This article is not about the famous rock band Stone Temple Pilots or the motor oil company. From a marketing point of view, STP means Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning. It is a strategic approach that helps marketers identify and understand their target market and develop a marketing mix that will most effectively reach and appeal to that market.
A brief explanation of the STP marketing model
When starting a business, you need to define your target audience. To whom are you going to sell your products or services? Who is your buyer persona? How to find them?. Then you need to define your target base. Then you must develop your marketing mix and how to offer your product or service to your target audience.
Segmentation
This is the process of dividing a more extensive market into smaller groups or segments based on shared characteristics, needs, or behaviors. The goal is to identify customers most likely interested in the product or service offered.
You can segment your audience by different factors. For example, let’s suppose you want to sell specialty sports shoes to males between 18-35 years old, singles, with a and income range from $35K-$50K, located in the southern United States, who like sports and outdoor activities and know very well about soccer, football, tennis, and baseball. This segmentation exercise used demographics, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral factors to identify our buyer persona for our specialty sports shoes business.
Targeting
Once the market has been segmented, the next step is to select one or more specific segments to target. This involves evaluating each segment’s potential for profitability, competition, and fit with the company’s capabilities and objectives.
Following the specialty sports shoes, we have identified a large population of males between 18-35 years old living between Georgia and Florida that is growing quickly. They are interested in Football shoes, rather than other sports, so there is an opportunity to penetrate the market, offer our products, and gain some market share in those states.
Positioning
Positioning involves developing a marketing mix that effectively communicates the unique value proposition offered to the target market. This includes aspects such as pricing, messaging, distribution, and promotion.
Now we have identified our target market; we can establish some point of differentiation between our products and the competitors offering the same type of shoes. We have distributed our football shoes in the big sports chain stores in Georgia and Florida.
Also, we have a big warehouse in northern Florida and another one in Central Florida that can allow us to offer the shoes at a very competitive price, not only for the local chain sports stores but also for free online shipping through our online store. Even though other brands are stronger, we have seen that many professional football players have been using our products since they were in college, most of them in Georgia and Florida, so we want to advertise this in the local markets and make a deal with them, so they can help us to promote the brand.
I hope the football shoes example showed how this marketing model works, and I hope you understand the importance of defining your target audience. Good Market research will help you to identify your target audience and give you an idea of how you can segment and position your products or services.
STP model is important because:
- It helps businesses identify their target market
- Allows businesses to focus their resources
- Helps businesses differentiate themselves from competitors
- Enables businesses to create more effective marketing messages
By using the STP model, marketers can create more targeted and effective marketing strategies tailored to the needs and preferences of specific groups of customers rather than trying to appeal to a broad, generalized audience.
