The most important element of a marketing plan is your target customer

Knowing your target customer is the most important job of any marketer, and it’s a job that never ends. While this is something you should be working on every day of the year, documenting what you’ve learned about your client over the year is essential.

Related: 7 Steps to Defining Your Niche Market

As you write this section of your plan and then share it with your colleagues, you should focus on four key areas: universal truths that hold true year after year, factors that are new and different for the year, who’s been trending and what might actually become an important question to consider, and what you might expect to start to take shape over the course of the year.

1. Universal Truths

Start by listing the factors you’ve always known were true about your client — things you can anticipate that will likely never change, so you need to continually build them into your plan. Remembering the key characteristics of your customer gives you a good foundation to pursue the elements of your marketing plan that are likely to continue to work.

2. New and different

Supplement your basic knowledge with what you have learned over the past year that might be new and different with your client. This should include things that will likely change your plan for the next year because you’ve learned something new about what your customer is looking to get from your brand.

3. Trend

It’s important to also highlight what you see brewing with your customers. Acknowledge issues that you think have started to take shape, but may not yet have become universal. You will want to keep an eye on these issues so that you can of course correct your plan throughout the year as needed.

Related: How Entrepreneurs Can Benefit From Frugal Experiences

4. Expectations

Finally, identify issues that you think may arise this year and therefore want to track in anticipation of the following year. Maybe you have a glimmer of activity, but you’re not sure it will take shape. These are questions you want to keep an eye on for the future.

Let’s take a hypothetical example to give you an idea of ​​what I’m talking about. Imagine we are writing a marketing plan for an American car brand. Here’s how these four categories could fit together in theory.

Universal Truths: Cars continue to be a status symbol. Customers continue to choose cars based on the statement they want to make to others.

Tendency : Choosing more efficient cars has become a new type of status. It’s not really about how much money you spend on a car, but rather how smart you choose.

Tendency : More and more customers are using car-sharing services instead of buying their own car.

Expectations: Car services such as Uber will become more widespread and may further dampen the automotive market in the future as they gain a foothold in more and more markets.

Hopefully, you can see how understanding your customer and evolving your learning over time can really help your marketing plan take shape. As we continue this series, we’ll show how this learning can influence the programs you create in your marketing plan.

Related: Take This Systematic Approach to Identifying Your Ideal Client