How to use Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning (STP) to develop marketing strategies

Today, the STP marketing model (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) is a familiar strategic approach in modern marketing. It is one of the most commonly applied marketing models in practice, with marketing leaders crediting it for efficient, streamlined communications practice. STP marketing focuses on commercial effectiveness, selecting the most valuable segments for a business and then developing a marketing mix and product positioning strategy for each customer group. As Martech continues to develop, so do opportunities for segmentation, targeting, and positioning. So whether you're brand new to STP or a seasoned veteran, it can be useful to take stock and double-check you're utilizing every chance you get to reach, interact with, convert, and engage customers.

But, how do you know which customer segments to focus on? We recommend using personas to identify your…

Our recommendations of the best global online marketing consumer adoption and marketing benchmark statistics

Online marketers love statistics about digital marketing. We do too since they enable us to use a more data-driven approach to inform our future investments. They allow us to review the growth in customer adoption of the latest digital platforms and technologies, make the business case for investment in marketing and allow us to benchmark our growth and performance against competitors. From reviewing thousands of stats sources over the years, I've found that there are a very small number of quality online marketing statistics sites and sources which are updated at least annually and have a representative sample size from different countries. Here we share our experience of ten of the best, most reliable free and paid sources we use to update our benchmarks. Everyone has their favourites, but I thought it would be…

Six steps to writing research questions that get the best results

Eureka! You’ve got an idea for a business, product, service, or new functionality, a solution to a problem, or a hypothesis about why something is happening. Unfortunately, it’s a fact that not all ideas and solutions are good, and not all hypotheses are right. It’s a shame, but there it is. Before investing significant time and money, you’ll want to get a better idea if you’re on the right track. This is where primary research comes in. There is a lot to consider when conducting market research, far too many elements for one blog post. However, writing great research questions will go a long way to getting the answers you need to move forward. There are lots of market research methods but we’ll focus on writing great questions for an online survey, where the questions have to work their hardest.

Step 1:…

A Customer satisfaction survey (CSAT) allows you to measure customer experience, how much a customer would recommend your business and satisfaction with your brand

There are some simple rules to follow when creating a customer satisfaction survey which gives you high-quality insights, accurate data and actionable findings, whether it's the metrics you include or question types which can enhance the feedback. In our Quick Win on how to create an effective customer satisfaction survey, we go into more detail about metrics and question types, how to analyse and interpret results and even how to project manage the process. In this blog post, we'll explore some effective question types which can help you pull together a useful CSAT.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

You might be familiar with NPS as it’s grown massively in popularity amongst marketers globally. It’s a low effort and generally excellent indicator of how a business is doing. It’s especially worth adding…

With more businesses using Facebook Messenger for marketing, brands are also starting to take advantage of Messenger for surveys and research too

I'm always on the lookout for new ways of conducting research with users and customers and one study which caught my eye was how Liberal Democrats are using Facebook Messenger to run a survey. Liberal Democrats are a political party in the UK, we don't support any particular political party, this just personally caught my attention. They paid for sponsored ads, creating a specific "Lib Dems Listen" messenger account and then ran an automated survey. There are great advantages to conducting surveys in this way, firstly like any survey, it's automated but it's also much more conversational and it helps to engage with users who may be tired of taking traditional surveys, thus response rate technically should be higher. Customers always…

Short ethnography studies can help to create personas and improve your website user experience and usability

Anyone who reads my Smart Insights blog posts will probably know by now that I try to achieve two things: Show marketers that research isn't too difficult, time-consuming or expensive (ok that's actually three things there) Show marketers the benefit of research and why it's worth the effort The next method I want to talk to you about is a particularly time-consuming type of research: ethnography, which are long-term observational type studies, however, I also believe that a simple short-term ethnography study can also yield fantastic benefits for user research and building personas which I recommend contain these features: Ethnography doesn't need to be time-consuming and there are ways of using this research method on a short-term basis to help increase your conversions and focus your marketing by helping…

Chart of the day: In the latest market research industry GRIT report, 6 in 10 are using online research communities, and over 8 in 10 have an interest in them. All hail the true superhero of market research.

6 in 10 (60%) are using online communities, with over 8 in 10 (82%) showing interest in them and over 2 in 10 (22%) also considering using them. Online research panels are a fast, affordable way of collecting insights from customers and audiences. The GRIT report produced by Greenbook, is a leading market research industry report. The survey also found that mobile first surveys are increasing in popularity and the shocker, text analytics are pretty popular too! It's great to see mobile first surveys are becoming a major source of data collection, with so many people using mobile phones and tablets, survey experience has in previous…

Chart of the day: Qualitative research dominates persona research and such research leads to revenue success

Most businesses are using qualitative research techniques such as interviews to create their personas, according to research by Cintell. Quantitative techniques such as surveys were found to be the least used whilst conducting qualitative interviews with customers and non-customers was found to be most popular, with more than 8 in 10 using such techniques. Interviewing overall dominated the highest results of the survey, which suggested that qualitative methods exceeded persona research goals. The research also found that 7 in 10 companies who missed revenue or lead goals did not conduct qualitative persona research. High performing companies were also more than two times likely to research the motivations of their customers. Source: Cintell Sample: 137 respondents. Popular job titles represented were Director, VP of Marketing, Chief Marketing…

How do consumers search for local products and services?

Google and IPOS research shows American shoppers are searching on their mobiles for local store information, including opening hours, address and directions. This has implications for Advertisers to ensure the right information is available! 4 in 5 consumers are using search engines to find local information, and 18% of local smartphone searches result in a purchase within a day. The infographic highlights 4 important tactics for retailers to embrace: 1. Ensure Ads include your address and directions, across all devices. 2. Tailor copy to take account of local searching. 3. Build an attribution model for local searches. 4. Use radius bidding and local bid adjustments. Download the full Infographic to find out more information from this American research on Local consumer search behaviour.…