Daniel Fox

Understanding your customer is one of the most overused and under-executed phrases in marketing. Everyone claims to do it, but few actually bother. In reality, most marketers operate on assumptions, biases, and their own experiences rather than genuinely understanding their customers.

The truth? If you’re not obsessively focused on your customer, truly knowing them, studying them, and making their needs the foundation of every marketing decision then you’re just guessing. And that’s not marketing. That’s a waste of budget.

The Lip Service of Customer-Centricity

You’ll hear every CMO say, “We put the customer at the heart of everything we do.” Sounds great. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that most brands are operating based on flimsy data, vague personas, and the classic “I think our customer wants…” approach. That’s not customer understanding. That’s projection.

If you actually understand your customer, you don’t rely on opinions, you rely on evidence. You don’t assume, you analyse. You don’t generalise, you segment.

Real customer understanding comes from Data and Depth

Too many marketers swing to one extreme or the other: they either rely on gut instinct (bad) or drown themselves in data without context (also bad). The real magic happens when you combine deep qualitative insights with hard quantitative data.

• Quantitative Data: Your CRM, website analytics, sales data, customer lifetime value (CLV), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and market research surveys all tell you the ‘what.’
• Qualitative Data: Focus groups, interviews, customer service transcripts, social listening; these tell you the ‘why.’

Most marketers stop at the numbers. But understanding your customer means going beyond the “what” and into the messy, complex “why” that drives behavior.

I Am Obsessive About My Customer

I am obsessive about my customer. Not just because it sounds good in a strategy document, but because marketing is fundamentally about them, not me. My opinions don’t matter. Here’s the uncomfortable bit: the CEO’s gut feeling doesn’t matter. The customer’s needs, desires, pain points, and behaviors are the only thing that matters.

Being obsessive means:

• Spending time talking to real customers, not just reading reports.
• Watching how they use your product in real life, not just in a survey.
• Testing messaging relentlessly until it resonates, not assuming you got it right the first time.
• Recognising that customers are not static, they evolve, and your understanding of them must evolve, too.

The three levels of customer understanding

To truly claim you understand your customer, you need to operate at all three levels:

1. Who They Are (Demographics & Psychographics)

Most marketers get stuck here. They build a persona like “Sarah, 38, Marketing Manager, enjoys hiking and drinks soya milk lattes.” That’s a start, but it’s not enough. Knowing who they are isn’t the same as knowing how they buy.

2. How They Buy (Behavior & Decision-Making)

Do they research online first or buy impulsively? Are they brand-loyal or do they switch? What are their key buying criteria? This is the level where real marketing power comes in.

3. Why They Buy (Motivation & Emotion)

This is the goldmine. Why does someone buy a Tesla instead of a BMW? Why do they pay extra for organic produce? Why do they choose your brand over a competitor? This is where brand differentiation and deep customer understanding come into play.

The Competitive Edge: Deep Segmentation

Great marketers don’t stop ‘understand’ their customer, they segment them ruthlessly. If you’re still treating your customers as a single group, you’re already behind. The real advantage comes from understanding that different segments have different needs, triggers, and buying behaviors.

The best segmentation is:

• Data-driven (not just assumptions)
• Behavior-based (not just demographics)
• Actionable (if you can’t market differently to them, the segment is useless)

The cost of ignoring real customer understanding

Companies that fail to understand their customers pay the price by using irrelevant messaging, having poor product-market fit, and wasted marketing spend. Brands that thrive have an obsessive, unwavering focus on their customers. Not just who they are, but what drives them.

So next time you hear a marketer claim they “understand their customer,” ask them this:

• When was the last time you spoke to one?
• How often do you review real customer behaviour, not just reports?
• What’s the last major decision you made because of customer insight?

If they can’t answer, they don’t understand their customer. And that’s the difference between marketing that works and marketing that just sounds good in a PowerPoint.

If you’re not obsessive about your customer, you’re doing it wrong. Real understanding is listening, analysing, questioning and adapting. Do that, and you’ll always have the competitive advantage and enough insight to build a winning strategy.