Segmentation, Targeting, & Positioning (STP Marketing): The Marketer’s Guide

As a content material strategist, I wish to ask my purchasers numerous questions, beginning with, “Who’s your audience?”

However are you aware what reply I all the time dread listening to? “Everybody”

Whereas it’s good to consider that everybody can be keen on buying your services or products, this definition (or lack thereof) creates far more give you the results you want and likewise does a disservice to your precise goal market. That is the place segmentation, concentrating on, and positioning come into play.

We developed this information that will help you perceive how and why you need to make investments time into STP for higher, more practical advertising. Let’s dive in.

At its core, STP advertising lets you higher goal your advertising messages and higher serve your buyer base.

This is an instance: I as soon as created a advertising technique for a health attire model. Quite than enchantment to all health fanatics throughout the board, the model wished to focus on a particular section inside their goal market: feminine yoga followers of their 30s and 40s. 

In the end, our advertising marketing campaign was way more environment friendly and cost-effective since we knew our viewers, the place to achieve them, and what messages would resonate.

Conducting an STP Advertising Evaluation

STP means that you can take a big, nameless viewers and outline how your totally different merchandise (or totally different parts of the identical product) relate to particular consumer segments inside that bigger viewers — thus understanding the way to place your product(s) and messaging to seize the eye of every section.

Let’s unpack every a part of the segmentation-targeting-positioning mannequin.

1. Segmentation

Segmentation refers back to the strategy of dividing your viewers into smaller teams based mostly on sure traits. This course of means that you can group your particular person viewers members into related teams so you may higher talk your merchandise, options, and advantages which may be most related to them.

You may section your viewers based mostly on a number of of those standards:

• Demographics, which usually reply the query of who your purchaser is (e.g. age, gender, training, location, and occupation)
• Psychographics, which reply the query of why your purchaser buys (e.g. priorities, persona traits, and beliefs and values)
• Life-style traits, resembling hobbies, leisure preferences, and non-work actions
• Conduct, resembling model loyalty, channel preferences, and different buying habits

Segmentation could sound a little acquainted to a different course of we regularly focus on right here on the HubSpot weblog — creating buyer personas.

Whereas the 2 are very related,  buyer personas enable you to create a handful of buyer profiles that characterize your broader viewers. Segmentation means that you can break up your viewers into numerous teams, every of which you’ll uniquely goal.

For instance, let’s say Paws & Tails is a Chicago pet-sitting firm that gives pet-sitting, canine strolling, and boarding providers. Given the huge variety of pet homeowners within the metropolis, they should segment their audience into smaller teams to raised perceive the way to place their providers.

Primarily based on their analysis and present buyer base, they break up their viewers into three primary segments:

• Phase A is made up of high-income pet homeowners who work typically and wish daytime canine strolling and pet pop-in visits.
• Phase B is made up of middle-class people and households who journey and wish in a single day boarding or pet-sitting providers.
• Phase C is made up of older pet homeowners and retirees who need assistance caring for his or her pets.

2. Concentrating on

Along with your viewers segments in hand, it’s time to maneuver on to the concentrating on part. First, nevertheless, it’s essential to determine which segments are price concentrating on along with your advertising. To decipher this, I wish to ask myself the next questions on every section:

• Is that this section composed of sufficient potential prospects to justify concentrating on? Would it not yield sufficient earnings if the section had been to transform?
• Is it measurably totally different from the opposite segments?
• Is it accessible by all members of Advertising and Gross sales?
• Is your organization geared up and in a position to serve the section? Are there any bodily, authorized, social, or technological limitations that would stop that?

Selecting what segments to focus on is a strategic resolution. Fortunately, sure strategic planning fashions — the PESTLE analysis is a private favourite — will help you higher perceive the viability of every section.

It takes numerous work to efficiently goal a section of your viewers. However from my expertise, whether or not you’ve recognized two segments or ten, don’t really feel the necessity to goal a couple of section directly. In reality, I’ve discovered that concentrating on separately will help you higher place your advertising for every particular section.

Following our instance from earlier than, Paws & Tails conducts analysis to raised perceive its Chicago viewers. Paws & Tails finds that Phase A makes up 60% of its market measurement, Phase B makes up 30%, and Phase C makes up 10%. Furthermore, Phase A has a better common earnings and is keen to pay extra for pet-sitting and strolling providers. Due to this, they select to concentrate on Phase A.

3. Positioning

At this level, you need to perceive the demographics, psychographics, motivations, and ache factors of the segments you’ve chosen to focus on, which might present a spot to start out on the subject of positioning your services or products.

First, take a step again and look at your services or products via the angle of your chosen section. In the event you had been of their footwear, why would you select your product over a competitor’s? What options or advantages are most related to you, based mostly on the motivations and ache factors you’ve recognized?

This info is vital to defining your brand positioning and understanding the way it stacks up subsequent to your rivals. One strategy to perceive the place you, properly, stand is by constructing a positioning map, which is “the visible plotting of particular manufacturers in opposition to axes, the place every axis represents an attribute that’s identified to drive model choice.”

The section you select to focus on ought to dictate what two attributes you plot in your positioning map. For instance, let’s say Paws & Tails decides Phase A selects pet-sitting manufacturers based mostly on two attributes: service space and reliability.

By understanding 1) what the goal section deems most vital for model choice and a pair of) the place its rivals succeed (and fall quick), Paws & Tails is ready to determine an open market alternative and place its advertising to greatest match the wants and targets of its viewers.

Utilizing Segmentation, Concentrating on, and Positioning in Advertising

The STP mannequin is a priceless addition to any advertising technique, no matter your trade, product, or viewers. It prioritizes environment friendly and efficient advertising and ensures you’re delivering solely essentially the most related, focused messaging throughout the board.

It additionally performs an vital position in creating different methods, resembling your purchaser personas, buyer lifecycle phases, and core model proposition.

By main with a consumer-centric method like STP, you may make certain that each inch of your advertising is related to your viewers — thus, growing the probability that they convert, buy, and grow to be lifelong prospects.

Examples of Nice Market Segmentation and Positioning

Manufacturers are segmenting, concentrating on, and positioning their audiences and advertising continually, oftentimes with out us (customers) even noticing. Ever seen a model or product and thought “Huh, that’s excellent for me” or “Wow, proper place on the proper time”? Yeah … you’ve been topic to the STP mannequin.

Let’s evaluation just a few examples of nice advertising segmentation and positioning.

1. Panera Bread

With numerous quick informal eating places on the map, it’s laborious to determine the place to eat whenever you’re within the temper for a fast meal. For some motive, Panera Bread all the time involves thoughts (no less than for me).

Panera has efficiently cornered the “health-conscious” and “climate-conscious” section of the quick informal eating trade. Is Panera’s meals so totally different from different quick informal choices? Not solely.

However by branding themselves with the angle that “we consider that good meals, meals you may be ok with, can deliver out the perfect in all of us”, Panera stays top-of-mind as a spot to get high-quality meals, quick.

2. AllBirds

Like eating opinions, there are so many shoe manufacturers available on the market. However AllBirds didn’t let that cease it from carving out a brand new area of interest in a busy area filled with snug, lively shoe choices.

How did AllBirds place itself to set itself aside from the competitors? By elevating its eco-consciousness and putting that entrance and middle in its advertising. In response to the AllBirds web site, the model “crafts with planet-friendly pure supplies, like merino wool and eucalyptus bushes, as a result of they’re our greatest probability for a sustainable future.”

At first look, AllBirds footwear don’t look too terribly totally different from different operating or strolling footwear. Nonetheless, its viewers section that cares about sustainability and earth-conscious merchandise is aware of the distinction.

3. Billie

Now not can companies merely section their audiences by “males” and “girls” — the people inside every broad gender group range an excessive amount of, and razor model Billie took observe of this.

In an effort to extinguish the “pink tax,” Billie markets cost-friendly razors and related merchandise. Furthermore, they work to normalize physique hair and different forgotten or shamed components of girls’s our bodies.

By way of this positioning, Billie is ready to set their merchandise aside from rivals and create a robust, constructive neighborhood round their model.

4. Hinge

The world of on-line relationship is a busy, unusual place. From Tinder to FarmersOnly.com, there appears to be a spot for everybody to satisfy, properly, anybody. Hinge got here on the scene solely a handful of years in the past, but it has skyrocketed to the highest of the listing of the most well-liked and dependable relationship app.

Time and time once more, I’ve heard that Hinge is a favourite as a result of it works — that means it helps individuals meet individuals and make actual relationships. You wouldn’t assume a relationship app would place themselves to finally be pointless, however that’s precisely what Hinge has executed. In reality, its mission assertion is to “[build] an app that’s designed to be deleted.”

By placing the wants and needs of its viewers entrance and middle, Hinge has created a extra reliable, in-demand on-line relationship expertise and set itself aside from its rivals.

The Case for Utilizing STP Advertising

The segmentation-targeting-positioning mannequin is designed that will help you higher goal your advertising messages and higher serve your buyer base. It’s a win-win for you and your prospects!

This text was initially revealed October 29, 2020 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.