Different than your audience or personas, your target, otherwise known as your sources of growth, looks at a broader yet no less specific cohort of consumers based on their propensity to be interested in your product or services. There are only four sources where growth can come from: Loyalists, Vulnerable Repurchasers, Switchers, and New Category Entrants.

A SWOT analysis is a helpful tool to help you understand your business. It can help you make the right decisions and get the most out of your assets.

You should use it to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with your company's position in the market. By doing so, you'll be able to create an effective strategy for growth that will take advantage of both internal and external factors affecting your business.

The best way for you to create a successful ad is by using a simple but effective tool like the creative brief. A proper brief will help you plan your campaign and know what kind of work is required. And by clearly stating your objectives and providing guidance on the target market and competition, this document will also assist in getting buy-in from decision-makers who may not be as familiar with advertising terms as your team.

One element that makes a great brief truly exceptional: It has a firm grasp on the culture in which it exists. We call this having cultural fluency.

As a marketer, it is essential to understand and have the right metrics to measure your performance. Too many metrics or wrong ones will not help you build the right strategy. The trick is not in having more data or more complicated metrics but in finding the right mix of metrics to track. Your job as a marketer is also essential in defining what success looks like for your company and then aligning your marketing efforts with that definition of success so that everyone knows how they are performing and whether they are doing well.

If you truly want to understand your target consumers and develop better marketing plans, you need to stop thinking about them as an “audience” or a “market segment.” Instead, think about them as the people they are in their everyday lives—as customers.

While the CDJ is a simple model, it's one of the most useful for understanding how we make decisions. It lays out how buyers move from one stage to another during the decision-making process, and it provides marketers with two critical insights that you can use to improve their marketing.

Whether you're a small startup or an established brand, understanding your category is critical to your success. The more you understand the rules and conventions of your industry, the better you can establish yourself in that market and reach your customers with targeted solutions. On the other hand, if you ignore this vital step in your company's growth, then there are many pitfalls that could lead to failure—such as failing to identify your competition and not understanding how consumers perceive products within their unique category.

A brand is much more than a logo, a name or an identity. It's about how people feel when they interact with your business. A brand is the sum of those interactions. And if you want to build a strong brand, you need to understand it from every angle.

With brand management, you're able to break this work down in even more ways. You can set a clear vision for your team, stay on the same page with everyone's goals and objectives, ensure that all deliverables have been met when the project is over—and most importantly, make sure that you're all working towards one goal together.