Where to Start with Marketing: Understanding Your Audience First
Our product is amazing—we just need more people to see it. Sound familiar? It’s one of the biggest issues for businesses, and is rooted in a poor marketing foundation. The truth is, even the best products fall flat if you don’t understand who you’re building for and what problem you’re solving. Otherwise, you’re just yelling into the void—and the void is noisy.
That’s why knowing your audience isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the foundation of every strong marketing strategy. Without it, everything else—your brand story, campaigns, content, even ad spend—rests on shaky ground. Let’s dig into why it matters so much, where businesses often stumble, and how you can set yourself up for success.
The mistake nearly everyone makes
When businesses are excited about what they’ve built, they tend to lead with features.
Our software has 17 different integrations.
This backpack is waterproof up to 50 meters.
Our coffee beans are sourced from a single hillside in Peru.
Those are interesting details—but they’re not reasons people buy. Customers buy because they have a problem that needs to be solved. If you skip the crucial step of understanding the challenge your audience is actually facing, you risk marketing something that feels irrelevant. Or worse, self-indulgent.
To use another real-life example, it’s like a car salesman talking up the horsepower of a car engine when all the customer wants to know is if the backseat fits two carseats. It’s not only frustrating, but it also makes the salesperson feel tone-deaf.
Finding the real pain points
Here’s the good news: uncovering your audience’s needs doesn’t have to be a massive undertaking reserved for Fortune 500s. In fact, some of the best insights come from conversations and observations, not 100-page research decks.
A few ways to get started:
Talk to your customers (or potential ones). Ask open-ended questions about their challenges, not just their wishlist for your product. Often, the gold lies in what they complain about.
Listen where they already hang out. Online reviews, forums, Facebook groups, Reddit threads—these are places where people openly discuss what frustrates them. It’s free market research!
Map the journey. Where does your audience get stuck before they even find you? What obstacles keep them up at night? Sometimes the biggest opportunity is fixing something small and overlooked.
Spanx: the power of solving one clear problem
Take Spanx. Founder Sara Blakely didn’t set out to create a billion-dollar brand by shouting about “patented hosiery technology.” She solved a real problem: women wanted smooth lines under their clothes.
It was specific, relatable, and crystal clear. By starting with the audience’s problem—not the product—Spanx became a household name and reshaped an industry (pun intended).
While many companies believe differently, people don’t connect with abstract innovation. We connect with solutions to our lived experiences.
Why this matters more than ever
We live in a world of infinite choice. Your audience isn’t comparing your offer against one competitor—they’re comparing it against hundreds of alternatives and possibly the option of taking no action at all.
That’s why understanding them deeply isn’t just “nice to have.” It’s survival.
The brands that win aren’t necessarily the ones with the shiniest features. They’re the ones that make their audience feel understood. Think of how Nike sells empowerment, not sneakers. Or how Airbnb markets relaxation, not just accommodation.
Practical ways to put audience-first thinking into action
So how do you ensure your marketing starts on solid ground? A few practical steps:
Build personas that go beyond demographics. Knowing your customer is 35 and lives in Auckland is fine. Knowing she’s exhausted from balancing two kids and work, and she’s desperate for time-saving hacks? That’s gold.
Frame your messaging around outcomes, not features. People don’t want “cloud-based task management software.” They want “to finally get home in time for dinner.”
Test and iterate. Audience understanding isn’t a one-and-done exercise. Keep listening, keep learning, and adjust as their needs evolve.
The takeaway
Marketing succeeds when you start with your audience—not your product. It’s not about what you’ve built, it’s about the problem you’re solving.
If you can answer:
Who are they?
What’s keeping them up at night?
How does what you offer make their life better?
…then you’ve already built the strongest foundation a marketing strategy can have.
The rest—your campaigns, your content, your ads—become infinitely more effective because you’re speaking to real needs, not just features.
At the end of the day, your audience doesn’t want to hear why you think your product is great. They want to feel understood. Nail that, and the rest of your marketing becomes easier.