You are not always your target audience. In fact, many times the person responsible for marketing a product or service does not fit in the target market for that product or service.

So happens when human nature tells us to create a marketing strategy that we like, and good business tells us to create a marketing strategy that the customer likes?

Good marketers rise above the rest.

If you want to know what your audience is looking for, there are a couple of ways to go about asking them. You can ask them directly, using a survey that is mailed out, emailed, posted on your social networks. Ask them to compare two designs, two pages, two headlines, and find out what they like better.

You can hold a more formal focus group, inviting a small number of people in your market in to answer questions and give you feedback on your ideas.

You can hire a marketing research firm to perform the research, or purchase statistics on your market that already exist.

You can hire a consultant with experience in your industry who can help you plan your marketing campaigns.

Or you can use your own ideas, the information available to you, and your gut instinct to create materials that you believe will work.

Either way, marketing is a game of experimentation. Not everything you do will work. The trick is to continue to test new things, track their performance, and move on.

And always remember that just because you do or don’t like something, does not mean your consumers will feel the same way. That can be the toughest fact to learn for all of us.