Two main premises make up good marketing. One major principle is knowing your business. The other is knowing your customer. 

Here’s what we mean when we say that you need to know your business: you need to know how you will make money from your product or service. 

Everything else has to do with your customer. 

• How are you solving your customers’ problems? 
• How is your customer going to buy your product or service? 
• What are they doing now to get a similar product or service? 
• How are you going to make the buying process and consuming process both easy and remarkable? 
• When your customer thinks about buying a product or service like yours, what are the words that they use to describe it? 
• Is your product or service confusing to your customer? 
• How can you simplify the explanation of your product or service, so what your offer “clicks” in your customers’ minds? 
• Where is the best place to find your customer? 
• What is the best, first way to get in touch with your customer? 
• How does your product or service make your customer feel? 
• What about your product or service is unexpected or extraordinary? 
• When your customers interact with you, what do they know that you know – that your competition doesn’t? 
• What do customers think about when they think about you? 

Knowing your customers can help your business immensely. Caring about them as humans can bring you into an entirely new realm of success. 

Marketing starts with serving your customer well and thinking through how they see what you have to offer. 

Then, you think through your product or service, your processes, your messages, your physical or online storefront, and your advertising – and you deliver what your customer needs. 

That’s when all of the tools, the tricks of the trade, the tactics come in. 

That’s secondary. First, know your customers really well.