factors:
- Target market
- Competitive advantage
- Customer need or solution
- Designation/frame of reference
By outlining how your product meets the needs of its target market, offers a distinct competitive advantage among similar offerings in its industry and categorizes itself within its designated frame of reference, you can create a clear yet powerful positioning statement that paves the path for success in customer acquisition.
Formulating an effective positioning statement establishes a strong base upon which marketers can develop their segmentation, targeting and positioning strategies in order to create a successful plan for engaging customers with their brand. With this integral foundation in place, brands are ready to begin launching ads and creating other promotional materials that communicate purposeful messages tailored to their specific audiences.
Implementing Your STP Strategy
The process of implementing an STP strategy includes several steps, such as defining step-by-step instructions for execution, creating action plans for each segment, and implementing the plans.
The first step in implementing a STP strategy is to define precisely what it encompasses. This will allow you to create tailored marketing plans for each segment. A well-planned and executed STP strategy should include a thoughtful set of activities and decisions to get the segment’s attention. Once you have defined these activities and decisions, you need to organize them into an action plan for each individual target market segment.
You can begin your implementation efforts by creating an effective marketing mix that accounts for all segments’ needs and characteristics. The next step is to come up with strategies that can ensure the success of your overall plan, such as promotional strategies, pricing strategies, distribution strategies, product development strategies, etc. Once all of these components are in place, you can start testing your approaches in order to understand their impacts on sales figures in different segments and make adjustments as needed.
The final step prior to executing your plan is internal management and deployment. You need an organized program management team that will monitor the profitability of your marketing initiatives so that any areas that are not meeting targets or performance expectations can be identified quickly in order to take corrective measures at the earliest stage possible. After establishing this management system and methodologies inside a company’s organizational framework, implementation of all activities within the STP program should begin steadily over time until it reaches its desired level across all markets.