STP analysis
Segment customers by meaningful differences, choose a priority group, and describe a position to test against their needs and alternatives.
STP connects segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Use it when a product claims to serve everyone or its messages drift between unrelated needs. Selecting a group for this stage makes a tradeoff visible; it does not prove that the group is the largest or most profitable.
Customer needs and behavior, evidence about potential groups, delivery capabilities, and known alternatives. Include the limits of reach, costs, and market-size evidence.
A segmentation basis, a priority target with reasons and tradeoffs, and a positioning hypothesis to check with that group.
How to use it
- Choose a segmentation basis relevant to the task. Describe differences in needs and behavior, with evidence and unknowns.
- Compare possible targets against need, ability to reach them, and the product's ability to serve them. Leave missing size or cost data unknown.
- Choose a priority group for the current stage and record what is being deferred. Do not equate a narrow target with a validated market.
- Write who the product serves, what task it supports, and why it could matter relative to alternatives. Test the claimed difference with target customers and revise.
Keep its limits in mind
Segments are working distinctions, not automatically fixed or mutually exclusive company categories. Positioning concerns the intended place in customers' minds relative to alternatives. A positioning sentence does not establish differentiation, demand, or favorable economics.
Focus a review product on design studios
Fictional example: Yunqiao's existing customers include design studios, consulting teams, and internal development groups. External client review needs are most concentrated among design studios in this case. Market size, acquisition cost, and validated competitive differences are not supplied.
On a small screen, scroll across the diagram to read it.
Choose a basis before a target: The worksheet segments by work pattern. Design studios, consulting teams, and internal development groups are observed customer types; they are not automatically exclusive matches to those three work patterns.
Alignment is not market validation: The team aligns marketing, demos, and the product roadmap around review work in 10–30-person studios. The one-link positioning is still proposed. Interviews must assess whether the difference matters; no market-size, acquisition-cost, or sales result is given.
Next step: Interview target customers about their review tasks and current alternatives. Check whether the proposed position is clear and meaningfully different before expanding marketing effort.
Three reasons to pause before choosing a target
Use STP when a broad product story hides different customer tasks and incompatible choices. Define the market question and the evidence available before naming an attractive segment. A target for the next research stage can be narrower than the eventual market, and a positioning proposal needs reasons customers could actually recognize.
Pause if company labels are being treated as exclusive needs. Pause if existing customers are being used to estimate the size of the whole market without a sampling basis. Pause if a memorable sentence is being presented as proof that people value or will pay for the difference. Keep those claims as questions until the relevant evidence exists.
Write both inclusion and exclusion conditions for the proposed target, plus the tradeoff being made. Preserve overlapping needs instead of forcing every team into one box. Avoid filling an economics column with a guessed acquisition cost simply because the choice feels strategically sensible.
Choose a market focus, an experience question or a purchase summary
These methods can inform one another, but they use different units of analysis. A made-up persona cannot validate a market segment, and a repeat-purchase score cannot explain the job a new prospect needs to complete.
| Method | Material needed | Output |
|---|---|---|
| STP | Bounded market research, alternatives and target tradeoffs | Target choice and positioning hypothesis |
| Persona | Attributed observations with explicit limits | A research synthesis or clearly labeled imagined person |
| Customer journey map | Task-specific records across touchpoints | Experience gaps to investigate |
| RFM | Comparable eligible purchase histories | Behavior groups under stated rules |
Worked case: preserve overlap while making a provisional choice
The Yunqiao example above supplies a qualitative concentration of external-review need among design studios. It supplies neither the number studied nor market size. The following S1 packet is an additional fictional three-note teaching set for practicing overlap; it is not the missing research behind that concentration and cannot estimate a population share.
S1 contains all three of its illustrative notes: S1-A is a 12-person design studio describing client review and project delivery; S1-B is an 18-person consulting team describing client review and internal collaboration; S1-C is a 24-person internal development group describing internal collaboration and project delivery. These are invented task descriptions, not interview results collected by this site. None records willingness to pay, current acquisition cost or a validated competitive advantage.
Each work pattern appears in two notes, so six pattern mentions belong to three teams. Dividing the mentions as if they were six independent customers would be misleading. Company type and team size remain descriptors, not proof of a need. In particular, the consulting team also has external review work, but the current proposal deliberately prioritizes 10–30-person design studios. That exclusion is a focus tradeoff to test, not evidence that consultants have no demand.
| Note / team | Stated work patterns | Implication for the draft target |
|---|---|---|
| S1-A / design studio, 12 people | External review + project delivery | Fits proposed type and size; demand unvalidated |
| S1-B / consulting, 18 people | External review + internal collaboration | Shares review task; excluded by proposed type |
| S1-C / internal development, 24 people | Internal collaboration + project delivery | Size alone does not establish target fit |
Test the positioning against actual alternatives
The provisional conclusion remains a focus on external review in 10–30-person design studios. The proposed one-link position is a hypothesis about usefulness and difference. Do not add claims such as “best,” “saves half the time” or “lowest acquisition cost”: the supplied material supports none of them. Aligning a demo and roadmap with the hypothesis makes the test coherent, not validated.
For the next research stage, ask a target participant to describe a recent review task, who gave feedback, the current tools, workarounds and an outcome they considered acceptable. Ask what “one link” would replace and where it would fail. Do not assume all use the same competitor. Include a participant outside the proposed target, such as a consultant with similar work, to challenge whether company type is a useful boundary.
Before recruitment, define the learning question, selection criteria and what findings would justify retaining, broadening or rejecting the target. No universal interview count or success percentage is supplied here. At review, retain who was included, task context, attributed responses, contradictory evidence and missing economic information. Revise segmentation, target and position separately if the evidence points in different directions. Positive comments alone do not establish willingness to buy; sales and reach costs require their own observed records.
Check your work
- The segmentation basis is explicit; work patterns are not confused with company labels.
- The target choice has evidence and acknowledged unknowns about reach, size, and costs.
- Positioning addresses a relevant task and comparison, rather than a list of features.
- A proposed difference remains a hypothesis until customers and alternative evidence support it.
- Marketing, demonstration, and product decisions reflect the same current target without claiming sales results.
Framework references
References explain the framework and its scope; they do not validate the fictional example's results.
Put the framework to work
Copy the outline and add your question, evidence, and open questions.
Practice with an example
Use historical teaching material from 2015, explore continued-use and refill premises in a fictional project, and prepare one assumption and test for your own business.
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