Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning
Market segmentation, target selection and positioning, with Ghanaian cases, practice tools and report templates.
INSIGHTS@IG Learning
Sharing practical marketing knowledge
For more than 16 years, my firm, the Bureau of Market & Social Research (MSR), has helped organisations in Ghana understand their customers. The work covers over 450 client engagements in FMCG, financial services, agribusiness and development.
INSIGHTS@IG Learning shares that experience with marketing students, young executives and practitioners. Each resource is practical, drawn from real assignments and grounded in Ghanaian evidence.
- BriefingsStructured guides to core marketing topics.
- MasterclassesResearch and planning skills used in practice.
- TemplatesReport templates and commercial plans for use at work.
Isaac Gwumah
PhD in Marketing
Fellow, Chartered Institute of Marketing
Principal Consultant, INSIGHTS@IG.
CEO, Bureau of Market & Social Research Ltd.
Visit https://www.isaacgwumah.com/
Learning resources
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Doing Product and Concept Testing in Practice
Planning, running and interpreting product and concept tests to support launch decisions.
Pricing Research
Research methods for setting and testing prices, and for turning the results into pricing decisions.
Preparing Winning Business Cases
Structuring a business case for approval: the problem, options, financials and risks.
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Questions on a resource, training or research support. WhatsApp ID: InsightsIG
Executive Briefing
Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (STP)
For marketing students and entry-level marketing executives
Learn how to prepare an STP brief, divide a market into useful segments, choose the segments to serve and position a brand. All examples come from Ghanaian markets, with a practice tool for each idea.
Isaac Gwumah
PhD in Marketing
Fellow, Chartered Institute of Marketing
Principal Consultant, INSIGHTS@IG.
CEO, Bureau of Market & Social Research Ltd.
Visit https://www.isaacgwumah.com/
Module 1The STP brief
How to start an STP exercise with a short brief on the market, the category, competitors and customers, and a builder to write your own.
Start →
Module 2Segmentation
How to divide a market into groups, where the data comes from, and which variables really predict behaviour.
Start →Module 3Targeting
How to choose the groups worth serving, and why very small segments are risky in a small market.
Start →
Module 4Positioning
How to write a positioning statement and make it believable to Ghanaian customers.
Start →How to use this resource
Work through the four modules in order, because each one builds on the last. A module starts with a short explanation, then gives you a tool to practise with. At the end you will find a short quiz, a question to think about for your own organisation, and a list of readings if you want to go further.
Your answers, notes and progress are saved in this browser, so you can stop and come back later on the same device.
If STP is new to you, start with this short overview video.
Why STP matters in Ghana
Ghana is a small market by world standards, yet the people in it are very different from one another. Income comes from salaries, trading, farming and relatives abroad. Language, location and access to services also vary a lot. If you treat everyone the same, your message will reach many people but move very few. If you split the market too finely, each group becomes too small to pay back what you spend on it. STP helps you find the balance.
30.8mPeople counted in the 2021 Census
56.7%Live in urban areas, up from 50.9% in 2010
US$6.65bnMoney sent home from abroad in 2024
26.7mActive mobile money accounts in December 2025
Sources: Ghana Statistical Service, 2021 Census (reported by GNA); Bank of Ghana data (reported by Citi Newsroom, February 2025 and January 2026).
Start with an STP brief
Every STP exercise in your organisation should start with a well-written brief. A brief is a short document, usually two or three pages, that sets out what you already know about the market and the decision the STP work must support. It saves time because the team, and any research agency you hire, start from the same facts and only go looking for what is missing.
A good brief covers four areas. Keep each one short. If a fact would not change who you target or what you offer, it does not belong in the brief.
A
The market context in Ghana
Remember PESTLE? It stands for political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, legal or regulatory, and environmental factors. Use it as a checklist, but write only about the factors that affect your own market. One or two lines per factor is enough.
| Factor | What to look at in Ghana | Example for a mobile money savings product |
|---|---|---|
| Political | Government priorities, the election cycle, policy direction | Government support for digital payments |
| Economic | Inflation, the cedi, interest rates, household cash flow | High prices squeeze budgets, so people save small amounts often |
| Socio-cultural | Family obligations, religion, language, remittances | Susu groups are familiar and trusted |
| Technological | Phone and smartphone ownership, data costs, USSD versus apps | Most adults have a phone, but many still use USSD codes |
| Legal and regulatory | Industry regulators, licences, advertising rules, data protection | Bank of Ghana rules on e-money; the Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) |
| Environmental | Power and network outages, seasons, packaging rules | Outages in some areas interrupt transactions |
B
How the category has changed, and how your product is doing
Describe how your product category has changed over the last few years. If your product is already on the market, add its sales, market share and trend, as far as you have them. Then decide where the category sits in the market life cycle, and where your own product sits in the product life cycle. The stage tells you a lot about how to segment.
IntroductionFew people know the category. Keep segments simple and aim at early adopters.
GrowthNew buyers arrive fast. Find segments with different needs and claim one early.
MaturityMost people already buy. Segment more finely, defend your core and look for new occasions or price tiers.
DeclineDemand is shrinking. Keep the loyal, profitable segments and cut the cost of serving the rest.
The market and your product can be at different stages. A new product entering a mature category needs a sharp point of difference and a segment that existing brands serve poorly.
C
The competitive landscape
List the main brands in the category and say how each one is performing. Note which customers each brand seems to target and what it stands for. Then look at their marketing communications: which channels they use, such as TV, radio, outdoor, social media, influencers, activations or in-store displays, and how well each brand is using them. Crowded channels and empty positions both tell you something.
D
Consumer behaviour and market size
Summarise what you already know about customers: who buys, where, how often, how much and why. Add any market sizing data you have, in volume and value, and say where each figure comes from. Your own sales records, past usage and attitude studies, retail audits and the census are good starting points.
Market size = people in the target population × share who buy the category × purchases per year × average price
How a good brief makes STP faster and better
Each part of the brief feeds a different step of STP. The table shows how. Read across each row.
| Brief part | Helps segmentation | Helps targeting | Helps positioning | What it saves |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. Market context | Shows which variables matter right now, such as pack size when prices rise | Shows which groups are growing and which are under pressure | Flags claims you cannot make because of regulation | Data collection on factors that do not affect your market |
| B. Category and product | Sets how finely to segment for the life cycle stage | Points you to early adopters or to the mass market | Tells you whether to explain the category or stand out within it | Effort spent on the wrong kind of customer |
| C. Competition | Shows how rivals already divide the market | Shows crowded segments and the ones nobody serves well | Shows which positions are taken and which channels are noisy | Copying a rival's position or paying to shout in a crowded channel |
| D. Consumers and size | Gives you starting ideas for segments to test | Gives the size and value you need to score segments | Gives you the customers' own words and needs | Research budget, which can now go only to the gaps |
A brief makes the work effective because every segment you build is tied to a real decision and real market conditions. It makes the work efficient because the research team knows exactly what is still unknown, so there are fewer rounds of fieldwork and faster sign-off.
A useful habit: write the brief before you speak to any research agency, and ask the agency to tell you which gaps it would fill and how.
Try it: write your own STP brief
Use this builder to draft a brief, one part at a time. It counts your words to help you stay crisp, works out a rough market size, and checks the brief before you copy it. Load an example first if you want to see what a finished brief looks like. Both examples are made up for teaching.
STP brief builder
Segmentation
Segmentation means dividing a market into groups of customers who have similar needs and who respond to your marketing in a similar way. The groups should be different enough that you would offer each one a different product, price, channel or message. If you would treat two groups exactly the same, they are not really separate segments.
What makes a good segment?
Marketers usually check a segment against six questions.
- Can you measure it?
- Can you reach it?
- Is it big or profitable enough?
- Does it respond differently from other groups?
- Can you build a plan for it?
- Will it last long enough to plan for?
Try this on a few labels you might hear in a Ghanaian marketing meeting.
Segment tester
Where the data comes from
You can collect segmentation data in several ways. Most good studies use at least two of them. Numbers tell you how big a group is and how much it is worth. Conversations and observation tell you why people behave as they do.
Case: a national segmentation for a telco using census data
The Bureau of Market & Social Research Ltd (MSR) used census data from the Ghana Statistical Service StatsBank to carry out a national segmentation exercise for a telecom company. StatsBank is free to use and publishes 2021 Census tables down to district level, including ownership of a functional phone and a functional smartphone.
The steps below show how a census-based segmentation of this kind works.
- Collect district tables from StatsBank: population by age and sex, education, employment, housing and household assets, and phone and smartphone ownership.
- Build one profile per district by putting these tables side by side. Ghana has 261 districts.
- Group similar districts with cluster analysis, so you end up with a handful of segments rather than hundreds of districts.
- Size each segment: people, households, phone owners and smartphone owners.
- Add the company's own data, such as subscribers, network coverage and agent locations, to see where it is strong or weak in each segment.
- Set priorities and plans for each segment: offers, channels, pricing and network investment by district.
Why this suits mass-market products
Census data covers everyone, not just your current customers, so you can see the whole market, including the people you do not yet serve. It uses the same measures in every district and costs nothing to access. That makes it useful for telecoms, mobile money, beverages, food and household goods, and utilities.
Points to watch
The data describes 2021, and district averages can hide big differences between towns and villages within a district. Combine it with newer survey or sales data.
Try it: score a customer with RFM
RFM is a simple way to rank customers using your own sales records. R is recency, or how recently the customer last bought. F is frequency, or how often they buy. M is monetary value, or how much they spend. Customers with high scores on all three are your most valuable group.
RFM calculator
The cut-off points here are examples. In practice you would set them from your own customer list, for example by splitting customers into five equal groups.
Social listening and location intelligence
Two newer sources are now common. Social listening means tracking what people say about a category or brand online, in posts, comments and reviews. It helps you spot complaints early and learn the words customers use. Be careful, though. The loudest voices online are not the majority, and many tools misread Pidgin, Twi and mixed-language posts.
Location intelligence means studying where customers, outlets and competitors are. Look at the picture: a trotro station like this one brings thousands of people to the same spot every day. A bank deciding where to place agents, or a drinks company planning promotions, can use this kind of data to decide where to act.
Useful location data includes outlet and agent GPS points, footfall counts, map platforms and census enumeration areas.
Going beyond age, income and location
Most companies segment by demographics, geography, lifestyle or product use. Business-to-business (B2B) marketers also use firmographics. These are easy to measure, and you still need them to size a market and buy media. The trouble is that they describe customers without explaining why they buy. The ideas below are harder to measure, but they often predict behaviour much better.
Traditional bases
- Demographic (age, gender, income)
- Geographic (region, town, urban or rural)
- Psychographic (lifestyle, values)
- Behavioural and product usage
- Firmographic, for B2B marketing (industry, company size, location, number of staff, turnover, how the company buys)
Conceptual bases
- Stage of adopting a new product
- Stage in the buying journey
- How skilled the buyer is in the category
- Whom the buyer trusts
- The job the customer wants done
- Limits such as irregular cash flow
Explore three conceptual bases
When a new product arrives, people take it up at different speeds. Researchers group them into five types. Click a part of the curve to see what each group needs.
Source: Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations.
Customers pass through several stages before and after they buy. Some get stuck at one stage. A group that is "stuck at sign-up", for example, is a real segment with a clear fix. Click a stage.
Some buyers accept whatever is offered, while others compare, bargain and switch. This skill depends on the category. A trader may compare mobile money charges closely, then accept an insurance policy on an agent's word. Move the slider.
The "job to be done" idea in the list above comes from Professor Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School. This short talk explains it with his well-known milkshake example.
Splitting a market into too many small boxes is a common mistake.
Each new variable multiplies the number of groups. Five age bands, four regions, three income bands and three usage levels already give you 180 groups. Nobody can build 180 different marketing plans, and most of those groups would be too small to measure properly.
Ghanaian data adds another problem. Money sent from abroad means declared income is often a poor guide to spending. There are about 80.5 million registered mobile money accounts for around 31 million people, so one person often has several accounts. It is better to use a few variables that really change your decisions, and to say clearly what you do not know.
How many groups?
The average assumes people are spread evenly. Real markets are uneven, so many groups would be much smaller. Ghana has 16 regions.
Targeting
Once you know your segments, you have to choose which ones to serve. This choice is called targeting. You are deciding where to spend limited money and staff time, so it helps to think like an investor. Some groups pay well today. Others pay little today but may grow. A good target list has a mix of both.
Value today and growth tomorrow
A simple way to compare segments is to score each one on two things: how much it is worth now, and how much it could grow. The answers place each segment in one of four boxes, and each box suggests a different plan.
- Defend: high value now and good growth. These are your core customers, so protect them and sell them more.
- Develop: low value now but good growth. Invest carefully and learn, so you are ready when the group grows.
- Maintain: high value now but little growth. Keep serving them well while you control costs.
- Deprioritise: low value and little growth. Serve them through partners, or step back.
Segment matrix
The segments below are examples from a retail bank. Move the sliders, delete rows or add your own segments.
A common mistake in Ghana is to judge segments only on what they earn this year. That keeps this year's figures safe but leaves nothing for groups that will matter later, such as younger digital customers, fast-growing towns outside Accra and Kumasi, and Ghanaians living abroad.
Microtargeting: useful, but use it with care
Microtargeting means picking out a very small, precise audience and sending it a message made just for it. Digital platforms make this easy, so it is tempting. In a small market, though, every filter you add shrinks the audience, while the cost of the creative work, data and management stays about the same.
The model below lets you see this for yourself. Change the filters and watch the audience fall. Then check whether the campaign still pays back.
When microtargeting makes sense
- Testing an idea before a full launch
- Large business clients
- Keeping your most valuable customers
- Promotions around a physical outlet, such as a bar or shop
Microtargeting break-even model
All figures are examples. Replace them with your own.
Positioning
Positioning is the place your brand holds in the customer's mind when they compare it with other options. To position a brand, you choose one main thing you want to be known for. That also means choosing what you will not try to be. A brand that claims to be the cheapest, the best quality and the most convenient all at once usually ends up known for nothing.
Write a positioning statement
A positioning statement is an internal sentence that keeps everyone in the business clear about what the brand stands for. It names the target group, the category you compete in, your main benefit, your proof, and the trade-off you are willing to make. The example is a made-up fintech brand. Replace it with your own.
Statement builder
Now check your statement
Two useful terms. Points of parity are the things your brand must match to be taken seriously in its category. Points of difference are the things it does better than others and can prove.
What makes a promise believable in Ghana
In Ghana, people often believe what they see and hear from people they know more than what they see in adverts. Keep these points in mind when you plan your positioning.
Trust comes through people
Agents, church members, colleagues, family and traders carry a lot of weight.
Convenience means more than distance
Flexible payment, steady supply and help after the sale all count.
Buying is often a family decision
Relatives may pay for, share or influence the purchase, including relatives abroad.
Language builds closeness
Local language and humour show that a brand belongs.
Regions differ
What works in Accra may not work the same way in Tamale, Ho or Takoradi.
Proof happens on the ground
Agents, vendors, nurses and drivers prove the promise every day.
You can see these ideas at work in the Ghana cases.
Ghana cases
You will find four cases that show segmentation, targeting and positioning in Ghanaian markets in this section. Some have been embellished to enhance the teaching value and may not necessarily reflect a fully verified story. Read the facts, answer the discussion questions, and then you can open the teaching point.
Practice: build a segment profile card
Now put the three modules together. Choose one segment from your own industry and fill in the card below. You can work alone or in a small group. Give the segment a name based on a need or a problem rather than an age group. For each line, think about where you would get the evidence, and make sure the promise is something your organisation can actually deliver.
When you finish, ask yourself one question. Does this segment change a decision about product, price, channel or message? If it does not, go back and sharpen it.
Ideas to start from, by industry
The table gives starting ideas for different industries. They are suggestions for discussion, not research findings, so feel free to disagree with your row.
Your notes so far
Reading list
These readings, data sources and tools will help you go deeper into each part of STP. Some Harvard Business Review articles need a subscription, but your school or company library may give you access.
Photo credits
The photos on this site come from Wikimedia Commons and are used under the licences shown. The photo of Isaac Gwumah is his own.
Templates
This section turns STP analysis into a report and a commercial plan. The sample report below shows the final outputs. Industry templates for ten sectors are sent by email on request: a PowerPoint report template and an Excel commercial plan for each sector.
All brands, figures and research findings in these files are hypothetical and for training only.
Sample STP project report: SikaSave
SikaSave is a fictitious daily savings feature on a mobile money wallet. The report covers the full STP process, from the brief to a three-year commercial plan.
| Part of the report | Content |
|---|---|
| Executive summary | Targeting decision, positioning and three headline figures |
| Brief and market context | Business question, objectives, PESTLE analysis, category life cycle and competitors |
| Segmentation | Research sources, segmentation variables, segment size and profiles |
| Targeting | Attractiveness scores; primary, secondary and non-targeted segments |
| Positioning and marketing mix | Positioning statement, perceptual map and marketing mix by segment |
| Commercial plan | Customers, revenue, marketing spend, contribution, payback, channel mix and KPIs |
How the templates work
1. Excel commercial plan
Enter segments on the Inputs tab: size, category buyers, target share by year, price, margin and costs. Classify each segment as Primary, Secondary or Not targeted. The workbook calculates customers, revenue, marketing spend, contribution and the payback year.
2. PowerPoint report
Follow the slides in order. Grey italic text is a prompt to replace. The commercial plan slides carry example figures from the Excel plan; replace them with your own results.
3. Brand and present
The templates use a neutral design. Apply your company branding, confirm that the slides match the Excel inputs, and cite a source on every data slide.
Request the industry templates
Select the industries you need. The PowerPoint template and Excel commercial plan for each industry will be sent to your email address.