Armed with this foundation, your business is ready for growth.

By Michael Tasner 

Here are the four questions to help carve out your foundation.

1. Who are your best customers?

First, let's focus on the who. Every business has different types of customers. The chances are high you have some customers you love, and some not so much. Some customers pay more, some less. Some are more profitable, some less. Some are easy to get in touch with, some not so much. Get immense clarity on who you love doing business with and who you would love to have as a customer. 

Once you understand who your best customers are, I encourage you to build an ideal persona. 

2. Where are they hanging out (online and off)?

Armed with that persona, the next step is to do some market research as to where they are hanging out. The chances are high that you may be a bit biased. For example, I never would have thought my prospects would be hanging out on TikTok, but they are. Your prospects' attention continues to shift regularly. As a new platform or outlet comes along, some of their attention moves there. As they get bored with that outlet, they may also move back to one or move to another. The attention is moving constantly.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

1. What events do they attend?

2. What social media platforms are they on?

3. What groups or clubs are they in?

4. What are they reading/watching/listening to?

5. Where are they spending their money?

The purpose of this work is to learn more about your customer and what makes them tick. 

Here are some helpful tips for building up that knowledge base of market research:

3. What are their pain points today?

Now that you have your best customer persona and details as to where they are hanging out online and offline, it's time to listen and read. Read the conversations going on on social media. Stop into a meeting or two or an event and listen and observe.

Your goal is to listen for one key area: pain.

• What are your prospects struggling with?

• What's keeping them up at night?

I'm not talking surface-level pain, but the bigger pain points. Let's use a child care center as an example.

Your "who" would be parents. Your ideal parent could be of a certain income range, job type, location to your center or even educational philosophy.

4. How do you get them to pay attention to you, your brand and your business?

The final step is to grab the attention of those best customers using all of your new knowledge.

You could think that to get people to pay attention, you need the loudest voice possible. You try to shout as loudly as you can. This rarely works, though.

The most effective marketing is always going to be the one that is targeted at the right person/business at the right time with content specifically designed for them, showing the path from pain to pleasure. In short: It is about being relevant — not being loud.

Sticking with the childcare example. If one of the pain points is around affording a world-class education for your child and your center is the solution — focus there. Put out content across the platforms your ideal parents are using. This shows them you understand where they are.

These steps are a part of a strategic exercise that I suggest you revisit every three to six months. If the economy or the landscape shifts in between those windows, you will need to execute this more frequently.