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.