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…

Customer listening is now essential

Ever talked with someone who doesn’t seem to listen to you or let you get a word in edgewise? Pretty annoying, right? The same is true in digital marketing. In order for you to market and, ultimately sell better, you need to listen as much as you talk. Only then can you capture the critical customer feedback you need to inform the tactical tweaks and strategic transformations you need to make to take your business to the next level. The best way to do this is by listening – at first manually if that’s all you can afford to do – but eventually in a deep, analytics-based way. This is the realm of customer listening (CL) platforms.

What’s a Customer Listening Platform?

A customer listening (or CL) platform is a SAAS-based app that allows you to listen to all the streams of customer data you have available so you…

How well do businesses really know their customers?

As consumer expectations for relevant content and offers grow as they experience top retailers such as Amazon, companies need to focus even more on customer experience through relevant communications. When completing our Managing Digital Marketing in 2015 research we were interested to see how well companies do understand their customers since many respondents said that improving use of CRM and applying Big Data concepts was a priority for this year. We asked businesses which of the classic segmentation and targeting techniques they used to target their customers using online marketing, for example targeted emails or web-based personalisation. The results show that, overall businesses are long way from the 360 degree customer view and personalised customer lifecycle marketing that many have discussed for a long time. As marketers we see a lot of examples about how we should improve…