Stop Marketing on Gut Feel: Building Your Marketing Backbone With STP and USP
STP is the basic framework of marketing: segment the market, choose your target and take a clear place in the customer's mind. A USP is the selling value that sets you apart from competitors.
This is part 1 of our Marketing Strategy Basics series.
Good marketing starts with a backbone.
When you launch a new product or enter a new market, it's tempting to assume everyone needs what you're selling. But marketing without a clear target is like throwing your budget into the wind.
"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself."
(Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, 1973)
In the same passage, Drucker wrote that the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. Getting there starts with understanding the customer deeply.
When planning how to enter a market, marketers often look at the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) alongside the 4Cs (Customer, Cost, Convenience, Communication), which look at the same questions from the customer's side. This post covers the step that comes before them: STP and USP, which decide who you sell to and what you offer.
1. Segmentation: Mapping Where Your Customers Are
Segmentation means dividing a large market into groups of customers who share similar traits, such as attitudes, location or demographics. Instead of sending everyone the same message, it's the first step toward a strategy that fits each group.
Demographic labels like "women in their 20s" often aren't enough on their own. Adding online behavior and interests lets you divide the market more finely.
Quick tip: five conditions of a useful segment.
Kotler and Keller's Marketing Management lists five conditions a useful segment should meet.
- Measurable: you can measure its size and purchasing power.
- Substantial: it's large or profitable enough to serve on its own.
- Accessible: you can actually reach and serve these customers.
- Differentiable: the group responds to marketing differently from other groups.
- Actionable: you can design programs that attract and serve it.
2. Targeting and Customer Personas: Choose and Focus
Targeting means choosing, from the segmented market, the group you can serve best, and building a marketing strategy around that group.
A customer persona helps here. It's a fictional profile of a typical target customer, built from demographics, behavior patterns and similar details so you can understand that customer better.
The more concretely you picture your target customer's daily routine, worries and favorite media, the clearer your marketing message becomes.
3. Positioning: Claiming a Place in the Customer's Mind
Positioning is the strategy of making clear what sets your brand apart from similar products, so it takes hold in the customer's mind.
"Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect."
(Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, 1981)
The goal is to own the one keyword that comes to mind first when your target customer thinks of your brand, such as "the most affordable platform" or "the fastest solution." Ries and Trout stressed finding an open spot in the prospect's mind and getting there first. A single simple keyword is easier to remember than a complicated message.
4. USP: The Value Only You Can Offer
USP stands for unique selling proposition, and some people call it a unique selling point. It's the strategy of putting forward the strengths that set your brand or product apart. The key is to find value only you can offer, not something any competitor could say.
Because your USP sits at the center of your ad copy, it ties directly to performance marketing results. Among your product's features, pick the selling point most likely to resonate with customers, and test which message gets the best response.
Telling Your Strategy as a Story
Once STP and USP give your strategy a backbone, you need a story to carry it to customers. Rather than listing features, tell a story customers can relate to. Even a strong USP loses its power if it never reaches customers in a way that lands. The goal is for customers to pass your brand's story along on their own.
Wrapping Up
We've covered the basics of STP and USP for entering a market. Knowing the theory is one thing. Applying it to your own business with data is another.
The same backbone guides how you build social proof, such as customer reviews and sales rankings. Only when you're clear about who you serve and what you promise can you decide which reviews to collect and where to show them.
The Marketing Strategy Basics series continues with part 2 on performance marketing, part 3 on conversion rate optimization, part 4 on customer journey maps, part 5 on GA4 and KPIs and part 6 on growth hacking and AARRR.
Work with Budit
If you'd like to check your brand's targeting and positioning against real data, get in touch with Budit.
To see how often people search for your brand keywords on Naver, Korea's largest search portal, try Naver Trends in ViewVibe (requires signing in).
References
- Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973): quote on the aim of marketing
- Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller, Marketing Management (15th ed., 2016): the five conditions of a useful segment
- Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (1981): the concept of positioning and quote