Published: 27 Apr 2023
The latest Business Briefing Note from TSA
“In relation to marketing, we have to know the audience we’re targeting, we have to make sure that what we do and what we say fits the with the wider corporate and marketing strategies.”
So says Chartered Marketer Neil Kelly, Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for the Marketing Subject Group at Leeds Business School and author of Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning, the next in our series of Business Briefing Notes, which is now available to download here, free of charge for all our members.
Neil specialises in marketing communications, with a particular focus on digital marketing and planning. He has worked in a number of marketing roles for some major brands and has been on the judging panel for the CIM Marketing Excellence Awards.
This latest guide, written for TSA members, introduces Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (STP), a key strategic marketing decision-making process.
The guide contains some academic content but is also a practical how-to guide, containing checklists, models, some useful links for further resources and questions to apply and consider when developing your marketing programme.
Segmentation
Markets are segmented through bases, which Neil terms as demographic, geographic, geodemographic, psychographic and behavioural. He explains how audiences can be categorised into loyal brand users, favourable brand switchers, other brand switchers, other brand loyals and potential new category users. He also describes what is meant by a ‘buyer persona’ and includes a useful template of a persona to get you started.
Targeting
Once you have identified a variety of different segments to target, how do you choose which ones to try to reach? How do you avoid wasting time, effort and money? Follow Neil’s advice to ensure the best use of these resources.
Positioning
Simply put, positioning is how your market positions you in their mind against those of key competitors. The guide includes a perceptual map, along with a template to copy to help you understand positioning. There is also a list of key questions to ask yourself to prompt you to develop a strong brand positioning statement, all of which will assist you in planning your marketing and communications approach.
This series of useful guides to running a business is available free of charge for all our members to support one of our vision statements that ‘TSA will help you build a better business’. The guides are aimed at any size of business, at whatever stage of development it’s at. Whether you are just setting up a new business for the first time and need to put systems and processes in place, or you have a more established firm and you’re now looking to healthcheck existing practices or introduce new ideas, the guides are ideal for all our ‘time poor’ members, who are looking for effective, yet easy to implement, solutions.
