2. Understand Your Customer

Have you determined who your customer is yet? Sure, you know what you want to sell them, but have you had a good think about their life goals, their needs and desires? As brand storyteller and strategist Bernadette Jiwa reflects:

…the products and services you sell create meaning for your customers beyond their utility. The truth is that as marketers, we often miss the opportunity to acknowledge and reflect that story back to them.

Understand your target audience by reviewing company research that has been undertaken previously. If none has been undertaken, look into that. Or use freely available tools to conduct your own desk research. 

Look at Google Trends for keyword movements relating to your industry. Or run a few searches of relevant hashtags on Twitter to get a feel for what your prospective customers are speaking about, complaining over, and praising. Jeff Jones, CMO of Target, suggests:

As a marketer, you have to be driven by the consumer that you are serving, and you can only do that when you are insanely curious about them. You can’t change the world if you are not curious about it.