When it comes to marketing your business, there are a lot of different approaches you could use. The most popular and successful is a strategic and analytical approach – one that gathers all the information you can to build a strong and effective marketing strategy. Granted, this takes more time than a more scattergun approach, but it yields much better results. One of the tools you can use to build these analytical strategies is called the STP model, and we wanted to share with you why we think it’s so important for you to use.
What Is The STP Marketing Model?
The STP marketing model is essentially a tool to help you understand your target audience in more detail so that you can deliver more relevant and personalised content to them as part of your marketing efforts. This approach means you can really hone your messages for your target audience, and your customers will get a better impression of your business because they’re receiving content that feels tailor-made to their needs. It takes a big, anonymous group of people (your customers) and turns them into specific segments you can target with your marketing.
The STP model has 3 stages, segmentation, targeting and positioning.
Segmentation
In this stage, you take your large audience and split them out into smaller groups, based on certain common characteristics they share. This means you’re now dealing with several smaller groups with an interest or trait in common that you can focus on, and allows you to provide more targeting marketing that really speaks to their needs, answers their questions and showcases the benefits to their specific circumstances. You can segment your audience according to any characteristic you want, but some of the most common are:
- Demographics (who they are)
- Psychographics (why they buy)
- Lifestyle (hobbies, preferences etc)
- Behaviour (brand loyalty, reading preferences, shopping habits etc)
You can create as many audience segments as you need to achieve those targeted marketing messages that have the best chance of success.
Targeting
Once you’ve got some clear audience segments, you can now look at stage 2, which is all about targeting. Targeting is all about choosing one or more of your segments to focus your marketing efforts on. You don’t have to target them all at once – it depends on both your priorities as a business and the capacity of your marketing department. Many businesses choose to target their largest segment first, as this could potentially give the most return, but this isn’t set in stone.
One of the things we will say is that you should take some time at this stage to identify which segments aren’t worth specifically targeting with your marketing so that you save yourself a lot of time and energy later on. These ono-qualifying segments might not be big enough to justify a targeted campaign of their own, you might not be able to provide the right product or service level for them, or they might just be a complete outlier from the rest of your customer base. By knowing which segments you don’t want to target directly, you can focus fully on the ones that will bring you the best results. If you’re struggling with this, we recommend conducting a PESTEL analysis on each segment to give you a better idea.
Positioning
Finally, you know who your customers are and which ones you’re targeting, it’s time to look at your business and decide how to position yourself for them. By now you should understand a lot about your target segments, which should make it easier to know how to frame your own services. A great way to kick-start this process is to put yourself in that target customer’s shoes. Given all, you know about them and why they buy, what is it they’re looking for that you can provide? What would make them choose you over one of your competitors? What do they find attractive in the brands they buy from? For example, if we look at the beauty world, we see some excellent examples of positioning to attract different markets even with the same products. Fenty Beauty is largely targeted at minority women and women of all colours, while brands like Garnier have started targeting the environmentally friendly audience with their new eco-friendly zero waste ranges. So when you’re trying to find a position for yourself, look at what each segment finds important, what they value and how they buy, then use those aspects of your business as a focus for your marketing.
What Can The STP Model Do For Your Marketing?
As you can see, the STP marketing model is really worth its weight in gold when it comes to marketing. Research has shown time and time again that targeted marketing always performs better than mass marketing, and the more bespoke you can make your communications at every level, the better return you will see on your investment.
STP allows you to go through the process of refining your target markets in great detail, drilling down to the things that really matter to them. The knowledge you get from going through this exercise means you can design and deliver personalised and relevant messages to each segment of your audience, creating a stronger relationship with your brand and an increased conversion rate. That’s why the STP model is one of the most popular marketing models out there!
Its customer-centric view means you are forced to think about your customers in an entirely different way and move away from ‘feature-driven marketing and onto ‘benefits-driven’ personalised marketing instead. Using STP can significantly enhance your competitive position in the market, provide a strong direction and focus, and even help you identify new opportunities for market growth. It also provides you with a ready-made priority list, so that you can ensure you’re only investing time, money and energy into marketing methods that are going to work for your customers. At Lion Spirit Media, digital marketing strategy is at the heart of everything we do. We want to help you find your ROAR, and make sure it’s strong enough to become the leader of the pride. One of the ways we do this is by implementing models like STP when creating your strategy, so that your marketing will always be targeted, refined and lour enough to be heard. If you’d like to know more, just get in touch with one of the team today.
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